Two

“You mean, she really is still working? As a servant?” Miss Fell’s fluting voice filled the word with horror.

“Well, yes.” Mr. Fountain looked uncomfortable, glancing at Rose as though he hoped she might rescue him.

“In between her lessons?” Miss Fell went on, glaring at Rose. “She is an apprentice. How can she possibly be a maid as well?”

“I’m used to working, ma’am,” Rose murmured.

“Be quiet, Rose.” Gus walked along the back of the chaise longue and wafted his tail over her mouth. Rose tried to argue and found she couldn’t—her mouth felt as though it had been stuffed with hair. She swiped at Gus’s tail and glared angrily at him, but he only purred, his eyes smug. “She is ridiculously stubborn, and I have been telling her for months that she can’t be a magician’s apprentice and a housemaid.”

Rose hadn’t realized that Miss Fell thought she was an apprentice and nothing else. She had lain awake through the night, hearing the city bells tolling hour after hour, as she wondered and worried about the girl in her painting. Then she had dragged herself out of bed at six to lay the fires. She had been laying Miss Fell’s bedroom fire when she stupidly dropped the fire irons in the grate.

The clumsy crash of the irons had woken the old lady, who had been remarkably patient with the careless servant in front of her until she discovered who it was. Miss Fell had swathed herself immediately in a lace-trimmed robe and summoned Mr. Fountain and a tea tray to the drawing room. Gus hadn’t been summoned—he had arrived out of incurable nosiness.

When they returned from Venice, Rose had been unsure what she was supposed to be. While they were away, she had definitely been a young lady—she had danced at a palace ball, for starters. Little Venetian servant girls had lit the fire in her bedroom, and to her shame, she had even stayed asleep while they did it.

But back at Mr. Fountain’s house, there had been the flurry of finding a room for Miss Fell and dusting it and hanging the curtains for the bed and fussing until everything was perfect. So Rose had found herself putting her beautiful, silver lace dancing dress on a hook in her tiny bedroom in the attic, feeling quite sure she would never wear it again. And then she had run down to the kitchens to soothe Mrs. Jones’s panic about how to produce a suitable supper for the master and his guest, when (she claimed) there was only a haddock in the house, and that was past its best.

How could Rose possibly have refused to help? As she stared now at Miss Fell’s disapproving face, she imagined a similar expression on her own as she told Miss Bridges that she was not a servant now and would not be ordered around. Rose hadn’t joined the family at supper—which wasn’t haddock, of course—although Mrs. Jones swore that she was ashamed to send it upstairs.

“But I am a maid,” she whispered. “That’s why I came here. Miss Bridges took me out of the orphanage, ma’am. I can’t forget that.”

Miss Fell’s eyes glinted like flints. “You must. You are no longer a servant.” She stared thoughtfully at Rose. “It’s much easier to be a housemaid, isn’t it, Rose?”

Rose gasped. She was willing to bet Miss Fell had never scrubbed steps or cleaned a grate. How on earth would she know? Did she think maids spent all their time gossiping in the kitchens?

“She’s right.”

Rose flinched as Gus delicately pricked her hand with one extended claw. She glared at him. She much, much preferred him as a dance partner, as he had been in Venice, she decided.

“It may be hard work, but someone is always telling you what to do. You have a list to run the errands, or you just do the same backbreaking chores every morning. You never have to think.” The silvery-white cat swiped his whiskers across her cheek affectionately. Their tips felt like tiny dancing feet. “No difficult decisions to make. You can be lazy.”

Rose stared down at her lap, where her hands were tightly folded. Callused, dry-skinned hands, which Bella kept being rude about. But Rose couldn’t stand the thought of raw-chicken-skin gloves, however much Bella swore they would make her skin pretty and soft again. She stretched out her fingers, eyeing the roughened patches.

Was that what it was? That she didn’t want to give up a life where she only had to follow orders? She had always had marked hands, for as long as she could remember, because she had worked at the orphanage. They all had; even the littlest ones could carry washing. Rose had been proud of working and delighted with her wages. Since she’d become an apprentice, Mr. Fountain had paid her the same allowance he gave Freddie, but that didn’t feel quite the same.

“Freddie always has dirty hands too,” Gus told her helpfully. “Covered in ink and who knows what else.”

Rose sighed. “But who will do my work?” she asked miserably. “Already they’re stretched belowstairs, with me having so many lessons.”

“Can your housekeeper not engage another maid?” Miss Fell asked. “Or even two. Really, the house seems to be run on a skeleton staff as it is.”

Mr. Fountain sighed. “I suppose so. I dislike new people in the house. It feels different.” He twirled his mustache irritably around one finger. His magnificent scarlet brocade dressing gown clashed horribly with the mauve armchair he was sitting in, and he looked generally grumpy and very tired. He was spending even longer than usual at the palace, being dragged into meetings about military strategy and war defenses, and he hated it. “I will speak to Miss Bridges.”

“What will I do when I don’t have lessons?” Rose’s voice was small. “I could help in the kitchens anyway, couldn’t I?”

“Of course not!” snapped Miss Fell. “I am trying to get you out of the kitchens, child. You should be in the schoolroom or the workroom. Or you may sit in your own bedroom, of course. You should practice your sewing. That would be very suitable.”

Gus gave a short, purring laugh. “Sitting cross-legged on her bed like a tailor, ma’am? She sleeps in a garret. No chair and only a hook for her clothes.”

Miss Fell closed her eyes and shuddered slightly. “Of course. Well, there’s no shortage of rooms. I will speak to Miss Bridges about this myself. Perhaps the room opposite mine?” She asked Mr. Fountain out of courtesy, but it was plain that she expected him to do as he was told.

“But I like my room, the one I have now.” Rose faltered, aware that she was sounding stubborn and silly.

Miss Fell hardly glanced at her. “You are a young lady, Rose. You are being educated. It’s hardly appropriate for you to be living in an—an attic.”

Rose gulped back a sob. Her precious first maid’s place had gone, and now her little room as well. It was all very well to say that she would have a proper bedroom now, one that suited her station in life, but that attic room had been the very first place that was hers. The first clothes that had been only ever hers hung on those hooks. Her eyelashes fluttered miserably. She supposed she would have to get rid of the clothes too. In her strange, unhappy mood, she forgot how delighted she had been with the new dress from Venice, and smoothed her too-short dark wool dress lovingly over her knees.

Why was she so frightened by all this? It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be an apprentice. But giving up her other life as a maid seemed so final. It had been there waiting if everything went wrong, she supposed. She could go back to the kitchens and the way things were before. Rose ground her teeth. The safe way things were before. Gus and Miss Fell were right, even though she hated to admit it.

But she really didn’t see why she had to give up her little bedroom. “I don’t need to move, ma’am,” she protested politely. “I’ll practice my sewing in the schoolroom, I promise.”

Miss Fell’s eyes skewered Rose like daggers. “It is not appropriate!” she hissed. “Not for a…” She stopped herself sharply, her bony, knobby fingers clenching into her palms.

“A what?” Rose asked, confused. Somehow she could feel that Miss Fell had almost said something terribly important, and it was there, just waiting to be dragged into the open, if only she could catch hold of it. She stared hungrily at the old lady, but Miss Fell was sitting calmly, her hands folded around the old silver mirror that she carried in her reticule.

“For a young lady,” Miss Fell repeated, each word falling into the room, hard-edged.

Mr. Fountain sighed and nodded. “I’m sorry, Rose.” Rose wasn’t sure whether he was apologizing for not treating her like a proper apprentice before or for letting Miss Fell turn her life upside down now. She suspected he wasn’t sure either.

She sniffed pathetically, and Gus clawed her again. “Stop it,” he murmured. “Such self-pity. Disgusting. Ask for a new dress, and stop being so feeble.”

“I shall speak to Miss Bridges after breakfast. A meal which you will eat in the dining room, Rose,” Miss Fell pronounced, and she walked regally out of the room.

***

“The room on the other side of my room?” Bella asked, whispering to Rose over her boiled egg.

Rose nodded. Exactly what she needed: Bella running in and out of her bedroom all the time. Bella had never seen Rose’s attic room—she had probably never gone beyond where the stair carpets stopped, as servants didn’t need carpet.

Rose smiled into her porridge, wondering whether Bella could possibly be a worse neighbor than Susan, the other housemaid, who couldn’t stand Rose. But then her eyes filled with tears suddenly. She wouldn’t miss Susan; of course she wouldn’t. The girl had spent weeks torturing her. It would be a pleasure never to see that sharp-featured, sulky face again. But it also meant that Rose wouldn’t see Mrs. Jones or Sarah or her dear friend Bill—or only in passing in the corridors, and they wouldn’t be allowed to talk. That wasn’t going to happen, Rose told herself. She jabbed her spoon into the porridge angrily, striking a ringing chime from the delicate porcelain.

Miss Fell looked up sharply. She had taken most of her meals in her room since she arrived, only attending occasional family dinners, and she hadn’t realized that Rose’s absence meant she was eating in the kitchens. This morning Miss Fell had appeared promptly for breakfast, in severe plum-colored silk with an ivory walking stick. She meant to see that her instructions were being obeyed. She frowned disapprovingly at the lapse of manners, but perhaps the stiff set of Rose’s shoulders discouraged her from commenting.

“Oh, good,” Bella murmured sweetly, and Rose shuddered. Bella sounded altogether too happy about the idea.

“It will be delightful for you, Isabella, to have Rose close by,” Miss Fell pronounced.

Freddie smirked and trod on Rose’s foot. “Notice she says it that way, not the other way around,” he muttered. “Good luck.” Rose kicked him hard in the ankle and went back to eating her porridge with an angelic expression that she had usefully learned from Bella.

Eating at the long dining-room table felt odd. She had eaten with the family in Venice, but that was abroad, where things were obviously different. Now she couldn’t help feeling as though someone might shout at her for sitting down.

She had personally polished the silver teapot that stood in front of her—it was a beast to polish, with all those fiddly little bits around the lid. She kept wanting to smack Freddie for reading a cheap horror comic under the table. If he didn’t pay attention, he was going to drop bacon grease on the tablecloth, and it was impossible to get grease stains out of linen.

But she was actually drinking out of a cup from the Meissen breakfast service, Rose reminded herself. The tablecloth wasn’t for her to worry about anymore. Her fingers felt like sausages around the cup’s delicate handle.

Miss Fell finished the meager triangle of toast that had been her breakfast and stood up. “Isabella and Rose, we will discuss etiquette and the proper spells for managing a well-run household at eleven o’clock sharp in my room. I shall go and speak to Miss Bridges about your new accommodations, Rose.”

“Why does she want me to change rooms so much?” Rose murmured half to herself as the last whisper of Miss Fell’s silken train died away.

“Don’t you want to?” Freddie asked, looking up from his comic in surprise. “I mean, I could see why you’d want to stay as far away from Bella as possible, but the room you have now… It’s more like a cupboard, Rose.”

“I know. And I suppose I’d like to have a bigger room. It’s just odd.” Rose glanced over at Mr. Fountain, but he was deep in a book and appeared not to be listening. “It feels odd. I–I liked being half and half. I’m not a lady, and I can’t see how I ever will be!”

Gus licked the last drops out of a bowl of cream. “Miss Fell does seem fairly sure that you are or should be already,” he murmured thickly.

“She’s very set on it,” Rose agreed in a gloomy voice. It hadn’t taken any of them long to learn that whatever Miss Fell was set on tended to happen rather fast.

“I wonder why?” Bella mused, licking egg yolk off a little silver spoon with the tip of her tongue. “Why does she mind so much?” She flicked a curious sideways glance at Rose.

“She’s just like that,” Freddie shrugged. “She wants things her way, that’s all.”

Bella shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She dug her spoon into the egg again, perfectly aware that almost everyone around the table was now staring at her while she diligently scraped around, finding the last little bits.

“Oh, pick it up and lick it!” Gus snapped. “What are you talking about? What do you know that we don’t?” His whiskers quivered with irritation.

Bella smirked. “I watch, that’s all. I’ve seen how Miss Fell looks at Rose. And there was the painting, of course…”

Freddie pushed his chair back with a screech. “We all know Rose is the most talented apprentice magician ever. Let’s not go over it again.” He stomped out, slamming the door loudly enough to shake Mr. Fountain out of his book.

“More tea?” he asked vaguely, waving his cup at Rose.

Rose filled it, waited until the master was safely back in a world of his own, and then stared at Bella and Gus. “What was that?” she demanded, jerking her head at the door.

“He’s jealous.” Gus shrugged. “You take to spells more easily than he does, or so he thinks. It’s true that Miss Fell doesn’t seem very interested in teaching him. He feels slighted.”

“It’s only because he’s a boy!” Rose sighed. “She’s like Miss Bridges. She only likes tidy people, and he’s always knocking things over. He doesn’t want her teaching him anyway; he’s always trying to get out of her etiquette lessons.”

Gus snorted. “Etiquette. He doesn’t care about that. The woman is one of the most powerful magicians of the age! That’s what Freddie wants, her secrets. He’s an ambitious boy. And she’s giving them to you instead.”

“Oh.” Rose sounded doubtful. Despite Miss Fell’s obvious power, so far all their new mistress had done was criticize Rose’s embroidery—and practically collapse in a painting lesson. Rose did not feel that she was being taught secret, powerful spells. She raised one eyebrow at Bella, who looked equally unconvinced.

“I expect she’ll get to that. Maybe we need to be able to sew properly first.” Bella sighed. “But anyway, Rose, that wasn’t what I meant at all. I mean, you may be good at spells, but you certainly aren’t as good as I intend to be.” She smirked smugly. “I think Miss Fell is interested in you for quite a different reason.”

She paused, clearly waiting to be begged, but Rose wasn’t in the mood. She was still turning over the strange news that Freddie was jealous of her talent. He had been impressed when she first used her magic, impressed and furious that he had been shown up by a servant, but Rose had thought that had worn off by now. “Oh, stop being so silly, Bella. If you want to tell, tell. Otherwise I have to go and study that diagram of curtseys before our lesson.”

Bella pouted, but she couldn’t resist. “Oh, Rose, it’s obvious. She knows who you are.”

She sat back, looking proud of herself, and took a delicate bite of toast. But she was peering sideways at Rose to see how she took the news.

Rose put her hands in her lap, wrapped around each other to stop them from shaking. She had suspected as much, but the idea seemed so much more real when Bella said it out loud. “Why wouldn’t she just tell me?” she whispered.

“I don’t know…” Bella said thoughtfully. “Maybe she isn’t quite sure? It would be cruel to tell you if she wasn’t certain. Or perhaps she thinks you aren’t ready to know. It might be such an awful truth that it would send you screaming mad.” Bella crunched more toast. “Yes, it’s probably that.”

“She has to tell me.” Rose sat up straighter. “If she knows who I am, she has no right to hide that from me! She has to tell!”

Gus snickered. “Remember what I said about one of the most powerful magicians of the age? I don’t think she has to do anything.”

“Shut up, Gus.” Rose stared at Bella, her eyes narrowed. “Exactly what did you see to make you think she knows? Did she say something?”

Bella blinked a little nervously. She hadn’t seen Rose like this before, and she was frightening. “She looks at you…Rose. She…she looks like you. Now, the way you’re glaring at me, you look like her. I think you’re a Fell. And she knows.”

Gus surged up from the pile of cushions on his chair and picked his way swiftly through the breakfast things until he was nose to nose with Rose. “A Fell. Well, goodness me. The child could have said something useful, for once. A Fell child in an orphanage. That would be a surprise.” He sat down, wrapping his tail around himself thoughtfully and still staring at Rose. “Why would a child from one of the most feared and respected magical families in the world end up in an orphanage, Bella?”

“I don’t know.” Bella shrugged. “But you think I’m right, don’t you?”

“Possibly. Possibly.” Gus purred with satisfaction. “This really is turning out to be a most interesting day.”

“It isn’t just an interesting thing to talk about over breakfast!” Rose hissed at him. “This is important! How are we going to find out if we’re right?”

“You could ask her,” Gus suggested.

Rose shuddered. “No. She’d just give me one of her looks and tell me my petticoat was showing. If it were that simple, she’d have told me already, wouldn’t she?”

“I’m all out of ideas, then.” Gus yawned, deliberately widely. “Time for a nap, I think.”

“I’ll help,” Bella suggested hopefully. “Please, Rose. It was me that told you. Let me help.”

Rose nodded reluctantly. Bella was right. She was the one who had noticed. It wouldn’t be fair to shut her out now. “Can you think of anything?” she asked.

Bella frowned. “Nothing very clever,” she admitted. “But I wonder if we could search her room. There must be something in there. Old letters, perhaps. Some clue to who you are.”

Rose swallowed, but her mouth still felt dry. She’d had a horrible feeling that Bella would say something like that.

“Hesitating to say it for the third time, but one of the most powerful magicians of our age. Hmm? I think not the best person to burglarize.” Gus jumped off the dining table, hitting the polished floorboards with a solid thump, and strolled out of the door, his tail tip whisking happily. Rose stared after him, wondering who he was going to tell.

***

“Simple persuasion spells can be very useful, but in general, servants and magic do not mix,” Miss Fell continued. She was sitting in a wing chair by the window of her room, where she taught Rose and Bella most of their lessons. They were perched on footstools in front of her chair, trying to concentrate on the proper management of servants.

Rose couldn’t help feeling that she knew rather more about servants than Miss Fell ever would. Between that and trying to look for clues without Miss Fell noticing, she was finding the lesson hard to attend to. It didn’t help that she had to keep elbowing Bella, who had no idea of discretion and kept turning around to stare at anything that looked like it might be useful in their search.

For once, Miss Fell was not sitting bolt upright. She looked tired—which Rose couldn’t help feeling was her fault. The old lady didn’t usually come downstairs for breakfast, preferring to take a tray in her room. By accidentally waking her this morning, Rose had added several hours to Miss Fell’s day.

As she tried to concentrate on the old lady’s flutey voice, Rose wondered how old Miss Fell really was. Rose had had some experience with glamours, but she had no sense that Miss Fell was using one. She just was one of those people who always looked perfect, even in her nightgown. Even now, only the purple shadows under her eyes and her slightly huddled position in the chair showed that she was weary. She was holding her pretty silver-framed mirror in her gnarled hands again, and she stroked it as she talked, gently running her fingers around the delicate frame.

“Rose dear, pay attention,” Miss Fell scolded. “And don’t frown like that, child! You will have wrinkles before you’re twenty if you sit and scowl. Really, direct sunlight and excessive facial expressions”—Rose had to think for a moment before she decided this probably meant smiling was outlawed as well—“are the ruination of the complexion. Don’t frown, and never let me see either of you in the sun without a parasol. Rose, you are still frowning! Here, dear, look.” She handed Rose the silver mirror. “Just look at the creases between your eyebrows. Disastrous.”

Rose felt a strange little skip of frightened excitement as she took the mirror and smiled sadly at her own anxious face in the tarnished glass. She nodded obediently at Miss Fell and tried hard to flatten out her forehead, but it seemed to want to crease.

She was handing the mirror back when it happened. The face seemed to come sliding out of the frame, as though the glass had been pulled sideways. Rose thought for a moment that some strange fault in the old glass had twisted her own reflection about. She had seen what was called a haunted mirror in the magicians’ supply shop where she ran errands for Mr. Fountain. The younger Mr. Sowerby had shown her one that made her jump at seeing her reflection all stretched out. But this was more than just old glass. The face was hers but not. It was her but older, and how could that be, unless the glass had some strange glamour spell on it? There was something else dragging at the corners of her memory too, a certainty that she had seen this face somewhere else.

Rose tore her eyes away from the girl staring back at her and looked up at Miss Fell, her mouth open to ask. But the old lady hadn’t noticed what had happened and was still lecturing Rose on the perils of scowling. Miss Fell simply held out her hand for the mirror and laid it back in her lap. She gave no sign that she expected Rose to have seen anything odd.

Which left Rose wondering: was she the only one who saw strange faces in that glass?

***

“What was it?” Bella demanded, a little while later. As soon as they had been dismissed by Miss Fell, she had hauled Rose along to her own bedroom and practically shoved her into the window seat. “Come on, Rose! The mirror, what did it do?”

“Did you see it?” Rose asked her sharply.

“No!” Bella smacked a cushion crossly. “I knew it; there was something. You went the strangest color. What happened? Was it one of your strange pictures? Oh, was it something about the war? I saw a paper on Papa’s desk which said that the Talish are most definitely making plans to invade. It said one of their plans is to fly across in huge balloons, but I can’t believe that’s true.”

Rose shook her head. “Nothing like that. Nothing—grand. It’s only that I looked in the mirror and it wasn’t my face looking back at me. I’ve seen odd things in mirrors before, but only when I was supposed to,” Rose muttered. “When we were scrying to find out what had happened to Maisie, and I saw Miss Sparrow. I asked the mirror to tell me that time, though. This was something different. I think that face is always in the mirror.”

“Who was it? Was she pretty? Was it someone you knew? Oh, Rose, stop sitting there like a lemon and tell me!”

“Bella, I think it might have been…my mother,” Rose whispered.

Bella’s mouth fell open, and for once, she was speechless. She stared at Rose, mouth and eyes circles of amazement.

Bella looks like the queen’s Pekingese dog with her eyes like that, Rose thought vaguely. Her brain was behaving like a butterfly, flitting from thought to thought and back again, and refusing to stay on the important things. Until she’d told Bella, she’d hardly dared say it to herself, but she was almost sure that she was right.

Bella got over her amazement quickly and moved on to curiosity. “How do you know? Did she look like you? And was it just her face, or do you think she could see you back? Is she inside that mirror?” Bella wrinkled her nose in disgust.

Rose frowned. “No. It was only her face. She didn’t move, and her eyes didn’t seem to see anyone. I only saw her for a moment, but she wasn’t alive. Or anything like that. It was more as though she used to look into that mirror, and it kept the memory of her.”

“I don’t see why Miss Fell would have a mirror with your mother in it,” Bella objected. Then her eyes brightened with the excitement of scandal. “Maybe it was your mother’s mirror and Miss Fell stole it! We really have to find out about this properly, Rose. It’s just so exciting.”

Rose sighed. She knew she probably couldn’t discover the truth on her own, but she wished Bella wasn’t quite so eager. This wasn’t one of those silly novels full of castles and dungeons and beautiful heroines that Bella’s governess, Miss Anstruther, used to hide in the schoolroom ink cupboard. Bella couldn’t seem to see that it was real. And just because Rose hadn’t fainted dead away—gracefully, of course, like one of the idiot girls in the books—didn’t mean she wasn’t upset. She had just seen her mother. It couldn’t be the first time she had ever seen her, but it felt like it. Everything had changed.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Rose muttered. “But Miss Fell isn’t going to tell me. That’s clear, or she would have done it by now. So I need to find out myself. I’m not giving up!” she told Bella sharply. But then her shoulders slumped. “Though I might as well, since I can’t think of anything. The mirror is the only clue we have.”

“We don’t have it,” Bella pointed out, and Rose clicked her tongue irritably.

“You know I meant…” She trailed off. “What if we did?” Her voice was scared, and she looked at Bella wide-eyed.

“You want us to steal it?” Bella asked hopefully. “But what about what Gus said?”

Rose folded her arms, her face grim. “If Miss Fell is actually my long-lost relative, then she probably won’t kill me. Probably. She might kill you.”

“No, because then she would have to deal with Papa, and he’s one of the most powerful magicians of the age too,” Bella said sunnily.

Rose nodded. “I suppose it’s good that she’s making me change rooms. It’ll be easier to get into her room from this floor than it would be from the attic.”

“What shall we do with the mirror when we’ve got it?” Bella’s eyes were sparkling. She’d skipped over the difficult part as usual, Rose noticed. “Because whatever we do, Rose, we’ll have to do it quickly. Miss Fell’s bound to see it’s gone when she gets up. She always uses it to put her hairpins in, haven’t you noticed? She always picks it up when she’s putting the ones that have fallen out back in.”

Rose shivered. “So we’ll have to creep into her room twice, so we can put it back as well. And she wakes easily. I know she does. I woke her this morning, and I hardly clanged the fire irons at all.”

Bella smiled delightedly. “I know a spell we can use to be quiet. I was reading one of those strange old books in the workroom, the one with the cover that looks like squashed lizard.”

“Ugh. I haven’t touched that one,” Rose admitted. “It looks so horrid that I always think it’s going to be full of poisonings and disgusting things to do in graveyards at the full moon. Is it?”

“Of course it isn’t. Think, Rose. Anything like that would be on the high shelves in Papa’s study.”

Rose blinked. She hadn’t thought of it that way, but now she rather wished that Bella hadn’t been so sure that her father had that sort of books. She wondered how often he used them.

“It’s actually a collection of useful spells you can make from everyday ingredients. Things that you can find around the house. We need the Silent Slippers spell.” Bella looked proud of herself, but she was also eyeing Rose sideways.

“What?”

“It does have some ingredients you won’t like.” Bella edged back a little over the coverlet, as though she didn’t want to be too close to Rose. “The slippers are mostly made of spell, but the magic’s woven into something real—something very soft and quiet…”

Rose stared at her in a panicky way. “What, Bella? Please, you’re giving me palpitations!”

“We have to harvest rather a lot of cobwebs,” Bella admitted.

“Oh.” Rose smiled in relief. “No.”

“You can’t just say no!”

“Yes, I can, because I just did. I won’t do it, Bella. You know I can’t bear spiders.”

“I don’t know why on earth not. Honestly, I’m the one who was brought up to be a young lady. I’m supposed to be screeching on a chair while you catch the spiders in a jam jar, Rose!”

“Please don’t.” Rose put her hand over her mouth. “I shall be sick on your silk bedcover.”

“Really? Just because of jam jars?”

Rose watched Bella file this information away for future use. The huge blue eyes were clear and innocent again in seconds, and Bella smiled. “Well, I shall do it then. But this is an extremely big favor, Rose. You’d better remember that.”

Rose nodded wearily. There was very little danger of Bella letting her forget.