SMUDGE WAS FINE, OF COURSE. The large gray tomcat just liked to make a scene. Jane knew that, but running after him had been a good excuse to get out of the kitchen so she could fume alone, in peace.
She was cross with her mother for being her mother, and she was cross at herself for being angry at Miriam. Miriam hadn’t meant to embarrass her, Jane knew that, but she had been embarrassed just the same.
Miriam and Nancy might not be related by blood, but they were more similar for that lack, as far as Jane could tell. While Jane might look like her mother (albeit a plainer version), Miriam thought like her. They came at problems in the same way; enjoyed the learning of languages and the quiet rustle of the turning page. They even shared a middle name: Cornelia, after the sixteenth-century diabolist Cornelius Agrippa.
Jane was glad for it. Mostly. She wanted Miriam to feel like a real part of their family, and of course that was helped by her having a real connection to Nancy. It was just hard, being the odd one out—and it was especially hard knowing Nancy wished her daughter was a little bit more like her ward.
But Jane could only be who she was—and she was someone who felt a healthy respect for the how and the why of the Art . . . but when it came down to it, Jane would really rather just do.
Jane’s mother always said that “doing” was too dangerous a method of learning many of the skills diabolists regularly relied upon. That was for “wild” diabolists, as her mother called them—practitioners of the Art who learned it without the safe and effective teachings of the Société.
Jane had no desire to be a wild diabolist—she wanted to be a Master, with all its attendant privileges. But there was no rule in the Société’s criteria for Mastery that said Jane had to enjoy the theoretical part.
Nor was there any rule about the way an aspiring Master had to think through certain diabolical problems, as far as Jane could tell. While it might please her mother and Miriam to come at every question like two scientists in a laboratory, Jane was free to think of herself as a wielder of arcane powers—as long as the results of her efforts were successful, it shouldn’t matter. So much of the Art was about imagination, and about using one’s will to change what was possible. But every time Jane used the language of the occult to explain her reasoning, her mother would try to weed it out of her like an obsessed gardener.
“We’re not witches, Jane,” her mother had said to her, time and again.
And that was true. But it was also true that neither were they scientists.
While it was possible that Nancy wasn’t as disappointed by Jane as Jane sometimes thought, it was also true that she rarely praised her daughter often or lavishly. Indeed, it was almost better at times not to hear how her mother thought her efforts good, said in that earnest but unenthusiastic way that managed to convey that perhaps if Jane tried a wee bit harder, Nancy might think her efforts very good or even excellent.
Jane had once been able to talk to Miriam about these sorts of feelings, but no longer—not since she realized that in many ways Miriam agreed with Nancy about Jane’s study habits and methods, and also about Jane’s eagerness to begin the process of transforming into the distinctive young lady she’d like to one day become.
She found Smudge by the front stairs, sitting on a middle step. She plunked down next to him, and the cat crawled, purring, into her lap, a sure sign that all was forgiven. The feel of his silky fur under her fingers was soothing, and when she scratched him behind the ears and under the chin, his eyes closed in feline bliss.
“Oh, Smudge,” she sighed. “You understand, don’t you?”
Smudge cracked open one yellow eye as if acknowledging her words. She ruffled his ears, and he nipped her on the hand hard enough to leave a wine-colored indentation in her skin before dashing upstairs as if the devil—or more probably, a demon—were after him.
She needed to get to dusting anyway.
Her mother had been right; Jane had made a hash of her chores the day before. But not because she was thinking about Clark Gable—or anyone else, for that matter.
Talking aloud through a problem often helped Jane figure out the answer, and yesterday Jane had been muttering over her latest unsuccessful attempt to make a broomstick fly. Not just any broomstick, either—the fancy one she’d bought in London with Edith last year with the polished black handle and black stitching keeping the bristles secured. Beautiful as it was, it had been unaffected by an armamentarium of flight Jane had made from a bit of dried lemon peel infused with the essence of a demon colloquially called Seven Clouds. An Egyptian diabolist, renowned for her ability to levitate, had sent it to her via a tricky little piece of diablerie involving a simulacrum of a seagull. When it had landed on Jane’s windowsill, reeking of fish and salt, it was so lifelike—but after it vomited up a wooden box, it had dissolved into smoke that smelled of autumn’s first wood fire.
It hurt that Nancy assumed her daughter’s thoughts were so frivolous, especially given the ambitious undertaking Jane was attempting—so ambitious it might, in fact, be impossible.
Magical items like the fairy dust of Peter Pan, the flying carpet of One Thousand and One Nights, or—Jane’s favorite—the witch’s broomstick had captured the public imagination since time immemorial. But actually getting objects—let alone people—to fly was seemingly impossible, even for a Master diabolist.
Therefore, to do so as an apprentice would be quite a feather in Jane’s cap, if she could manage it.
Most diabolists who wished to fly made the Pact with a demon that granted such an ability. But Jane had looked at the Bilinen Şeytanların Kitabı—The Book of Known Demons—and none of those demons seemed like her idea of a life’s companion. Especially Seven Clouds; beyond granting levitation, all it did for its diabolist was “calm the nerves,” and Jane could make herself a cup of tea for that.
And anyway, she didn’t want to levitate. She wanted to fly. Diabolists were like unto gods and goddesses; why should they not have the powers of such?
As she rinsed out her dust rag in the kitchen sink, Jane blushed, her eyes tracking nervously toward the door to the stairs of the Library. Her mother would not like to know that such a thought had crossed Jane’s mind. Nancy was always quick to remind them that diabolists were not gods; they were not kings and queens.
Fine with Jane. She didn’t want to rule anyone. Plenty of gods didn’t seem to care a fig for the struggles of men. They just wanted to have a good time, and that was Jane’s goal too. She longed to escape Hawkshead and Cumbria altogether so she might go on adventures in the deserts of Egypt wearing gauzy white; attend parties in fabulous flats in Paris wearing scandalous, alluring black, a color currently forbidden to her by her mother because, well . . .
We’re not witches, Jane.
Jane sincerely hoped her mother would enjoy the taste of her own words when Jane was zooming about the countryside on a broomstick like Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz.
Jane didn’t have her own looking glass, much to her chagrin, and the bathroom’s tin mirror revealed what could be only charitably described as an Impressionist interpretation of her face. For her final inspection, only her mother’s vanity would do, so just before noon, Jane took off her apron and went upstairs to see if she was at all mussed from her labors. But when she entered Nancy’s rooms, she found the vanity already occupied.
“I don’t know why braiding my hair makes me fly to pieces when I can create a potion of binding from memory,” snarled Miriam.
Jane felt an overwhelming rush of affection for her friend that did much to dispel her earlier pique.
“Let’s see what we can do,” she said, coming up behind Miriam. She freed Nancy’s comb from where her friend held it twisted in her fingers and then set to detangling the mess before her. There was no salvaging any of whatever Miriam had been trying to do; they’d have to start over entirely. Jane began by trying to find all the pins in Miriam’s hair with her nimble fingers.
Jane envied the dark waves that cascaded over Miriam’s shoulders. Her own mousy-brown tresses were so thin and fine that there were few fashionable styles that looked well on her—oh, to have Hedy Lamarr’s mane to start out with!
“Let’s do a few pinned rolls and then use a ribbon,” she said, running the brush through Miriam’s hair. A bit of blue would accentuate her friend’s dark hair and high color.
“I trust you,” said Miriam.
“You’ll look beautiful,” said Jane. It was true, she would, with her big dark eyes and her thick brows that would make Miriam really stand out if only she’d let Jane tame them a bit.
But, of course, the last thing Miriam wanted was to stand out.
“You manage it so easily,” sighed Miriam, as her hair began to take on an actual shape and style.
“I find it fun,” said Jane. “A harmless distraction from the war, if a bit pointless when one lives in a tiny village. Why, the only person around our age who lives within ten miles and seems remotely thoughtful is the blacksmith’s son—hey!”
Miriam had lurched around, her elbow narrowly missing the box of hairpins Jane had set upon the vanity. “Sam?” she asked, mouth hanging open in childish astonishment. “Do you fancy him?”
“Goodness no!” Jane put her hand on the top of Miriam’s head and physically turned it back to face the looking glass. “I just admire his ability to speak in complete sentences.”
“I see,” said Miriam.
The truth was, Jane had never fancied anyone, ever, and she didn’t think she ever would. In spite of what her mother might think, she felt nothing for Clark Gable or any other star of the silver screen. Jane’s interest in the cinema was academic, not romantic. Where else in Cumbria would she learn to act like a lady? The romance plots of films, for Jane, were always just a distraction from the tensions of a drawing room or the currents of a party sequence.
“But if you did fancy him . . .” said Miriam.
“Why, Miriam!” Jane pantomimed surprise. “Do you fancy Sam Nibley?”
Miriam blushed. “No!”
Jane leaned in, a shark’s smile on her lips.
“Are you sure? ” she drawled.
“Yes!” Miriam was now pale as a sheet. Jane genuinely couldn’t tell if her friend was feeling upset at being found out, or was mortified to be accused of something she did not feel. Either was possible, so Jane let the matter drop and turned her attention to the last few pins Miriam’s hair needed to stay in place.
When she was done, she stepped back and looked Miriam over with an exaggerated critical gaze, hand on her chin.
“I think you look marvelous,” Jane declared, “but how do you like it?”
Miriam finally looked up from her twisting hands. “Oh! I barely recognize myself. It’s far too glamorous!”
“Oh, stop. You look lovely.” The hairstyle wasn’t “glamorous” at all—it just showed off Miriam’s face rather than hiding it. “Now budge up and let me put myself together.”
Jane spent an enjoyable half hour making herself ready anew. A very fidgety Miriam hung about as she did so. She was anxious and doing a poor job of pretending not to be.
“All right,” said Jane, with a satisfied pat of her hair. “I think that’s all I can do.”
“Let’s go down to the Library, then!”
Miriam truly loved the Library—she would live down there if she could, Jane suspected. In fact, Jane was amazed Miriam had made small talk with her that afternoon instead of leaving her for the more solitary pleasures of its shelves and aisles.
Jane, on the other hand, couldn’t bear the darkness or the quiet for very long. In summer, she wanted to be under a tree, a tatty blanket under her bottom and a picnic basket by her side; in winter, feeding the wood burner in the kitchen with a kettle singing in the background. That wasn’t to say she didn’t love the Library—she did. She’d been nursed within its walls, taken her first steps across its floor, and said her first words to the sigils and guardians that were some of the cavern’s oldest protections.
Not for the first time, Jane wondered what the other residents of Hawkshead would think about this place. Most of them would simply be amazed to know a cave like this existed near them; nature enthusiasts would be a bit more unsettled to note that the curiously squared-off walls had been carved from no local slate or granite, but rather some decidedly imported tufa. The carvings were all authentic Etruscan, but it was a mystery whether its presence here, in Cumbria, was due to the efforts of ancient diabolists or more modern ones. They had records of its existence dating back to the fifteenth century but no further; no one knew how it had gotten there, but there it was, and the climate within always perfect for the preservation of the written word whether it be recorded upon paper, skin, or materials stranger yet. Not only that, but all attempts to move the Library had failed, and those few who had sought to destroy it had met with terrible fates—indeed, that had been the end of the diabolists’ organization previous to the Société.
The Library also seemed to expand to accommodate new works, though interestingly its measurements remained the same whenever anyone tried to calculate its size. It was an astonishing work of diablerie, and Jane never failed to be moved by it. She just knew that there were other astonishing wonders out there in the world, and she wanted to see them, too.
“Ah, girls!” Jane’s mother was in the process of receiving an ancient scroll through the Library’s Basque Lens, a tool used by every diabolist in the Société to send written messages over distances. The Basque Lens lay flat upon Nancy’s large oaken desk, and while it would indeed reflect the viewer’s face, it did so much more than that. Its surface had been infused with various diabolic essences and coated with layers of specific armamentaria, and once a Master made theirs, they could send written requests for chapters of books, or even entire volumes—from the Library, or from their fellow Masters. Merely press a scrap of paper bearing a message to a Basque Lens’s surface, and a perfect copy would appear upon the addressee’s.
It was Nancy’s duty to keep up with fulfilling what requests came to the Library. It wasn’t as onerous a task as one might think, given most diabolists’ penchant for owning their own collection of rare volumes, but it still occupied the majority of her working hours.
Miriam raced up to take a look at the pile of Library materials Nancy had been sending along to their recipients. Jane chose instead to wait patiently, though in truth she was just as full of nervous energy and longed to be already walking toward the village.
Her patience was tested as everyone fumbled their way into their coats and their hats and mittens and scarves. No one was dawdling—not even Miriam, who tended to delay leaving the house as long as possible. Regardless, Jane was in agonies by the time they left, and barely able to keep herself from skipping ahead when the white cottages and the spire of the village church came into sight.
“Here we are at last,” said Nancy, as they walked up to the low wooden doorway of the Queen’s Head, “and now you can relax, Jane! Next time, just put on a collar and bark at us the whole way if you’re going to herd us so ruthlessly!”
Jane blushed. “I just thought we should be here when Edith arrives, not out of breath from rushing up at the last minute.”
“We’re certainly not late,” remarked Nancy.
“We could always pop over to the Lion and have a cup of tea,” said Miriam, her eyes angled longingly to the neighboring coaching inn.
Nancy peered at Miriam. “They have tea at the Queen’s Head, and that is where we are to meet Edith. Does their tea not suit you?”
Miriam shook her head. “No! I just thought it looked . . . a bit warmer, is all.”
Jane managed to pretend her snort was just a cough. The village forge was behind the Red Lion, and that, of course, was where Sam worked. Miriam’s attempts to hide her interest in him were so clumsy, poor thing. Jane was just about to try to help her out by coming up with some reason, any reason, to amble past the forge, when Sam did them the favor by just appearing from the alley. He was carrying what looked to be, judging from the way his muscles were straining against the sleeves of his jumper, a very heavy box.
Miriam startled like a colt when she saw him. Poor Miriam!
“All right, ladies?” he said, with a smile that showed off his good teeth. “Are you in need of assistance?”
“Hello, Sam,” said Nancy. “I can see why you would think we might be, what with us just standing in the street like three fools. I believe we were discussing whether the Lion would be warmer than the Queen’s Head. Have you an opinion on the matter?”
Miriam could not look more miserable and humiliated as she stared at the tips of her muddy boots—which was why it was Jane who noticed that Sam’s eyes slid toward Miriam as he spoke.
“The Lion is always a bit warmer,” he answered, confirming Jane’s suspicions; he said it to Miriam, not any of the rest of them. “At least, so it seems to me.”
He trailed off as Nancy shrugged elaborately; Miriam still said nothing. Jane was just mulling over how to help out her friend when the rattle of her aunt’s stylish but finicky Citroën reached her ears.
“There’s Edith!” she cried. A distraction would be the best possible thing for all of them at that point.
“I must be off,” said Sam, excusing himself as he walked on with his box, much to Miriam’s obvious relief.
Edith hallooed at them, waving wildly with one hand as she steered with the other, much to the dismay of several villagers who were out and about on their various errands. Jane sighed to herself in envy; how she would love to be so noticed as she went through the world!
“Why on earth are you all standing in the street!” cried Edith as she killed the engine and leaped out of the automobile. A very confused stable boy wandered out to accept her gloves when she handed them off to him.
“I wish I knew,” said Nancy, embracing her sister. “Were we strange children? I can’t remember.”
“The strangest!” declared Edith. “And you know it!”
Edith stood out in any crowd, but today she looked the part of the glamorous Continental even more than usual. Her dark skin was set off beautifully by a black suit that looked very much like something a stylish recent widow might wear, complete with black hat and black lace veil. Jane almost moaned, looking at the jet beadwork.
It was likely true what Nancy said—that given their rural location, it was a bad idea for any of them to “look like a witch.” Diabolists might not use magic, but they could be prosecuted for it, given the unusual and unchristian nature of the Art. But that was just another reason Jane had for wanting to leave the village. No one in a city would bat an eye to see a smartly dressed young woman attending a party all in black. At least, so it seemed from Edith’s accounts—and the movies Jane loved so much.
“You girls can’t stop growing up, can you?” said Edith. Jane’s heart soared when Edith caught her eye and gave her a private, approving nod.
“They won’t slow down even though I beg them,” said Nancy.
There was no road to the old farmhouse, just a path, so Edith supervised the loading of her luggage into the mule cart and passed the driver a pound coin. He looked pleased and promised prompt delivery.
“Brr, it’s cold,” she complained, as they began to walk. It was two miles from the village to their farm in the lonely countryside, over muddy paths dotted with frozen puddles. “How do you manage?”
“It’s not so bad,” said Miriam, the picture of loyalty. “The house is very snug.”
“It’s the Library I’m more worried about,” said Edith, shivering inside a long black greatcoat she’d pulled from somewhere; its dramatic collar and cinched waist gave her a silhouette that would not be out of place in an Erté. “It’s not exactly warm down there even if it’s dry. I’ll have to borrow some slippers so my toes don’t freeze during your Test!”
“Test?” asked Miriam. She sounded as shocked as Jane felt. “Whose Test?”
Edith pulled a bag of what looked like fancy sweets from her purse and popped one into her mouth. They were her method of keeping in touch with her demon Mercurialis, but to any non-diabolist it looked like nothing more than a woman indulging in a bit of candy.
“Yours,” said Edith, matter-of-factly. “It’s time, according to Nance—but she couldn’t test you herself. She’d be too easy on you.” Edith’s dark eyes flashed wickedly as she took Jane’s hand and beckoned for Miriam to come along. “That’s why I’m here at this dreadful time of year. Don’t look so surprised, my dears, or at least don’t act so surprised. It slows you down, and I’m perishing for want of a hot cup of tea.”
“Oh, of course we’ll have tea before you begin,” said Jane’s mother. “I even made a Victoria sandwich yesterday.”
“I can’t imagine having enough eggs for cake!” Edith sighed happily, but as she looked from Jane to Miriam, she sobered somewhat. “Such long faces! And with cake awaiting us! Don’t worry, girls. You’ll do just fine! You’re ready!”
“Ready for what, though?” asked Miriam.
Jane had a different question, directed at both her mother and her aunt. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Tradition,” said her mother.
Jane scowled. Tradition was her least favorite reason for anything.
“Think about it this way—we’ve saved you the trouble of worrying about it!” said Edith.
Jane wasn’t so sure about all that. They still had the entire walk home before them, after all.
And tea.