A LIGHT BUT STEADY RAIN HAD been drumming against the windowpanes all day. As Jane ate her midday meal of bread and butter, she wondered whether that sound constituted the sort of “irregular pattering” that her summoning demanded.
She was so lost in thought, she nearly jumped out of her skin when Miriam cleared her throat.
“Someone will be stopping by this afternoon,” she said.
Jane stared in surprise at her almost-sister. It was a miserable day—not one on which any reasonable person would expect visitors, especially to their remote house on the outskirts of the village.
“Who?”
Jane and her mother asked it at the same time. Jane apparently wasn’t the only one surprised by this information.
“I ordered something. For my research,” said Miriam, staring at a nibbled bit of crust that lay hardening upon her plate. “From the—the blacksmith.”
Jane stared at Miriam in astonishment. From the blacksmith, indeed! More like from the blacksmith’s handsome young son, given the glow blooming like a rose in summer across Miriam’s nose and cheekbones.
“I see,” said Nancy, to cover the awkward silence.
“It wasn’t ready last week, when we went into the village,” Miriam began, looking as if she might burst, “but he’d said he was going to take the truck out today to make deliveries, and offered to bring it by.” Jane couldn’t help the sly smile she wore as Miriam said all this. Miriam had claimed she’d forgotten her gloves at the pub during that sojourn; now she knew what her friend had really gone to get.
“Well!” said Jane’s mother. She was obviously experiencing a whole host of emotions. “What a day for it! If you’d like to invite him in for a cup of tea . . .”
“What? Why would I do that?” asked Miriam, looking absolutely horrified by the idea of tea.
“He’ll want to come in and warm up, won’t he?” said Nancy.
Cruel as it might be, Jane was enjoying the awkwardness. It was nice to have it not centered on her, at any rate.
“He’s just making a delivery.” Miriam’s blush deepened dramatically. “I’m sure he won’t want to stay. Others will be waiting for him.”
“Of course,” said Nancy, and did not press the issue further.
Jane was intrigued by Miriam’s caginess, but in truth she was more curious about what Sam would be dropping off than about what might be between the two of them. Regardless, she had other matters to contemplate.
She found Smudge curled up in the lumpy blankets of her unmade bed. He looked so peaceful and warm as the cold rain lashed the old farmhouse.
Jane decided in that moment that if the storm continued into the evening, she’d do the summoning that night. It was time.
She sat down beside her beloved cat, trailing her hands through his fur. Smudge deigned to crack open one eye as she rubbed beneath his ears and under his chin. He began to purr, softly at first but then butting his head into the palm of her hand and writhing to expose the paler fur of his belly. Jane gazed upon it, resisting the urge to touch it—for Smudge, showing his tummy was a sign of trust rather than an invitation.
Even so, Jane would often chance it, knowing she risked tooth or claw sunk into the meat of her hand as a consequence of stroking the downy tufts that stood up in soft peaks reminiscent of her mother’s meringues. Sometimes, she even petted his belly not in the hopes of getting away with it, but the reverse—to see Smudge’s outraged reaction.
She was not disappointed when he latched on like a bear trap, sinking his teeth into the fleshy side of her hand and grabbing on to her wrist with his front paws.
“Smudge!” cried Jane, though really she was delighted by his ferocity. Naughty as her cat might be, Jane didn’t enjoy the idea that soon he’d no longer be the cat she’d always known. Not entirely.
But also not for long. She’d banish the demon as soon as she could.
It would be interesting to see how it all worked out. Jane planned to command her diabolic servant to be as catlike—no, as specifically Smudge-like—as it could manage. That said, if there was one thing everyone agreed upon, it was that expecting a familiar to indefinitely pass as a pet was foolish arrogance. They could not conceal their true nature for long.
No one could.
Jane left the cat to his nap and returned to the kitchen to pass the afternoon reading in the perpetual warmth of the AGA. Not long after she settled in with a cup of tea and a book called The Natural, the Supernatural, and the Unnatural, Miriam came down to join her, and then Nancy did as well.
The distant rumble of a pickup truck made Jane look not to the window, but to Miriam. Miriam looked everywhere but at anyone, seemingly terrified rather than pleased, and Jane felt a warm sympathy for her friend that she had not felt in a long time.
“Let’s go meet him,” said Nancy.
Jane had never felt any sort of romantic inclination toward anyone, man or woman, nor was she interested in seeking out the experience. Frankly, she felt those who dabbled in love deserved the ensuing headaches it seemed to cause. But even so, when Miriam looked yet more panicked, Jane did her best to help.
“Mother, let’s let Miriam have her secrets,” she said.
“It’s not a secret,” snapped Miriam. Jane recoiled a bit and saw Miriam repent immediately. Her reaction had been from nerves, not anger. “I’m sorry—it’s just . . .”
“It’s private. That’s completely fine,” Jane assured her, having plenty of her own secrets these days. “If you’d rather go out on your own—”
“No!”
Jane suppressed a smile. Poor Miriam. “I’ll get my coat.”
Miriam didn’t seem over-pleased, but neither did she screech in protest. Sometimes all anyone could do was seize upon the best of two bad options.
“I’ll stay in and fix some tea,” said Nancy. “For you girls when you get back,” she added, when Miriam turned her wild and panicked gaze her way, “but enough for Sam if he does fancy a cup.”
Bundled up in coats, hats, scarves, boots, and mittens, for it was still quite cold as well as wet, Jane and Miriam squelched their way up the hill, last year’s dead leaves hopping in the breeze around their feet like a flock of small strange birds. Sam was standing beside his truck, looking handsome and manly and unbothered by the foul weather.
The idea of commissioning an outsider to make an item crucial to her diabolic work was bizarre to Jane—but probably Miriam would likewise fault her for attempting to turn Smudge into her familiar. To each their own.
“Hello!” called Sam, as they approached. “I’ve got your mirror!”
A mirror.
Jane didn’t stop walking, but she did pause mentally. Interesting, that she and Miriam were both using mirrors for their diabolic Practicals.
A sidelong glance at her friend told Jane that it had been no mere coincidence that Modern Mirror Methods had been missing from the Library just after her father had mentioned it. Somehow Miriam had read that letter and had gleaned something from it that had led her to retrieve the same book for her own purposes.
Which meant Miriam knew Jane was in touch with her father.
“You little—”
“I’m sorry!”
“All this time—you’ve known!” said Jane. She didn’t have to say about my father. Miriam knew very well what she was talking about.
“Yes,” said Miriam, “but I haven’t said anything to anyone about it, I promise! I would never, Jane, I just—”
“You just what? ” It came out more harshly than Jane intended, but her blood was up. “You just read my letter and then—”
“I did read it,” said Miriam, folding into herself in the face of Jane’s rage like candy floss in the rain. “I took the book, but I brought it back as quickly as I could! Something your—”
“Don’t you dare!” Jane wasn’t sure what she was saying Miriam ought not dare to do—it might have been acknowledging the existence of Jane’s father, it might have been explaining her treachery as if it were reasonable, it might have been just speaking to Jane at all in that moment. For some time now, Jane had borne the word Miriam writ in jagged bloody letters upon her heart, and this knowledge opened up many of the older wounds at once. “You—you—you little beast! Knowing what it meant to me, you still—”
“You don’t know why I did what I did, Jane Blackwood!”
Miriam did not often raise her voice like that, or call Jane by her full name. In spite of her righteous anger, Jane cringed.
“You’re not the only one who uses the Library, and you’re not the only one for whom this is all very high stakes.” Miriam had lowered her voice, but the intensity was still there. “I needed the book, so I took it, and then I returned it. It’s not fair to yell at me for that!”
“What would it be fair to yell at you for?” snapped Jane. “How about snooping?”
Miriam crossed her arms. “Clearly I can keep a secret!”
“That’s not the point!”
“Girls, girls!”
Jane had forgotten Sam was there at all.
“You stay out of this!” said Jane, sounding exactly like her mother.
“Something I said was the cause of all this,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t realize the mirror was a secret.”
“Oh, Miriam loves her secrets,” said Jane, with a level of venom that felt good to express, even if she knew it to be unfair. “And the best thing is, the more you get to know her, the more secrets you’ll discover she has!”
And with that, Jane stalked off toward the old farmhouse with such determined footfalls that her heels didn’t even slip in the mud. She burst in upon her mother as Nancy was just setting the teapot upon the table.
“What happened?” said Nancy, chasing after Jane as she headed for the stairs and the privacy of her room.
“Nothing!” snarled Jane, not even trying to hide the lie of her words.
“Where’s Miriam?”
“How should I know!”
“Jane, wait!”
Jane did not obey her mother. She stormed straight up to her room, more hurt in that moment than she could ever remember being. She wanted to collapse upon her bed to cry, but Smudge was still there, half-buried in the bedclothes, so she flung herself into her chair.
She found it was just as easy to cry there, so she did—copiously and angrily, until Smudge jumped onto her lap to twine around himself in anxious figure eights. Though usually Smudge’s solid weight calmed her, today it just made Jane cry all the harder. The irregular pattering of the rain on her bedroom window reminded Jane that this might very well be the last time she would ever experience her beloved companion’s pure and instinctive concern for her.
Maybe her mother had been right, and there really were no shortcuts to becoming a diabolist.
Only sacrifices.