Selena paced inside her bedroom, silently urging the sun to descend quicker.
She wondered if there was a spell to manipulate time and decided that if there was one, she would learn it as soon as possible. It seemed as though she was always waiting for nightfall. Except that tonight she was not waiting for dark in order to sneak out and visit Lucas Thorne.
Truth be told, she had not seen Lucas in some time and felt guilty for avoiding him. But surely he would understand. Her grandmother’s health was at its worst. He would forgive her for spending so much time with her.
As for the evenings consumed by studying the spell book, well, Lucas would never know about those.
Selena did miss the boy, though the emotion was buried beneath a torrent of excitement. She had hardly been able to sit still during her afternoon lessons, and Briarbridge’s suspicious stare had lingered all through dinner afterward.
Finally, when she could take it no more, Selena slipped out into the hallway, extinguishing the light behind her. She carried no light with her and hoped the skills she had picked up as Slinky would serve her well.
Selena encountered no one en route to the drawing room. Pushing the door open a crack produced a wailing creak. She stiffened, praying to Syphrenia, Quess, and Vhestaz that no one had heard. Then she inched the door a little wider—cringing as it squealed—and squeezed between the door and its frame.
The drawing room was warm and smelled of pipe smoke. How long had her father and Old Alger talked that night? Had the two of them just left?
Squinting into the heavy darkness, Selena depended on her memory of the room’s layout to circumnavigate the furniture and statues. She felt her way along a bookcase until her fingers touched a curve of cold, smooth glass. Tracing the bulbous shape upward, her fingers soon met the hard surface of metal—of gold.
Taking the thing in two hands—it was heavier than she anticipated—Selena drew it close to her chest and made her way back to the door. Once through, she hesitated, debating whether or not to close the noisy door behind her, until a different sound accosted her ears.
The cadence of footsteps.
Cursing wickedly under her breath, Selena abandoned the door and hurried away from the scene of the crime. When she reached an intersection, she saw a distinct light emanating from one of the avenues. She chose a perpendicular path, although the route would take her out of her way. Despite the panic welling up inside her, she poked her head back around the corner to sneak a peek at the person holding the candelabrum.
She lingered as long as she dared and then broke into a run. She did not like to think of Alger White as an enemy, but the old Knight had already stumbled upon her once at a late hour, when she had been on her way to see Lucas.
Tonight’s circumstances would be more difficult to explain, and a Knight of Superius was the last person she wanted to know about her plan for spell casting.
She jumped at every shadow and unexplained noise as she hurried along the circuitous path back to her bedroom. In between her baseless fears, she had time to consider Alger White’s presence near the drawing room.
Had the old man forgotten something inside? Would he notice the missing fixture? She supposed Old Alger, as seneschal of Castle Nelesti, might have duties that occupied him even in the middle of the night.
Her heart pounded yet faster as the distance between her and her room dwindled to a handful of yards. A slight scratching sound from right behind her stopped Selena in her tracks. She spun around, expecting to find the elderly seneschal bearing down on her, sword drawn and ready to lop the head off of Superius’s newest witch.
What she saw startled her even more—a pair of glowing yellow orbs staring back at her.
She nearly collapsed with relief when she realized they were not the eyes of a small demon, but rather one of the castle’s many mousers. The cat had probably been chasing its dinner. Now it regarded Selena with its unsettling gaze, perhaps wondering why the stupid human had intruded in his nocturnal domain.
Unlike Evelyn, who had always like animals—just last year she had devoted her life to opening her very own menagerie, before the life of a minstrel became her dream—Selena had no use for critters of any kind.
As for the felines that roamed the castle, their relationship was one of mutual indifference. Tonight, however, Selena realized she had a new use for this little night-prowler.
“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” she whispered, doing her best to mimic the silly sounds Evelyn was wont to make.
The shiny yellow spheres did not move.
Selena continued to chant the word “kitty” as she walked backward. Once she reached her room, she opened the door and backed inside, still repeating the two syllables. Maybe its curiosity was piqued, or maybe it thought her bedroom a worthy hunting ground. Either way, the cat followed her inside.
Selena quickly shut and locked the door behind it. Careful not to trip over the small bundle of fur, she went over to her bed and deposited her ill-gotten treasure. Next, she lit the candles by her bedside. The cat squinted at the sudden brightness, and she could not help but laugh.
Naturally, it was a black cat.
As the cat sniffed around her room, Selena examined her haul. The hourglass looked even bigger without any neighboring books and ornaments. Lying there, out of place on her bed, the hourglass resembled nothing more than the spoils of a burglary.
Yet Selena’s gaze was not fixed on the gilded gold of the frame, but on the powdery white sand inside.
She knew nothing about the hourglass, other than that it had been in the Nelesti family for generations. Years ago, Barclay and Lucian had gotten a scolding for running around the drawing room and knocking it over. The antique’s craftsmanship, not to mention all that gold, made it worth a small fortune.
To Godfrey, who had nothing but respect for his ancestors, the hourglass was priceless.
Selena reached down to touch the glass but then pulled her hand away, feeling guilty for what she was about to do. There must be another source of sand in the castle, she thought, though nothing came to mind. She could ask Lucas, but that would only lead to difficult questions. If she waited until the snow melted, there would be sand down by the creek.
One glance at the spell book, and Selena knew that she would not be able to wait another month—or even another day—to cast her first incantation. Lydia had wanted something valuable for the ancient tome, and the Goddesses of Magic also demanded a sacrifice.
So be it.