Unnatural Issue Read online

  She studied the front of the house, finding the window she wanted, one on the ground floor. This wasn’t the first time she had wanted to come or go without anyone knowing. There, in the room that had probably, in days when the squire entertained, been used by the men to gather after dinner, was her best access: a window with a broken catch, a window that she kept meticulously lubricated and spotlessly clean. She should be able to get in and over the sill without snagging or dirtying her dress.

  She scurried up to the side of the building and ducked in behind shrubbery that was rank and overgrown, leaves yellow and blighted. A piece of log she’d propped against the side of the building served as a stepping-stool; she slid the window up and climbed over the sill. She swung her legs over, dropped to the floor, and closed it again.

  She paused in the gloom of the smoking room for a moment, stilling her own breath, and cast another simple spell. This one gave her hearing as keen as a rabbit—or a robin, who could hear an insect burrowing under the earth—or an owl, who knew exactly where the mouse scuttling through the grass was. As the magic settled in place, she heard the sounds of pots and pans, of cutlery, and laconic conversation. She identified Agatha, the cook, Patience, and Prudence. At this moment, all the house servants would be in the kitchen, preparing supper. This hadn’t been true when she’d been one of them, but now, they were at least one pair of hands short, and other things that didn’t matter so much—such as cleaning unused rooms—would just have to go undone. The men wouldn’t come any farther into the house than the kitchen, and then only to be fed. No one would find her prowling about.

  So there was only one person left to guard against . . . one person and, just possibly, something that wasn’t human. She had left her shoes and stockings in the orchard; her feet were so calloused and so unused to shoes, at least in the summer, that the soles were as hard as leather. Now she closed her eyes and invoked the power of the Earth again. This time she wrapped herself in another sort of magic, the kind that worked on the minds of those around her. Again, this was something that Robin had taught her, so that she could slip up unseen on the shyer of the forest creatures and spy on young hawks and owls in their nests without ending up with a face full of talons.

  I’m not here, the magic whispered into those minds around her. You see only what you expect to see.

  It wouldn’t work if she made a noise; it also wouldn’t work if someone expected to see her, or if she touched them. But for anything else, yes, it worked beautifully.

  This spell, this magic, had a feel to it; it felt as if she had wrapped herself in a veil or a cloak. Sometimes she wondered if this was how the fairy stories of cloaks that granted invisibility had started.

  When she felt herself shrouded in the magic, she moved, keeping close to the wall and taking step by slow, soundless step up to the second floor, and the part of the house where her father’s rooms were.

  Let’s see how he likes being spied on....

  She listened closely at the door, pressing her ear against it, and heard . . . nothing. Not even the sound of breathing. So unless her father was dead, and the eyes that had been upon her all this time were those of a ghost, there was no one in that first room.

  Slowly, she turned the knob; slowly, she eased the door open. First, just a crack, which she put her eye to. Then, she opened it just enough so that she could slip inside. It was well oiled; she remembered once how Agatha grumbled about the master insisting that every hinge of every door, used or not, be kept oiled so that creaking wouldn’t disturb him.

  She closed the door behind her, kept her back tightly to the wall just inside, and looked around.

  By now her eyes had adjusted to the gloom in this part of the house; the window was curtained so she wasn’t staring into glare from darkness, and she was able to actually see the room she had been brought to by Agatha. This was obviously the study. There were books lining the walls, floor to ceiling. If there had ever been any objects on those bookshelves other than books, they were gone now. The only place where there were no bookshelves was above and to either side of the massive wooden mantel around the fireplace. Above the mantle, there was a place where a painting might have hung once, but now the wall was blank. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture—a couch, two chairs, a desk in front of the window with a third chair behind it. The carpet, like the one in her room, was old and worn. She eased around to the doorway she saw on the other side of the room and peeked in.

  A bedroom, This was like her own set of rooms, then: the study or sitting room and a bedroom. The bed was made, and the room was empty.

  So where was her father?

  Just as she wondered that, she heard the sound of creaking wood from what she had thought was a wall full of bookshelves on the right of the fireplace. Even as she watched, her mouth falling open with surprise, the bookshelves moved—

  No! It was a false wall, and the bookshelves were actually mounted on a door!

  She held her breath and ducked around the frame of the doorway into the bedroom, sure she was about to be discovered.

  But instead, her father strode impatiently into the room, looked about, muttered something, and seized a book from the desk and went back into the opening behind the shelves. The door swung closed, and she heard a latch click.

  She hurried out, scarcely knowing what to think.

  Except—there was a secret room. What that could mean she couldn’t imagine. All that she knew for certain was that she needed to get back to the orchard and dismiss the simulacrum. Or rather, dispel the image. She was going to keep that little bundle because she was going to need it again.

  There was a great deal more going on here than she had thought. No one among the servants knew about this room. Now, perhaps her father was using it for the practice of magic. It certainly had been a secret for a lot longer than she had been alive, because Agatha had been here for forty years at least, and she would have known all about a newly built “secret” room.

  But if he was practicing magic, it certainly wasn’t in the course of his responsibility as the local Earth Master, because there had been no stir in the Earth magic hereabouts, no rumors among the Elementals, and no shift in her own protections and spells.

  So what was he doing in there? And why?

  So father is keeping secrets? Whatever they were . . . she was going to uncover them. She had a right to know. And if they had to do with magic—she had a responsibility to find out what they were.

  There was more than enough moonlight to see well in her clearing. She had slipped out of the Manor again, once everyone was asleep, and come straight here. She knew how to call Robin when the need was urgent, and she had done that tonight; she pinned an oak and an ash leaf together with a thorn, impressed her need on them, and called one of the fauns and asked him to find Robin as quickly as he could.

  Robin had come. And she had made her request.

  “Why do you want to know true invisibility?” Robin asked, looking at her oddly. “It’s not easy magic. Humans take years, decades, to master it.”

  She frowned. “I don’t have years.” She had never been less than scrupulously honest with him and now was not the time to change that. “I discovered something. My father has a secret room in that house and he was in it today . . . Robin, I don’t know why. I only know that I have to find out how to get in there. I have to know what he’s hiding. I think it’s important. And the only way I can do that is to become invisible, because I can’t let him catch me doing it.”

  Robin scratched his head. There were Gypsies passing through, and today he looked like one of them: curly black hair, big dark eyes, skin as brown as if he’d stained it with walnut hulls. “Well,” he said, finally, “I think you’re right. And I have no power inside houses, so I can’t tell you what’s in that place. Wanting to be invisible though, that’s quite a different matter from learning the magic. And that, I can help you with, better invisibility than any mortal can manage.” He felt around in his belt pouch. �
��Here,” he said, finally, pulling out a ring made of finely woven horsehair. “That will give you invisibility five times.” He handed it to her. “Put it on; that’s all you need do. Take it off to be seen again. After the fifth time, it will fall to dust, and you’ll have to come back to me for another.”

  She took the ring and impulsively kissed his cheek. “Robin, thank you!”

  “Eh,” he said, with a shrug and a grin, “Those are things I keep about to give to folks as want to do a bit of mischief. Made some for my Gypsy friends so they can snare some coneys, maybe take a hen or two. They know who I’ll let them rob and who to leave be. And they know they had best not confuse one with the other.” He sobered. “I think you are right, though. There’s something very wrong about the man that is your father, and the keys to it must be in that secret place. Be more careful than you ever have in your life when you do this, though. Something warns me that you do not dare be caught.”

  Four times, Susanne had put on the horsehair ring. Four times she had left her image in the orchard—an image now strengthened by Robin himself—and slipped into her father’s rooms to watch him.

  The first three times, she had caught only part of the trick to getting behind that bookcase. But today she had been close enough to him to watch as he pulled out three books one after the other; they were false ones, nothing more than empty fronts. He had reached over the top and pulled a lever behind those false fronts. She’d heard a click, then watched him put his fingers behind a particular place in the side of the bookcase and pull. This time there had been no creaking of wood; he must have oiled or tightened something.

  Tonight she had waited until the house was quiet before putting on the ring for the fifth and final time and slipping up the stairs. The best time to get into that room was going to be when her father was asleep. Turnabout, again. If he was going to spy on her sleeping, well, she could prowl his secret room while he slept.

  But she knew how quiet he could be; she was going to make certain he was asleep before she tried.

  To her utter shock and relief, she discovered something else about that ring that Robin hadn’t told her about. The moment she slipped it on, she could see, see as well as a cat in the dark! Everything was in tones of dim gray, like twilight without any blue in it. This was going to make things much, much easier.

  She opened her own door and closed it behind her. She had left the image working at her desk, under a single lamp, as if she couldn’t sleep. With movements that were beginning to feel like routine, she moved soundlessly down the hall and listened at his door.

  Not a sound.

  She eased the door open; the study was empty. She entered and hurried across to the bedroom door, which was closed. She listened intently with the help of her spell, and heard slow, deep breathing.

  Well, she would have preferred snores, but . . . it sounded as if he was asleep. And she was not going to take the chance of waking him to crack the door and find out.

  She hurried back across the room; she found the three books and pulled them out in the right order; this time she heard a very faint sound as she pulled out the third one, not quite a click, more as if a bolt had been slid back. When she reached in behind them, she felt a lever; she pulled it down, and felt no resistance. Now she heard that click, and she put her hands on the place where she had seen her father put his. Beneath the molding, she felt something like a latch. She squeezed, and pulled, and slowly the hidden door swung open.

  Suppressing a grin of triumph, she examined the other side; she was going to have to shut this thing, and the last thing she wanted to find out was that she had accidentally locked herself in!

  But no, the opening mechanism on the other side was simple enough, a latch and a door handle. She pulled the bookcase closed behind herself, turned, and surveyed the room.

  It was full of bookcases and the dusty smell of old paper.

  A library? Why would there be a secret library here?

  What could be the need to keep books hidden away like this?

  There were a few books piled on a little table right by the door; probably books her father had been reading. She picked one up, and carried it to the window, hoping there was enough light to read it by.

  It was handwritten, and touching it gave her an odd, queasy feeling. She peered at it but was completely unable to decipher the peculiar, and very small, writing.

  She put it back and picked up another, which made her feel even stranger when she touched it. It, too, was handwritten, but this was a different handwriting, a bit larger, a bit clearer, but still impossible to decipher in the uncertain light. She was going to pick up a third, when she heard the latch at the door starting to move.

  Quickly she backed into the shadowed corner next to the window. There weren’t any books here, so it was unlikely her father was going to come in this direction. She was consumed with both fear and excitement—now she just might find out what he was up to, but he was a Master, and she just might get caught.

  She had no idea what he would do if he did catch her, but she doubted it would be pleasant. Punish her in some way, probably—

  But the door swung open, leaving her no more time to speculate.

  Her father looked as if he had been sleeping in his clothing; he wore a rumpled jacket and trousers, and his hair was unkempt. He ignored the table beside the door, instead moving farther into the room, his steps slow but steady.

  He hadn’t seen her; hadn’t noticed her. Marvelous.

  Cautiously, moving without so much as a whisper of sound, she followed him.

  On the other side of the bookshelves, there was a kind of alcove built into the wall, with a curtain over it. This was where he was standing, lighting candles on either side of it. Then he parted the curtain, and the light from the candles revealed that the curtain had hidden a portrait, a painting.

  A painting—of her?

  It certainly looked like her!

  She stared, mouth agape with shock. It was a portrait of the head and shoulders, the background dark draperies. The young woman in the painting was wearing a white summer dress and gazing slightly off to one side. Her hair was knotted low on the back of her neck, exactly the way Susanne wore hers. It didn’t look anything like any of the other young women hereabouts . . . and if it wasn’t her, then who could it possibly be?

  How had he gotten a painting of her?

  All she could think, in a somewhat dazed fashion, was that he had gotten it made magically . . .

  “It won’t be long now, my lovely,” her father murmured aloud, touching the painted face. “Not long at all. Days, no more. I’m nearly ready; at moon-dark all will be prepared. And once I’m done, I’ll take you to Italy. I have already gotten an agent to rent us a villa; he swears to me that the staff is old and incurious but hard working. It will be just the two of us. We’ll make love until you can’t think of anything but me—”

  As Susanne listened in horror, her father continued on in this vein, describing what he had planned, which were certainly things no father should even dream of doing to his daughter, not even in the depths of delirium! Her entire insides knotted up as she listened to him, and for what seemed to be an eternity, she was frozen where she stood. Her stomach cramped, she began to tremble, knees shaking. She nearly threw up then and there, listening to him describe what he was going to do.

  He’s going to take me to Italy? And . . . oh dear Lord in Heaven!

  Finally, as his fingers traced the painted bosom, she managed to shake off some of her shock; her revulsion overcame her paralysis, and she was able to retreat, step by careful step, to the door that was still open.

  Once out in the sitting room, it was all she could do to keep herself from tearing open the door to the hallway and bolting. With shaking hands, she eased the door open, slipped out, and eased it closed again. She was hot and cold by turns, and she fought dizziness. She stole a precious moment to steel herself; this was no time to give way to the vapors. It took tremendous willpower
, but she managed to slow her hammering pulse, banish the urge to sit down. Then she tiptoed as quickly as she could to her own room. Because she wasn’t going to spend one more minute under this roof! She had to get away, and get away quickly; once he knew she was gone, her father would start a hunt for her, and she would need every yard of distance she could put between them.

  Quickly she went through the wardrobe and found her old clothing, frugally stored in the back as she had asked—Agatha had finally seen the wisdom of keeping it, in case she might have to do something that would ruin her pretty new things. Now . . . those pretty things made her skin crawl, and she couldn’t be rid of them fast enough. She stripped herself to the skin and redressed in minutes—the lack of corsets and fancy undergarments made things so much faster. She glanced around the room; other than her old clothing, there was nothing else here she wanted. It was all from him, and the idea of having any of it touch her now made her want to vomit.

  The ring was still on her hand—she was still invisible. Good!

  She paused for a moment. Should she leave her image? It might delay pursuit . . .

  No, she dared not leave anything so personal in her father’s hands. She stuck the packet into the middle of the bundle, resolving to burn it at the first opportunity, and instead, made a rough dummy in the bed with pillows and clothing. That would have to do. And she thanked God and his angels that nothing, nothing that she would leave behind had enough of “her” on it to allow him to cast magic from a distance on her.

  She bundled her remaining clothing, her old shoes and stockings, and the comb and brush she had been using into her old shawl, then tied the sleeves of her winter coat around her waist, and slipped out into the hall and down the stairs. She could drink stream water, but until she could get far enough away to feel safe from pursuit, she would have to carry what she needed to eat. Which meant, much as she hated to, she would have to steal.