Spiral Path (Night Calls Series Book 3) (40 page)

“Don’t let them mix,” she warned me, “Yours are the sweet
ones for dessert.”

I glanced around for a rolling pin as I dipped my hand into
the apron and crumbled some yeast into my hand.

The rolling pin lay at the top of the table, along with a
bowl of flour. I scooped up a handful of the flour, hiding the yeast on my palm.
A quick rub to the rolling pin with the flour and yeast meant dough would not
stick to it. I scattered flour and yeast over the board in a tight spiral and
then I pulled some dough onto my flour-covered board, letting the yeast settle
in.

If I focused my Latin word on the pans waiting for the fire . . . .

Could older bread, already baked, still respond?

Lucy ignored me and worked very fast. I finished lining up
my biscuits on the pan as she carried hers over to racks by the monstrous brick
oven set into the wall, two oven cavities one on top of the other. I guessed
that the upper oven either had a bed for hot coals, or worked solely from
rising heat. The girl made sure her pans were closest to the fire.

If I spoke no word, they would remain only fluffy biscuits.
But if a distraction was needed, I had planted the seed. Maybe it was a silly
thing to do, but I felt better for it.

I reached for a flat wooden paddle to scrape extra dough off
the board, and then Cook tapped my right hand and yelled “I need someone to
help bring back dishes, come along!”

Thank you, Lady of
Light.

Cook took me by the wrist into the hallway under a candle
sconce, and I shivered at the contrast in temperature.

“Fancy dress, child,” she said in a soft voice laced with
English overtones—
not London
was all
I guessed. “Are you so pretty in your own kitchen?”

“No, ma’am!” I said quickly, giving her a curtsy. “Since the
professor was having a party, I was ordered to look nice, so I could help
wherever you needed me!” I was breathless, not like myself at all, but then I
was now Anna, a farm girl from Connecticut. It was fine if I sounded different.

“Mrs. Gardener is a gracious lady,” Cook said, her tone
brisk. “Good thinking on her part. I need you to help Emma bring back dishes
from the sideboard. Emma, here is Anna to help you! Show her what needs doing!”

A dark-haired young woman Margaret’s age moved out of the gloom.
She wore a dark grey gown with a full apron and a cap covering her hair. Emma dipped
her knee to the cook, and then took hold of my skirt and tugged. Cook fled back
into her kitchen.

“This way, hurry, now!” Emma rushed down the corridor. I
kept up as best I could, our footsteps loud on the wood—there was no runner. We
crossed onto polished stone, pale and slick, the ceiling above us high and
dark. I could feel cold air from somewhere, and a steady draft.

I was so tired it took everything I had to keep up with
Emma.

We crossed a huge room into a corridor. Here a long row of
large windows and two sets of double doors overlooked the winter night, one
door ajar. The windows seemed odd. The frigid night air streamed in around
several men talking on a veranda. A blanket of winter white covered a rolling
lawn, with the dark, shaggy outline of a labyrinth standing in frosted
splendor. The labyrinth pulsed with energy—the entrance curved to the left, a
male labyrinth.

Once we passed the doorway, Emma whispered, “These wizardly
folk don’t seem to notice the cold at all. Do you know wizardly folk?”

“I’ve never met anyone who called themselves wizardly folk,”
I said honestly. Practitioners didn’t call themselves wizards . . . did magicians? I
wasn’t even positive how magicians differed from practitioners.

“People who like magic, and magic likes them,” she hissed. “The
rule is to ignore them, no matter what they do, and keep to your work!”

I nodded.

The dining room blazed with tall candelabra placed along the
center table, and a chandelier above. Many men sat at the long mahogany table,
gesturing with cigars and pretty glass drinking vessels. I spotted the only
redhead and guessed that he was Cousin Esme’s old student. Emma and I crept to
the sideboard, where a young man in a suit like Kymric’s was setting dishes
cleared from the meal on trays.

The trick was to take as many dishes as possible without
dropping anything. My trick was to load a tray as slowly as possible, so Cousin
Esme could see everyone in the room. I was careful to choose fragile things
that could not be piled too high. I had never seen such glasses. They were so
clear, it was like looking through a window, or into a pool of rainwater.

“Those go to the butler’s pantry,” Emma said, pointing with
her chin to a door at the other end of the room. “Put them on the table in the
back, and then come back here.”

The butler’s pantry was very dim. I was grateful for the
door being open. Plenty of candlelight filtered in from the dining room as I
loaded the glasses from my tray onto the broad table against the wall.

My light level diminished by half as a knot of men stood in
front of the pantry door, having a spirited argument. I knew better than to try
to pass them, but I did my best to see their faces.
I am Cousin Esme’s eyes.

There was another open door, so I grabbed my empty tray and
ducked into a grand walkway lined with columns. It was filled with vases, from
tiny ones no larger than my hands sitting on pedestals or tables, to vases as
tall as me set right on the floor.

It had to be Professor Lee’s collection. Whatever did he use
them for? Were they filled during the summer with flowers?

Was this were they would leave the package?

“Anna! Where are you?” It was Emma’s voice.

I rushed toward the voices, and found myself entering the
dining room from yet another doorway. “The other door was blocked by guests,” I
whispered.

“We must finish clearing here!”

Two more trips to the kitchen—soup bowls and small
plates—before I could glance back into the huge corridor of vases. . . .

And there were no vases.

That stopped me in my tracks. I stood in the open doorway,
astonished, a cold wind lifting strands of my hair. What had happened to the
vases?

“Anna!”

Whirling, I hurried back to the sideboard.

I saw the redhead in passing. He was in a spirited
discussion with the man to his right, and the man to his left seemed to be
waiting his turn to speak.

This time, walking back down the icy cold hallway to the
kitchen, I took the time to scrutinize the labyrinth . . . and discovered that all
the windows in that corridor were portals!

Somehow I managed not to drop the tray I carried. It was all
I could do not to stop and look at one of the windows, but I knew that was a
bad idea. The portal to Marta’s cabin had pulled me right through it. I didn’t
want to get too close to those windows.

Could Cousin Esme tell that the windows were portals?

I let my vision unfocus as I carried the tray to where the
youngest girls were washing all the dishes. The kitchen remained a bastion of
normalcy in this unsettling sea of magic. Flickering light, the babble of
dozens of people talking, strong smells on the heavy air—but no magic that I
could perceive.

The next trip through the dark great room revealed something
flapping near the ceiling. I did not recognize any scent, any pattern to the
wing beat . . . but something was up there. I could hear it; I could feel a current of
cold from it.

I didn’t like that at all.

Back to the bright dining room. The footman had loaded a
tray with slightly larger plates and thrust it at me. I took the long way
around the table, so Cousin Esme, Dr. Livingston, and Margaret could see who
was talking with whom. Once more I trudged to the kitchen, down the ice house
masquerading as a hallway.

The kitchen was still chaotic—a swirl of people yelling,
ferocious heat, and splashing water. Someone grabbed the tray of plates from
me. I had time for a deep breath and then I was handed an empty tray, and I
headed back to the dining room via the east hallway. I hoped my apron was still
clean. I skimmed along the back wall, a ghost among the well-dressed men
walking off their dinner.

Were the Livingstons seeing what they needed to see?

In the murmur of conversation I occasionally caught phrases
like “land purchase,” or “form a town,” or even “another war with Britain” but
I ignored them. It took all my concentration to keep moving. My legs felt like
stone.

I reached the dining room. Emma was nowhere to be seen. The
footman was also absent. I set down the empty tray and picked up a loaded tray
of glassware. Fortunately it wasn’t ridiculously heavy, so I hauled it up and
headed for the butler’s pantry . . . and, I hoped, a door back to those vases.

They were the only vases I’d yet seen. Cousin Esme might
want to spot the package, so I needed to at least walk through that room.

I set the glasses down one at a time on the butler’s table.
Again, guests drifted back and forth before the pantry door. I hung onto my
empty tray and slipped through that opposite doorway.

The vases were back, tall and small, some made from heavy
clay and others as delicate as one of Professor Lee’s wine glasses. Several
candles were lit among the many small columns and niches supporting the vases. There
was a balcony above tracing the rectangular room. The soft glow of beeswax reflected
up under that walkway and cast long shadows from the glass and ceramic. In the
room’s center the ceiling was a vault filled with darkness and a glint of
starlight suggesting high windows.

Two men strolled down the long hall, talking quietly.

I held up my tray and pretended to look for glasses, keeping
myself pointed toward the walkers. As I approached a tall vase, I carefully
reached to touch a heavy rim.

My finger passed through the rim and down through the throat
of the object.
What
?

It was not real.

Were any of them real?

Another current of cold air prompted me to still. Was this
huge building so poorly chinked, or was it something else? Cold sank, it was a
natural law . . . the cold air had to be coming from above.

Gently I reached for another vase, staying well back from
it. This time my finger touched smooth china.

Real.

Maybe.

I circled the room, past an external set of double doors
with many glass panes, past a fine set of windows overlooking the veranda.
Glory be, I found three glasses. Quickly I set them on my tray.

Real vases, imaginary ones . . . there did not seem to be a
pattern. Some actual glass vases were tiny, and one was as tall as I. As I took
the circuit again, I studied their bases, desperate to view them all before
someone came looking for me.

Then I saw something out of place in that tall, narrow room.
It looked like a stick in the feeble light.

I had a candidate.

If that was the package, it remained untouched.

I returned with the tray of glasses to the dining room, this
time taking some off the big table, trying to face each cluster of men before I
headed back to the kitchen.

Emma and I carried dishes two more times, and brought back
bowls filled with nuts and fruit. Then we were following men up and down the
corridors, picking up dropped nuts and still more glasses.

Every once in a while I made sure to walk past the vase with
the stick peeking out behind it.

Still there.

What was wrong?

I watched for the redhead when I passed through the dining
room, and he was still stuck with those two men.

“Stuck” was the word.

They would not let him go. Other guests tried to break in,
or steer him off down the corridor for conversation. But the men who had sat on
either side of him were like burrs attached to his woolen coat.

I knew that the dessert biscuits would go into the brick
oven soon. How much longer would this party go on? All night?

As I made another pass through the vase room, the cold
breeze playing with my hair, I saw the dark protruding stick at the base of a
huge vase.

I wondered if I should pick it up. It looked like it would
fit into my wand pocket . . . .

A feeling of warmth flushed through me. It was not the heat of
embarrassment; it was the wave of a summer bonfire.

I turned away from that vase to pick up another abandoned
glass, and suddenly felt much colder, as if I had stepped outside. Once I had
the glass firmly on my tray, I looked back at the shadowy stick.

Warmth moved through me.

We can communicate.

I was convinced Cousin Esme wanted me to pick up that
package.

I bent my knees, keeping my head level in case someone came
in.

My fingers closed around a long, metal cylinder, and I
quickly slipped it into the wand slit in my skirt, my fingers trembling. I
tried to keep the feel and thought of it out of my head—I concentrated on the
memory of those pans of biscuits, waiting by the fire, just in case I needed
them . . . .

As I turned to walk back to the butler’s pantry, another
gust of air brought the stench of rotten eggs.

The chemicals for building some spells were quite odious . . . . I
glanced up. Something huge and winged soared up toward the few lights of the
upper story, curving around as if to swoop again—

RUN!
Margaret’s
silent scream nearly lifted me off the floor.
Hurry, hurry, RUN!

The winged thing flew between me and the dining room. Abandoning
my tray I spun on my toes and rushed for the outer door with its many panes of
glass. Could I open the door? Had they shoveled all the verandas for the party?
Please say someone has shoveled any
drifting snow!
I threw my weight on the levered door handle and the door
sprang open.

What kind of great house was this, that they never locked
the doors?