Goblin Ball (5 page)

Ugh.
All those kiss-up names, and they couldn’t find a place for Narcissus? Hey, wait a minute. “What did you say? About the other courts?”

“Sarumos and Edmos.” Morning Glory brightened, if that were possible. “You should invite them. Ha! More than their eyes would be green.”

“And the
Tuatha Dé Danaan
?”

“Why not?” The white-haired fairy sniffed and shrugged her shoulders. “We’ll show them who’s special.”

Cissa’s pulse quickened as the kernel of an idea sprouted in her mind. Her prince charming
must definitely
belong to another court!
It would explain why he’d never come to the faewood.

“You’re right.” She would send out invitations to the other fairy courts—laced with a spell to draw him to her. “Why not?” She could use the emerald necklace to call its maker to the gifting. Brilliant!

She only wanted to see him once again. Just once. What could it hurt?

« Chapter 5 »
Cammy

Tintagos Village

Cammy pulled her robe
together with one hand and clutched the torch she’d brought from upstairs in the other, illuminating the displays. No need to turn on the shop lights and raise the night patrolman’s curiosity. As she picked her way through
Into the Mystic
, she noticed the front door shade hadn’t been pulled down.

Oh, Bella.
Her sister was ever absentminded about some things. The shop wasn’t closed up properly at all. She set the bolt, flipped the door sign over to show the side that read
Closed But Please Come By Tomorrow,
and pulled down the shade.

Not that the lock was necessary. It seemed Tintagos was amazingly, mysteriously,
mystically
free from crime. There was a small police force whose two main functions, apparently, were to give the village the sense of service and protection and to provide employment to a few of its citizens.

She picked up two magic mirrors from their display, and as she headed back to the stairwell the clock on the wall behind the register chimed the quarter hour.
Fifteen minutes to go.
She should probably have gotten the mirrors from storage—in the supply room there was one box left of those the countess’s mother had “fixed”—but she didn’t want to risk missing the first chime of midnight.

“I’ve got them!” she called up to her sister.

They lived in the flat above the shop, which had come with the leasehold. Two bedrooms, an unexpectedly spacious old-fashioned bath with a claw-foot tub, a small lounge, a larger dining nook, and a kitchen. Free of the constant presence of their demanding and critical father, the cozy rooms felt as large as life to Cammy, as spacious and comfortable as the mansion at Faeview. Add to this the lush garden behind the shop, and sometimes she felt she’d come home to paradise.

Not that Cammy had been to Faeview yet, but she and Bella had been invited to Lady Lexi’s gifting on May Day.
Gifting
. It sounded like something out of Perrault. Yet another indication that her awakened memories of Tintagos were not ridiculous, as Bella would have it, but in fact true.

Cammy and her sister had left the Handover empty-handed and had gone home to their soul-leaching father. Vacation over. Mischief managed. And there was an end on it.

And it
had
ended, until they’d returned to Tintagos for Lilith and Cade’s wedding. The reception had been held at the remodeled Glimmer Cottage, and something had happened to her there.

She was sitting alone, watching the dancing and drinking champagne in the garden near an ancient yew tree when a crow jabbered at her. For some reason, she looked up to answer the bird and noticed the cottage roof in her line of sight. Standing at the roof’s edge was the most striking man she’d ever seen.

He had wild straw-blond hair and was dressed like a highwayman out of a Georgette Heyer novel. His shirt was open, and his smile was devastating. He was too far away to tell, and yet she
could
tell that he had violet eyes. His stare hit her like a laser beam, drove through her, and warmed her in ways it had no business doing.

Lost in his violet gaze for moments that seemed like an eternity, she had awakened. She remembered everything.

The wyrding woman.

Igdrasil riven by lightning.

The god Aeolios arriving to claim the soul trapped within the mystical tree as his bride.

That Lilith and Cade had sacrificed themselves, risked their very lives to free the ghostly lovers who’d haunted Tintagos Castle for a millennium.

It was all wonderful! And it was all true.

Bella did not wake up. She was still mesmerized with an implanted mundane memory—or whatever they’d used to drive the actual events of the Handover from her mind. No matter how often or in what detail Cammy recounted what had really happened during their vacation in Tintagos, Bella would not, could not, accept it.

Well. Perhaps this spell with the mirrors would show her. At any rate, on May Day, at little Lady Lexi’s gifting, they would see what they would see.

Bella met her in the dining nook, coming in from the kitchen with a chilled bottle of white wine and two glasses in one hand and plate of her homemade
gougères
.

“What?” Bella answered Cammy’s look with a disbeliever’s roll of the eyes. “Will pinot grigio spoil your little spell?”

“Never. Especially with your masterpieces.” Cammy popped one of the cheese puffs into her mouth and set the mirrors on the table beside two red apples. She fetched a couple of beeswax candles and the lighter while Bella poured the wine.

Whatever. Maybe she was the one who was crazy. But whether there were truly fairies in Dumnos or not, she was having the time of her life. Moving house was the best idea ever. She’d fallen in love with Tintagos. After leaving the first time, she couldn’t get the village by the sea out of her mind. The castle ruins, the mystical tree with a name,
Igdrasil.
The handsome Lord Tintagos, now Lord Dumnos.

Not that she had any designs on Cade Bausiney, not now. They’d all three—Cammy, Bella, and Lilith—met him on the same day, when he met them at Tintagos Halt coming off the steam train from London. He was meant to be everyone’s tour guide, but from the moment Cade saw Lilith, his eyes had only been for her.

So sweet, so funny, so engaging… so strangely attractive. He’d awakened something in Cammy, a desire for love, for romance. She’d found it easy to set her romantic, frothy attachment to Cade Bausiney aside, but she couldn’t—wouldn’t—put that raw desire back to sleep again.

She refused to sublimate, be a good girl, take care of her bereaved father. Why should she pity
his
loss of
his
spouse, when he had determined that neither of his girls should ever have their own? Their mother had died over fifteen years ago, and of course Cammy missed her every day. But life was calling to her now.

And she meant to answer.

“Bella, don’t you think marriage agrees with Lord Dumnos? He looks even more handsome than when we first met him.”

“Because his skin’s cleared up.” Bella took a drink of her wine. “That rough complexion was his only flaw. Now he’s practically perfect in every way.”

“And so is her ladyship,” Cammy reminded her sister.

“And so she is.”

Cammy joined Bella in a healthy sigh, and they clinked wineglasses. “To Lord Dumnos… and to Lady Dumnos, our particular friend.” They only ever called the countess Lilith to her face.

Cammy glanced at the wall clock and opened the book queued up on her Kindle. “Let’s get to it, shall we?” It was impossible to download books wirelessly here—Dumnos did have drawbacks, and no wireless Internet was a big one—but she already had what she needed:
Collected Writings of Lydia Pengrith, Countess Dumnos.

There was a publisher’s note at the beginning of the ebook:

Putting together this collection has been a labor of love. I first learned of the Wyrding Countess, as I think of Lydia Pengrith, when I was a little girl and discovered three of her books in the bookshelves of Mrs. Charles Sarumen—or, as I called her, Grammy Gwen.

The volumes I drew from for this collection were published from 1899 to 1901, though sadly not widely. In my research, I’ve found there was only one printing of each. In fact, I may own the only copies extant. I’d love to hear from anyone in possession of any works by the Wyrding Countess.

Meanwhile, enjoy these delightful stories, spells, warnings, and insights into the wyrd and fae of Dumnos—and by the time you turn the final page, I dare you not to believe… ~ Serena Sarumen Lamb

Cammy took a bite out of an apple as she clicked forward to the instructions she wanted. “Go on, Bella. Eat up.” She nodded at the other apple and began to read.

Most accounts of this technique will have it that the procedure only works on Mischief Night, also called Hallowe’en. This is true of the hours from dusk until dawn, save midnight. Midnight is the most powerful hour in the circadian cycle. Try any so-called restricted spell on any midnight, and you just may find that it works.

To see your true love in a magic mirror: First, obtain a magic mirror! As the appointed time approaches, eat a crisp red apple. Then when the clock begins to chime the hour, light a candle—preferably made of beeswax—and hold your gaze steady on the glass. By the final bell, your lover will appear over your left shoulder, as if standing behind you.

Warning—do not turn around! For the moment you take your eyes off the mirror, the apparition will dissipate.

Midnight’s first chime rang out, and Cammy flicked on the lighter. “Give me yours, Bella.”

“I feel utterly ridiculous,” her sister said, but she held up her candle to be lit.

The second chime sounded. “Don’t take your eyes off your mirror,” Cammy said.

She had first suspected something was up with the
Mystic’s
mirrors a few days after Lilith’s mother—from California…
right—
had been in the shop. Cammy remembered Morning Glory saying that she’d fixed them.

Bella had sold two to a couple of silly young girls around twelve or thirteen years old the day before. Along with the purchase she had included the handout she’d made with the information from Lydia Pengrith’s book, handwritten in lovely calligraphy. Bella really was an artist. If only she could turn that inward artistic eye out to the world all around her!

That was on the Friday. The next afternoon, the girls were back with several of their friends who also bought mirrors. On the Sunday, Cammy and Bella came back to the shop after church to find a line of ladies waiting at the door to buy mirrors.

Something was definitely up.

The fifth chime rang. “Do you see anything?”

“I do,” Bella yawned and drank more wine, her eyes never leaving the glass. “A dark splotch.”

“Don’t look away!”

“I won’t, dearest. Sun and moon, I don’t want to have to repeat this again tomorrow.”

“Bella, I…” Cammy’s heart began to pound. “There’s something…” As much as she wanted it to be true, as much as she’d believed in her head it had to be true, she hadn’t believed. Not really.

But there in the glass, behind her left shoulder, a formless blotch began to take the shape of a man. A gorgeous ginger-haired man with dark eyebrows, bright blue eyes, a happy smile, and a certain something that made her heart swell, full to bursting.