Lily and the Prisoner of Magic (12 page)

‘Do you think it’s the same sort of spell that Mama used on the photograph album?’ Georgie asked, scowling up at the glowing magic on the bricks. ‘It’s making me hungry. I don’t think that ought to be allowed; it isn’t fair, surely? Making people buy things with magic?’

Lily shrugged. ‘I wonder how much the magician who did it got paid? I hope it was a lot. It works, doesn’t it?’

‘When I was living with your Aunt Arabel, there were things like this in London, very occasionally,’ Henrietta said, sniffing hungrily at the bricks at the base of the wall. ‘But not this big, not ever. Shop signs that moved, perhaps. But even that cost so much to have done, people often didn’t think it was worth the money.’

‘I suppose a great many magicians fled here from London,’ Lily said, frowning. ‘They needed work, and they must have worked for a lot less than they would at home. Maybe Rose Fell made this one, since she lives here?’

Henrietta sniffed again. ‘Maybe. But I don’t think she’s the only magician in this building. Can’t you feel it? It positively reeks of magic.’ She shook her ears happily. ‘It smells very good. It’s seeped all through the walls.’

‘We should go in,’ Lily said, dragging her fingers away from the pinkish bricks. Henrietta was right – it wasn’t just a firm compulsion to buy Anstruther’s Sauce and Fine Chutneys that she could feel, there was a deeper magic underneath. It was deliciously intriguing, and it could feel her too; it was questing curiously around her fingers, trying to see who and what she was.

They walked round to the front of the building, and Lily submitted to Georgie straightening her hat and dusting her boots with a handkerchief. There wasn’t a great deal she could do about their dresses. Maria and Georgie had run them up in the theatre wardrobe, neat navy ones with a sailor-suit look, for the journey. But they’d only had room for what they were standing up in (or lying down in, really) when they were smuggled on board, and even the smartest dresses look grubby after six days’ wear and prolonged squashing inside a trunk.

‘You could glamour us a bit,’ Georgie said hopefully. ‘Just to make us look a little smarter, Lily – please?’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea…’ Lily said slowly. ‘It seems a bit rude, when we’re going to see another magician. Besides, she’ll be able to tell it isn’t real, won’t she? So there isn’t much point.’

Georgie sighed and nodded, and they hurried under the smart awning over the front doors, stepping back in surprise as the doors swung open in front of them with a well-oiled wheeze.

‘Magical doors?’ Henrietta murmured, prancing in. ‘Showing off, but I like it! Come on in out of the way, Lily, I want to do it again!’

‘Ssshh!’ Georgie muttered, seeing a smartly-dressed young man walking across the entrance hall towards them. ‘Stop it, Henrietta, you’re showing us up.’

‘I am interested in the magic,’ Henrietta said loftily, stalking towards the doors and then jumping back from them with a little mock growl, like any normal dog playing a game. But the doors remained resolutely closed. Henrietta sniffed them thoughtfully. ‘Clever. They must sense the intentions of the person approaching,’ she murmured.

The young man was standing just behind them now, watching her and nodding. ‘Ingenious, aren’t they?’ he said, lifting his hat and bowing slightly. ‘No one can enter the building for dishonest purposes – well, not to steal, anyway. The spell doesn’t go much beyond that, but it’s a start. Good day to you.’ And he strolled forwards, the doors swishing open in front of him.

‘I do like this place,’ Henrietta sighed. ‘It’s a pity we can’t stay. But perhaps when we bring magic back to England we shall be able to have clever doors. Be sure to remember them, Lily.’

Lily nodded. She was already walking through the luxuriously decorated entrance hall towards the stairs, drawn upwards by some deep magic that seemed to be calling to her already. Henrietta skittered after her excitedly, eager to meet this powerful magician at last.

Lily trailed her fingers along the walls as she climbed the stairs, loving the touch of this magical building. It felt alive, like a huge creature. It knew they were climbing to its heart, and it was watching them interestedly, she was sure.

‘Lily…’

‘What is it?’ Lily started, turning back to Georgie. She had been so deeply wrapped in the glowing magic that she’d almost forgotten that her sister was following her up the stairs.

‘There’s something wrong. I don’t know what it is, but the spells inside me are – are moving.’ Georgie had her arms wrapped tightly around her chest, as though she was trying to hold something in. ‘I think something’s calling them.’

‘The magic in the house?’ Lily asked, frowning. She couldn’t imagine how something that felt so gentle and essentially good under her fingers could be stirring up Mama’s dark spells.

‘No… I’m not sure…’ Georgie gasped suddenly, and she sank down into a little huddle on the steps. ‘Oh, it hurts!’

‘It’s Mama,’ Lily said, staring at her. ‘It has to be.’

‘She’s doing something? She’s calling the spells?’ Henrietta asked, nuzzling Georgie’s hand affectionately. She and Georgie argued all the time, but Henrietta regarded Georgie as hers too.

Lily shook her head. ‘No. She’s here. Rose’s address was on her list, remember. She got here first.’

‘We should go,’ Georgie whispered.

Lily looked at her worriedly. Her sister looked so pale, as though she was about to be sick.

‘I don’t want to go…’ she said gently. ‘Can we find somewhere safe to hide you? Can you bear being close to her for a while?’ Then she frowned. ‘You got closer to her than this on the ship, Georgie. Why is she only hurting you now?’

Henrietta snorted. ‘What do you think your mother is talking to Rose Fell about, Lily? She’s right here, and she’s thinking about Georgie, and the plot, and the magic she’s sealed inside your sister. That’s what’s waking it up.’

‘We can’t let her persuade Rose into being part of the plot,’ Lily said anxiously, glancing up the stairs.

Georgie shook her head. ‘No, you have to go. What’s that little door on the landing up there?’

Lily hurried up and opened it. ‘It’s a broom cupboard, Georgie, you don’t want to be stuck in there with all the mops!’

Georgie tried to straighten up, her hand on Henrietta’s head, and the little dog pushed up, as though she could really lift Georgie to her feet.

‘It doesn’t matter, I’m coming with you,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want you going up there on your own. It’s better now; I’m getting used to it.’

Lily hauled her up and gazed at her doubtfully. ‘Do you really think you can?’

‘Yes. If she’s up there with this Rose Fell, I want to hear what she’s say’s saying.'

Lily blinked. ‘But – we can’t let her see us, Georgie. Do you mean sneak into Rose’s rooms?’

‘Yes. I know Princess Jane trusts her, but it’s a long time since they knew each other. I want to see what she thinks of Mama. Then we’ll know if we can trust her, won’t we?’

‘I suppose so,’ Lily murmured, looking up the stairs again. She had been worrying about this morning – it was so important that Rose Fell should agree to help them. But now a tricky social call had turned into something entirely different. She took Georgie’s hand and led her slowly up the stairs, examining the little name cards set into brass holders on the doors.

‘This is her,’ she whispered at last, looking at the curly emerald-green writing. ‘What do we do now?’

‘You haven’t any more spiders on you?’ Henrietta grunted.

‘It’s not locked.’ Georgie was leaning wearily against the doorframe, her fingers wrapped round the handle. ‘I could turn it and walk in.’

‘Don’t!’ Henrietta snapped. ‘I will, I’m smaller. I can at least see if there’s somewhere we can hide and listen to what they’re saying.’

Georgie turned the handle, her damp fingers slipping, and Henrietta pushed the door open a crack and wormed her way through, leaving the girls waiting outside. Lily’s heart thudded painfully as she tried to listen for Henrietta. Time seemed to stretch out as she stood flattened against the wall of the landing, her hand tightly gripping Georgie’s.

At last there came a delicate pattering of claws, and Henrietta slipped back through the gap. ‘They’re in a room at the far end of the inner passageway, talking, and there’s a coat cupboard we could hide in.’ She shook herself disgustedly, dislodging a shining white hair. ‘There’s also a cat, but then there’s no accounting for taste.’ She looked up at Lily and Georgie, and nudged the door further open. ‘Come on.’

They crept in, blinking in the sudden light after the darkness of the hallway. The apartment was panelled in a pale, greyish wood, and smelled pleasantly of spices and sweet vanilla. Sunlight poured through from the room at the end of the passage, and Lily could hear voices – her mother’s low, hoarse murmur, which made her shiver, and another voice, higher and older-sounding.

‘I do see what you mean. Queen Sophia seems to have become quite unreasonable, and her mother always was. But I’m not quite sure what it is you’re trying to do.’

Henrietta jerked her head and hurried to a small door, hustling them inside the coat cupboard and pulling on the hem of Georgie’s skirt with her teeth to make her sit on the floor. ‘Before you fall down,’ she hissed.

Lily crouched down next to her, listening at the door, which they’d left cracked open.

‘We want to bring the magic back,’ she heard her mother say simply. ‘That’s all. It’s been banned for so long now, and the country is suffering; you do see that, don’t you?’

‘But with the queen so opposed, how on earth are you going to… Oh. I see.’

‘I’m so glad. It really is the only way, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so…’ It was merely a whisper, as though the old magician didn’t want to agree. But she was! Their mother was persuading her!

Lily strained her ears to catch the conversation in the sunlit yellow room, but they’d lowered their voices too much, now that they were talking treason. It was impossible to hear until she stretched her fingers out of the crack in the doorway, curling them towards and beckoning the sound in with a dollop of her magic.

‘We do have – well, one might call it a secret weapon.’ Lily’s mother’s voice suddenly filled the tiny closet, husky and excited, and Georgie jammed her fingers into her mouth to stop herself crying out.

‘Really…’ Rose Fell sounded intrigued, worried…

And the voices weren’t the only thing that came.

‘
G
ood morning.’

Lily had been crouching in the doorway, ignoring the ache in her knees, wanting to be as close to the voices as she could.

When the furry white face nosed itself around the edge of the door, she fell over backwards with a stifled yelp.

‘What is it, Gus?’ Rose called from the yellow room.

The cat stared at Lily and Henrietta, and their pleading eyes, and the pale huddled shape in the corner that was Georgie. ‘A mouse,’ he called back. Then he surged inside the cupboard and twitched his tail swiftly.

The door swung closed and the white cat began to glow, lighting up the dark and stuffy chamber.

‘Well?’

‘Oh please…’ Georgie gasped.

‘You mustn’t let her…’ Lily began at the same time.

‘You first,’ the cat said, dabbing Lily’s hand with his damp nose. ‘She looks like she’s about to faint.’

‘It’s our mother doing that to her,’ Lily explained hurriedly. ‘I mean, that’s our mother, talking to your – your –’ She didn’t like to say
mistress
, in case he was insulted.

‘Companion. Go on.’

‘She wants her to join in with a plot to overthrow the queen and bring back magic, and I know that doesn’t sound like a terrible idea but they’re doing it by filling their own children full of magic! Awful magic that’s meant to kill people. Georgie’s got the most horrible spells inside her, and she looks like that because the spells can feel Mama talking about them. Georgie is the secret weapon she just told you about.’

‘She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,’ the cat said disbelievingly, leaning forward to peer into Georgie’s face.

‘Of course she does, that’s the point!’ Lily hissed. ‘If she looked like a murderous conspirator she wouldn’t be much use, would she? She looks like a sweet little girl!’

‘If she is sick in here, I will be most annoyed,’ the cat said, his whiskers twitching, as Georgie gagged, her shoulders shaking.

‘I won’t,’ she gasped. ‘It’s just that she’s still thinking about the magic. It wants to get to her.’

The white cat got up and paced solemnly over to Georgie, but Henrietta darted across the two steps of floor first and crouched half on Georgie’s lap, poised to growl.

‘I’m not going to hurt her, you idiot dog,’ the cat said scornfully.

‘Your mistress is conspiring with the person who got her into this state!’ Henrietta snapped. ‘Right this minute!’

‘I assure you she isn’t,’ the cat replied. ‘A mouse? In my apartment? Do you think that’s likely? We have no vermin in
this
building.’ Here the cat looked Henrietta up and down rather nastily. ‘Usually. She knows quite well something is going on, and that I don’t want her guest knowing about it.’ He leaned over and trailed his absurdly long white whiskers over Georgie’s cheek, and she gasped again, but this time with surprise.