Mistress of Souls: A Prophecy of the Sisters Novella (3 page)

And there, right next to the stairs leading to Wycliffe, was the Douglases’ bookstore.

Her pace slowed as her gaze fell on the window, “Douglas’s Fine Books” rendered in gold script across it. She hesitated. James Douglas and his father were the only two people she truly knew outside of Birchwood. Or rather, the only two people she knew who had not yet shunned her.

She turned and carefully opened the door, wanting to avoid the tinkle of the bell, not quite sure she wanted to speak to the Douglases at all and knowing she would have no choice if they heard her enter the shop.

It was quiet, the soft murmur of voices in the back room the only sound, save for the clip-clop of horses outside and the muffled rattle of carriages outside the store. She ducked behind a shelf of books that nearly reached the ceiling at the front of the store. It had been ages since she’d been in the Douglases’ bookshop on anything other than a school assignment, since the early days of Lia and James’s courtship, when Lia would insist they stop in on their way to or from Wycliffe.

She pulled a book from the shelf. It was a book of poems by John Keats, and she opened the cover, inhaling the scent of paper and ink, of cloth and dust. She had always loved the smell, but Father’s library and all the books housed there had been Lia’s domain, and she and Father had ruled supreme within its walls. Alice went there only in the dark of night, pulling books from the shelves, opening them just to sniff the place where the paper met the binding, choosing one or two to secret back to her chamber.

This she had never confessed to anyone. To do so would be an admission of desire, a plea for acceptance into a club that would never truly admit her. The humiliation of it would be too great. Better to hold her head up and pretend she didn’t want it. To pretend that she wouldn’t accept it even if it were offered, for who wanted to spend their time in the confines of the dull and dusty library when one could be outside in the fresh air and wind?

She looked down at the book in her hands. It was open to “Ode to a Nightingale,” and she read the first words silently, letting them wash over her like gentle waves.

She was pondering the meaning of the words when the bell on the door rang, followed by high-pitched laughter. Stepping to the end of the row of shelves, she hid behind them, watching as a group of three girls made their way to the back of the store without so much as a glance her way. She stood, listening as they spoke. She could not quite make out the words, but they were followed by a deeper voice, which she recognized as James’s.

She clutched the Keats book to her chest as she strained her ears to listen, but she could make out nothing more than a murmured exchange. A few moments later, the girls’ voices got louder, and Alice knew they were returning to the shelves at the front of the store. She held her breath as they came closer, exhaling only when they turned into the row of shelves next to the one behind which she hid.

“Now, that is a gentleman with whom I’d like to stroll,” one of the girls said suggestively.

They snickered, and Alice eased forward, peering through a gap in the shelves where the books were removed on both sides.

Now she could see them, Victoria Alcott and Hope Chesterfield, together with another girl Alice did not recognize. They were perusing the books aimlessly, more intent on their observations of the man who had been her sister’s beloved.

“I wonder if he’s still pining after Amalia Milthorpe,” said the unfamiliar girl.

Victoria laughed harshly. “If he is, he’s a fool, and I’d not like him to court me anyway. Everyone knows the Milthorpes are cursed.”

Alice’s heart thumped wildly in her chest, a slow fury beginning to boil in her veins.

“Do you think so?” the girl asked softly. “I think it’s very sad, everything they’ve suffered.”

“When I was home on holiday, my mother said there have been dark goings-on in that house,” Victoria said. “She said there always have been.”

“But don’t you think that is nonsense?” Hope asked. “Superstition? Perhaps they are simply unlucky.”

Victoria snorted. “If it is simply a matter of luck, I’m the queen of England. Both parents and a brother dead in ten years? And no disease? No injury?”

“I heard the brother fell into the river,” Hope said.

Victoria raised her eyebrows. “In a wheelchair? What, pray tell, would a crippled boy be doing close enough to a river that he could drown in it?” The other girls were silent as she continued. “And I’ll tell you something else I heard: Amalia and Alice were with him when he drowned.”

“You’re not suggesting they had something to do with it?” Hope asked.

“Well,” Victoria said slyly, pretending to scan the books on the shelves in front of her. “Lia
has
run away to London.”

“Lia?” Hope gasped. “Surely not her. Why, she was as meek as a mouse. If anyone was involved it would have to have been Alice. Weren’t you friendly with her, Victoria?”

Alice studied Victoria’s face through the stack of books, watching as her smugness turned to panic. “Not really,” she said coolly. “We were friendly at one time, but that was ages ago, and I was never even invited to Birchwood Manor. Anyway, Alice always was the strange one.”

“How do you mean?” the unnamed girl asked.

“Oh, you know,” Victoria said. “A little
too
gay, always laughing and making mischief as if her life depended on it, and forcing us to go along, too.”

“And did you?”

Victoria hesitated. “Well, yes, but only because we were frightened.”

“Frightened?” the girl said in surprise. “Frightened of what?”

Victoria put the book back on the shelf. “Why, of Alice, of course. She had a mean streak a mile wide. You were either her ally or her enemy, and no one wanted to be her enemy. We were only nice to her to stay on her good side, not because we actually
liked
her.”

Alice’s cheeks were on fire, her face aflame with shame as the girls twittered about getting back to class before their absences were noted. They shuffled out of the row of shelves, and Alice moved back into the shadows, waiting for the bell on the door to signal their departure. When it did, she leaned back against the shelf, the breath leaving her body in a rush, her heart pounding wildly, though she could not tell if it was from anger or humiliation.

That little wretch! How dare she? Alice had been Victoria’s friend, had included her at a time when being included by Alice Milthorpe made one part of an exclusive inner circle.

And yet, if Alice were honest, she
did
have a mean streak, had enjoyed watching the girls at Wycliffe jump through hoops for her attention, doing all manner of things and giving her all manner of gifts to be invited on one of her many adventures. It didn’t matter that one never knew if they would end in simple fun or in a firm reprimand from Miss Gray. There had been very few girls at Wycliffe who did not think it worth the risk.

And then there was Henry. That they had dared to speak of her brother’s death—to make light of it, even—filled her with hatred so powerful it almost stole her breath. She was very nearly shaking with rage.

Perhaps this was her comeuppance. What was it Edmund had always said?
You reap what you sow.

“Lia?” She jumped, following the voice to the end of the row. James stood there, his face a mask of shock. “Is it you?”

Alice shook her head. “It’s Alice.”

James’s shoulders sagged, the light leaving his blue eyes. “Of course, I’m sorry. I saw you…I thought…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

She stepped toward him, looking up into his blue eyes. “It’s all right. We are twins, after all. I’m only sorry to disappoint you.”

He smiled, but she could see that it cost him something. That it did not come easy. “Nonsense. I am happy to see you. I’ve been meaning to call. I heard Virginia and Edmund left. Does that mean you are all alone in that great house?”

“Yes. They left some time ago.” She was embarrassed to realize she did not know how long they had been gone.

“But isn’t it strange? Being alone in so big a house?”

The look in his eyes was too close to pity for her liking, but then she remembered her appearance, the wild ride to town from Birchwood. She straightened her back and tried to smooth her hair.

“Not at all,” she said firmly. “I quite like the silence. It is nice to be truly independent. To have no master.”

His nod was slow. “Yes, I suppose when you put it like that, I can understand.” His gaze traveled her face, and she wondered if he was seeing her or her sister. “Can I help you with something? In the store?”

She looked down at the Keats book, still in her hand. “Oh, no! I was simply browsing. Coming in out of the cold for a moment.”

“Of course,” he said. “Would you like to stay for a chat? I could offer you tea….”

“Tea?” Her customary bravado faltered with the offer. She could not remember the last time someone had offered her anything, least of all their company. She felt suddenly shy, uncertain of the rules. “Oh…no, thank you. I couldn’t. I…I must be going. It will be dark soon.”

“All right, then,” he said. “Perhaps another time.”

“Yes, of course.” She shoved the Keats book back on the shelf, and he reached out for her shoulder as she moved past him. She shrunk back, unaccustomed to being touched.

He held up a dried leaf, still attached to a twig, and smiled faintly. “It was caught in your hair.”

“Thank you,” she said, continuing to the door. She opened it and was preparing to step through when she turned back around, meeting his eyes. “It was nice to see you again, James.”

She stepped into the cold and shut the door behind her, hurrying for the carriage, her shoulder still warm where James had touched her.

She made herself a supper of bread and cheese and washed it down with hot tea. She felt triumphant. It had taken her nearly twenty minutes to light the stove and find a proper cup, and she had had to guess in her measurement of the leaves, but in the end she had done it: brewed a perfectly good—albeit strong—cup of tea, all by herself.

She sat at the servants’ table to eat. It was the first time she had been content somewhere other than the Plane since before Father’s death. The table was heavy and solid under her plate, the kitchen warm from the stove, the tea fragrant and soothing. She allowed her mind to wander, surprised to find that, for once, it did not go directly to the Souls, the Plane, Samael.

Instead, her mind drifted to James. To his blue eyes and the look in them when he’d reached for the leaf in her hair. As if he were seeing her for the first time.

Of course, she reminded herself, it was because she looked like Lia. Exactly like her. And everyone knew Lia had been James’s beloved even when the three of them were small enough to run about, play hoops and sticks in the fields while Mr. Douglas consulted with Lia and Alice’s father about some rare volume on offer at auction. They had played together, yes. But it had been Lia to whom James had gravitated. Lia to whom his eyes drifted more and more as they grew into adults.

But he had seen
her
today—
Alice
. She was sure of it.

Finally, the tea gone, her plate empty save for crumbs, she wandered upstairs. Her mind was foggy as she made her way to the Dark Room, the eerie tune emerging from her throat like magic, the call of sleep lowering the veil between the worlds, weakening her footing in this one, though it had seemed so sure only moments before.

Once in the Dark Room, she climbed onto her mother’s bed. She had grown accustomed to sleeping here in the days since Aunt Virginia had left. Here she could sleep among Adelaide’s things, lie on the coverlet that had been hers and be only steps away from the spell circle carved into the floor. Everything seemed closer here: the Plane, the Souls, Samael, her mother.

Her hunger satisfied, she closed her eyes. Her hold on this world loosened immediately.

And then she was free.

There were things about the Plane she still did not understand. She could control, to some extent, which worlds she traveled, though it had come with significant practice. She could not control, however, the time of day in which she arrived or the weather once she got there. Sometimes she traveled in her sleep, the sky as black as pitch outside Birchwood, only to find herself flying through sunlit skies in the Otherworlds. She might leave New York in the physical world, the heat and humidity oppressive in midsummer, and find herself in a barren Otherworld, the wind icy, the ground covered in snow. There was no accounting for any of it, and while her power had grown in other areas, she’d come to accept that there were some things she would never understand or control.

Now, she flew through a sky that could have meant twilight or early morning. A thick fog swirled in the air, limiting her view so that she could see only a few feet in front of her. She smelled the tangy brine of the sea, sensed the stretch of it somewhere beyond the fog, and knew she was in a surrealistic parallel to her own world.

She had been here many times before.

She was grateful for the power of thought on the Plane, for she would otherwise not have been able to control her direction with the fog obscuring her view of the landscape below. But she had only to think of the otherworldly sea, the soft sand, the large rocks standing guard on the shore, and she began to descend.

Her body hurtled through the fog, and she laughed aloud, the thrill of it causing a rush of euphoria to speed through her veins. She sensed the approach of the ground before she saw it, felt her body slow as it came closer, adjusting to its nearness automatically, as if she and the Plane were one. As if it were alive, a living, thinking entity, bypassing her mind entirely and speaking directly to her soul instead.