Castle & Key, page 18
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Light and feeling came back gradually, but for Susan, the first sense to return was smell: she scented rosemary and lemon and dust. She was staring at a section of green ceiling so far above her head that it made unpleasant shadows move amongst the rafters, and when her head turned sideways, a jagged edge of pain tore through it, dividing her sight for a moment.
Susan took a moment to settle her stomach and, in the midst of so doing came to the inescapable conclusion that she had been hit on the head and left lying on the carpet in a hallway by person or persons unknown.
Regan was the most likely of those persons, she supposed, lurching into a sitting position and clutching her aching head. If Helfer had been going to whatever ghastly version of sleep the curse had conjured for him, it was likely that Regan had been on her way there, too. If she had seen Susan gawking at Helfer’s captured form, would she have hidden or hit Susan on the head? On the other hand, there was that lingering scent of rosemary and lemon that Susan rather thought she had smelt on Mrs. Carmichael the day she washed her hair.
Either or both of them were sufficiently motivated to do it, too—a lowering thought that also left her wondering if Janet would ever change to that extent.
Susan considered that, gazing around at the hallway as she did so. Now that she was sitting up with most of her wits recovered, it was plain to see that she was in the main lower hallway again, instead of parts unknown in the manor. The world around her had lost its moving, terrifyingly busy feeling of live magic.
Whoever had hit her must have been strong enough to carry her here: Susan could feel the tightness of dried blood on the back of her head, but there was nothing on the carpet when she conjured a small light to check. Wherever her head had fallen after being hit, it wasn’t here, even allowing for an unexpected elasticity in the reality of the manor.
Susan sat where she was for a few minutes longer, wondering first if she was going to be sick and then if Emmett was likely to come along at any stage so that she could prevail upon him to carry her back up the stairs.
Since she hadn’t thrown up after those few minutes and it seemed unlikely that Emmett was going to happen along the hallway, Susan staggered to her feet and wended a wavering path toward the front of the manor to see what Brennan might have seen. It was probably a good thing that no one was lingering around the grand entrance when she entered, because Susan wasn’t sure she would have seen anyone in time to prevent a second blow to the head, should that outcome have been likely.
She was still unsteady enough on her feet that when she got to the hall stand that was Brennan and tucked herself out of sight between him and the front wall of the entrance, his timbers seemed to hum.
“All right, old thing?” he asked.
“Just a bit of a bash on the head,” she said, leaning her aching head against the wood. “I don’t suppose you saw anyone going into the hallway or coming out after the footman?”
“Not a bean,” said Brennan. “Sorry.”
“Not to worry,” Susan said. “I didn’t really think there would have been. It would have been a bit too much to ask for.”
“I suppose you’re the one who’s been making a mess around here the last two days, then,” Brennan said morosely. “The whole place is already sitting so tight that I can barely tell where my timbers end and the floorboards begin, and it just got tighter again! You might have left me space to breathe!”
“Yes,” said Susan ruefully. “Tonight was a bit more than I expected. And I’m afraid I drew attention to myself by meeting with the master last night and being devastatingly honest. I was trying to get the curse to loosen from the bride and Emmett a little bit, but I have the feeling I’ve tangled it worse.”
“What’s wrong with the big man?”
“The curse seems to be making a story between him and Janet to tempt her away from the Perfect Result with the master,” Susan said. It wasn’t entirely guesswork, after all; her talk with the master had confirmed a lot of her suspicions, even if it had confirmed them by making things rather worse. “A sort of sub-plot romance between Emmett and Janet. I suspected it, so I tried to do something unexpected and draw away attention from that, and it looks as though the curse is trying to make two love triangles now. It probably didn’t help that Emmett kissed me in the pantry a couple of days ago.”
“Knew it!” Brennan said triumphantly. “You’ve been attacking people and stirring pots.”
Susan couldn’t help grinning. “All right Brenners, that’s a bit much, isn’t it? Are you calling my kisses an attack or pot-stirring?”
“Both, belike,” he muttered.
“I’ll have you know that I was the one who was being attacked,” she said. “So watch it or I’ll start sobbing at the unfairness of it.”
“A likely story,” he said, and that made Susan grin again. “When you just admitted that you’d been playing with the curse and the big man too.”
Susan found that her head hurt a little less now, that and she had entirely lost the feeling that she was about to be sick every time she moved a bit too quickly. It gave her enough energy to retort, “Consider yourself lucky that I didn’t kiss you. What else have you got to complain about?”
“Being a hall stand,” he returned at once. “Look, Su—do you think you can stop those long-shanked tweed-twiddlers from peering in through the windows all the time? Gives me a nasty shock every time I look up and see them pressing their blank little faces to the glass, even if I’m made of wood.”
“Yes, they’ve been a bit clingy, haven’t they? Did you see them come in to get the body yesterday morning?”
“I saw them,” he said gloomily. “It’s nothing but bodies around here, isn’t it?”
“Just not the ones I was expecting,” Susan remarked. “Look, I don’t suppose you see blood dripping from the walls every so often, do you?”
If a hall stand could have been said to stare in horror at anything, Brennan did so. “Blood dripping from the walls?”
“Just a bit of it,” Susan said placatingly, as a vast shadow passed around the edges of the main entrance hall to meet them. “No need to worry, Brenners! You haven’t got any blood to drip, just now.”
“You didn’t mention blood last time I saw you,” said Emmett’s voice, a murmur of shadows; then he was right there next to her, far too warm and big and close.
He settled himself on the floor, too: his back to the front wall and his arms laid comfortably across his bent knees.
“Nobody was dying,” Susan said, rather too aware for comfort that she would have to manoeuvre around him to remove herself from her current position. She had always been aware, in some way, of how very large Emmett was as a companion-at-arms; it was another thing entirely to be aware of the extent of his height and breadth as a man. She corrected herself, “That is, I don’t know if anyone was dying at the time. I was just strolling through the halls and then blood was rolling down the walls. I’d quite like to know if it was the previous valet’s blood, actually.”
“I’ve never seen a curse do that before,” Emmett said.
“No, it’s very interesting,” said Susan. “I suspect that it was just to frighten me, but then, I wasn’t quick enough to preserve any of the blood—that was very thoughtless of me.”
She saw that Emmett was looking quizzically at her and explained, “At the time I thought it best to ignore the nonsense if the curse was trying to frighten me.”
Emmett shrugged, the movement of it brushing against her legs via his arm. “It probably isn’t the best idea to stay too long in the halls alone. I doubt we could have learned much from the blood that would have made it worthwhile.”
“I was with the hound,” Susan said, by way of offsetting what she would have to say next. “Still, I agree about not staying too long in the halls; it might stop people hitting me on the head, at any rate.”
Emmett’s eyes fixed on her. “What happened in the halls?”
“Never mind, lummox; it was just someone who wanted to convince me that I hadn’t seen something I’d seen.”
Emmett stared at her in massive silence, crossing his arms, until she gave in.
“Let’s just say that I discovered exactly why the footman and the maid think they go home and where they go when they think they go home. I thought that the walls had swallowed that leggy footman, so obviously I followed him—”
“Obviously.”
“No need to be snide, lummox; I got hit on the head for my pains, remember?”
“That’s what I’m remembering,” he explained, leaning forward to seize her head in huge, gentle hands.
“I doubt that there’s anything but blood to be seen,” she told him, but stayed as she was, uncomfortably bent forward, until he had examined the wound and set a trickle of magic tickling through her hair. “The important thing is that those two young ones don’t go home: the curse or something else gets them to wander down into parts of the manor that don’t exist during the day, and then—”
“And then?” prompted Emmett as she leant back against Brennan’s woody side, feeling rather better.
She hesitated. “They sort of get sucked up into the wall and drop their heads down. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were giant clockwork or steam-work dolls.”
“I don’t know any story curses that do that, either.”
“That’s what I thought just before someone hit me on the head,” agreed Susan. “What do you think it gets out of it? I would have expected it to drain the story of its magic and make it less effective.”
“It should do,” Emmett said, and he looked at her and then away again. “It’s supposed to work in small things—implications and suggestions and dreams. It shouldn’t be wasting power holding people prisoner physically.”
“I’m quite sure it’s not the master doing it, too,” Susan said. “There was far more magic when I went into the walls last night than anything I’ve found in the normal parts of the manor—including anything from the master. It feels as though he’s as caught up and scared as any of us.”
“Did he tell you that?”
Emmett wasn’t looking at her now, but Susan thought that he was listening very carefully.
“No,” she said. “But he talks as though he’s almost given up, and as if he had a bit of hope briefly from Janet. I think we’d best try to keep them together and happy if we want to get out of this alive. Apparently he has to trust her enough to give her a key that could get her out of the manor or some such thing—and she has to trust him enough to not use it.”
Emmett’s laugh rumbled across the shadows. “He should have picked you instead.”
“That’s what he said,” Susan said, before she could quite stop herself. Hastily, she added, “He seemed to think I would have hit him over the head, taken the key, and carried him out with me.”
There was the briefest of moments before Brennan’s voice said, “Knows you very well, old thing, doesn’t he?” and Emmett and Susan, chancing to meet each others’ gazes, sputtered into a laugh at the same time.
Susan was still trying not to laugh when she said, “All right, we’ll see what happens when we try to keep the two of them together more often. At the very least, it should be easier to keep them safe than it was trying to look after them singly—if the curse doesn’t try to put a spanner in the works.”
“I think the curse will let us do that much,” Emmett said, sobering. “It’s connected to them first and foremost, after all. It wants them together for the Perfect Result. The rest of us are just side-players.”
“Oh well,” said Susan. “At least it will be easier to connive from now on: we don’t have to meet in the pantry, and we won’t be suspected if Mrs. Carmichael or Mr. Oswald see us lingering in corners or putting our heads together.”
She added hastily, “To talk, I mean!” because Emmett’s gaze, slightly questioning, had met hers.
“Suspected of what, old thing?”
“Anything other than Proper Behaviour Befitting Staff,” Susan said promptly, breaking that gaze with some relief to look over her shoulder at Brennan. “I mean, they’ll think we’re walking out together, which is scandalous, but it’s not against the rules as such. The curse is very good at trying to thread itself through what it’s already got going.”
“Always thought you two already had something going,” said Brennan dispassionately. “Surprised it’s taken you this long.”
Susan stared at him. “You thought what?”
“Shut up, Brennan,” said Emmett.
“No need to be rude, big man. Well, it was obvious. Joined at the hip, both of you; you’ve even got a shared spell going, and if you don’t know that horselords don’t share their—don’t try to bean me, old man. Can’t bean a hall stand, for a start—haven’t got a bean.”
“There’s nothing that you need to comment on,” Emmett said, with one last threatening rattle of the hall stand.
He reached down to grip Susan’ forearms and lift her up as she gathered herself to rise more slowly than he had done.
Brennan objected, “Yes, but if the two of you have been canoodling in cupboards—”
“I told you, Brenners,” said Susan hastily, freeing herself from Emmett as soon as she was upright, “it wasn’t canoodling, and it wasn’t in a cupboard. It was in the butler’s pantry, and it was entirely subterfuge.”
“Odd sort of subterfuge, if you ask me,” muttered Brennan.
“Nobody asked you,” Emmett said, with finality.
Susan felt his eyes on her and forced herself to look up at him, but by then he was glancing away again. “Never mind, Brenners,” she said, with rather too much heartiness. “We’ll probably only confuse you until we get out of the manor. We can’t do much about it until then, so just hold tight, all right?”
Brennan seemed to mutter something along the lines that he wasn’t the one who was confused, but Emmett only asked, “No sign of the others?”
“Don’t know, old man—haven’t seen them walk through my room, and the vibrations of the place say there should be a couple hundred people in the manor.”
“No sign of them from my searching,” Susan agreed. “Brenners, what do you mean, “the vibrations of the place”?”
Brennan said simply, “That’s all I’ve got, now that I’m wooden: vibrations and footfalls and voices for a couple hundred people who never come out to play. They’re all in the walls.”
“Delightful,” said Susan dryly. “Maybe it was one of those people who hit me on the head.”
“I doubt it,” Emmett said. When Susan looked at him enquiringly, he added, “I don’t think they’re capable of more than malevolence and trickery of the mind.”
“Ghosts?”
Emmett shrugged. “Ghosts, or dreams.”
Susan couldn’t help thinking of lips pressed against her own, and of waking to a ghostly Emmett above her. She took in a thoughtful breath and asked Emmett, “How are the dreams, by the by?”
“Still there,” he said shortly. His gaze dropped to hers, and there was something of a tentativeness there when he asked, “You haven’t had dreams?”
And Susan, who couldn’t think of any way to explain the dream she had had that morning that wouldn’t cause more trouble than it was worth, could only look away, shrug, and ask, “Should I have?”
“No, I suppose not,” said Emmett; but he was thoughtful, and that worried Susan.
It was one thing for her to be understanding things and making connections—it was quite another for Emmett to be doing the same thing when it came to inconvenient truths that were a little too close to home.
That didn’t stop her from grinning at him and saying a somewhat malicious, “Sweet dreams!” up at him when he had walked her to the division of the halls and they were about to part. Perhaps she said it to test her fledgling theory; perhaps she said it to provoke the exact reaction it brought out: Emmett, speculation and uncertainty in his eyes, stepping toward her with the vaguest motion forward of one hand.
Susan wasn’t sure, but she was certainly a little bit breathless when she turned and took her own path to bed, pretending not to see that step forward.
“Goodnight, lummox,” she called softly over her shoulder. “Don’t do any more wandering, will you?”
“Not while I know you’re abed,” he said, and Susan fancied that the ghost of a laugh followed her to the suite while her cheeks heated in the darkness.
Ten
Susan woke into an early half-light the next day, with fog at the windows that was golden around the edges as if there really were suns behind it and a weight beside her in the bed. It was so familiar a weight that it took her a moment to realise that, familiar or not, it wasn’t supposed to be in this bed with her. When she did realise as much, Susan turned her head and found another resting on the same pillow with her.
She had never seen Emmett from just such an angle before, face-to-face and lying beside her. Confusingly, she could feel the faint tickle of his breath against her face, and as Susan was trying to recover from that particular life-like circumstance, Emmett’s eyes opened.
She would have asked, “Lost your way in the dark?” but she was wary of giving the situation a more dangerous legitimacy than it had already established. It was also at that point that Emmett smiled at her, warm and close, and nudged his head closer.
“Absolutely not,” Susan said firmly, turning her head away again.
He rolled over her easily, resting his weight on his forearms to either side of her, and bent his head until his nose touched hers, then pulled away playfully. Susan had exchanged many a playful look with Emmett, but never in such a context and never in such a way that set her heart beating in her throat. She felt bare toes brush coolly against her calves and could only think oh dear as Emmett’s gaze drifted down to her lips. Reverting to no way forward but to attack in her loss for what to do, Susan had a sudden, brilliant epiphany.
