A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(29)

“I wish that were less true,” Nan acknowledged.

Beatrice set the scone in the middle of the stone, the little cup beside it. Then she closed her eyes, and Nan waited patiently. After a moment, a little creature . . . grew, or emerged, right out of thin air. If Beatrice had been standing, he’d have barely come up to her knee.

It looked like a wizened old man in a country-style smock and buff trousers, wearing a pointed cap. He looked at Nan warily for a moment, then at Beatrice.

“Mistress Leek, you call me, with a feast for a favor?” he said.

Beatrice’s eyes opened. “I did, Hobson, and it is a very large favor. This young lady and I need you to carry a message to the Oldest Old One.”

The poor little man paled. “Oh . . . oh lady . . . speaking to him is not for the likes of me!”

“Look at her, Hobson. Look deep,” Beatrice said, in a coaxing tone, not as an order.

The brownie half turned and stared at Nan. After a moment, his eyes grew huge. “Oh . . . oh!” he gasped. “Oh, and she has his favor and grace all over her!”

“And I’ll tease a bit of it off her and put it on you. He’ll know who you come from, and you and the word you bring will be respected.” Beatrice smiled slightly, and the little man flushed at the last word.

“Respected?” he asked. “The likes of me, by him?” He drew in a long, careful breath. “Ah well, then . . .” He made a little grasping gesture with his hands, and the milk and scone vanished. “A feast for a favor, done.” He looked at them both, expectantly.

Nan sucked on her lower lip. Could Robin Goodfellow read? She’d have to chance it.

“Let me write a note,” she said, feeling in her reticule for some paper and a pencil.

“Oh, that would be a grand thing, mistress,” the brownie replied, looking relieved. “Better if I don’t have to remember. Because . . . if I do go standing before him, I think all my memories will drain right out my ears, I truly do.”

She was getting so used to this story she was able to condense it down into two pages of closely written notepaper, which she folded and sealed with a blob of candle-wax, and handed to the little man. He stowed the packet inside his smock and waited patiently again.

While Nan had been writing, Beatrice had been making little motions with what could only be a wand. Nan had never seen anyone use a wand before . . . the Elemental Masters she’d seen in action all used their hands, not wands.

Beatrice was making tiny circles with the tip of the wand pointed at Nan, eyes narrowed in concentration. Nan thought she saw little transparent, glowing wisps of something collecting on the end of it, but she couldn’t be sure.

Eventually, she held out the tip of her wand to the brownie who cupped his hands around it and apparently pulled an invisible ball of something off it. “There you go, pet,” Beatrice said easily. “That will show him who you’re from. Favor for a feast. Tell him Miss Nan will meet him, if he can come, in Kensington Garden the day after the Eve.” She looked at Nan. “Don’t worry about finding him, he’ll find you.”

That was a good choice, Nan realized. On Christmas Day Kensington Garden would be practically empty.

“Thenkee, mistress,” said the little man, who bobbed an awkward bow, then faded away.

“Well,” Nan said after a long pause. “That’s done.”

“’Tis,” Beatrice replied. “And I would take it kindly if you’d help me up and back to my chair!”





6





THE coal fire on the grate kept the sitting room warm, and supplied most of the light. Alexandre waited, somewhat impatiently, for Alf to return with the last component of the magic work he was about to attempt. He had spent the last two days carefully going over the ritual he had copied from The Book, making sure he clearly understood each and every word of the incantations, and that, barring mistakes in The Book itself, he could pronounce everything perfectly. He didn’t want to take a chance on this going wrong, because if it did, he couldn’t try again for another year. And even then . . . this would be the most effective Eve for quite some time. Everything would be perfect right now, but only if Alf could get him that one final, and all-important, thing.

But if anyone could, Alf could.

He paced the floor of his sitting room, eager to start, even though midnight was three hours away. He planned to take his time and move slowly and methodically, but the longer it took for Alf to get back here was less time for him to use. Time wasn’t critical . . . yet. But if Alf took much longer, it would be.

He thought he knew now why The Book had found its way into his hands. Most of the people who frequented the bookstore were interested in the erotica, not the esoterica, and the few who had any interest at all in the occult had not, at least to his eyes, shown any signs of real power. Like the proprietor, they could not tell trash from treasure. And he was certain now that, like many such items of power, The Book had a certain level of sentience, and had deliberately bent the mind of the owner to show it to him.

Or . . . no, that was not quite correct. It was not The Book itself that was sentient. It was that there was a power behind The Book that had been seeking for the proper person to find The Book. Now, its ability to interact with the material world was thin and feeble, and the best it could do was dimly influence minds to get The Book to someone that could use it. Once he set it free . . .