A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(5)

Suki squealed with glee, and jumped a little. “I will!” she promised, and ran up the stairs.

“You spoil her,” Nan said, mildly, as Sarah trotted up to unlock the door to their flat.

“She’s easy to spoil, and it doesn’t seem to do her any harm,” their landlady replied fondly. “Good night to you, Miss Nan.”

“Pleasant dreams to you, Mrs. Horace,” Nan answered, and followed Sarah.

Sarah had already turned up the lights, poked up the fire, and was helping Suki out of her finery and into her nightdress, so Nan went to the birds’ room to check on them.

In summer, the birds either slept on the headboards of Nan and Sarah’s beds or on their perches, but in winter they shared a cage that had had the door taken off. It was shrouded in a nice, thick blanket, and had a hot brick wrapped in old flannel at the bottom of it. The raven Neville would have been fine without such a precaution, but with Grey being from Africa, Sarah and Nan preferred to take every precaution they could think of to keep her warm.

Neville seemed to feel the same, since Nan found them huddled together with Neville’s wing over Grey’s back.

They looked up at her footstep, and blinked sleepily at her. She checked the temperature of the brick with her hand, and decided to exchange it for the one on the hearth.

“Good fun,” Grey said.

“Yes, it was a great deal of fun,” Nan agreed. “I wish you could have come with us.”

“Rrrr. Ginger nuts,” suggested Neville.

“Providentially, Mrs. Horace has decided that tomorrow is going to be a baking day, so I think that can be arranged,” Nan chuckled, putting the hot, newly wrapped brick in the bottom of the cage. “Good night, my loves.”

She went to her own room and came out in a comfortable flannel wrapper over her own nightdress to find Sarah, who had done the same, waiting with chamomile tea. “Suki is already asleep,” she said, handing Nan a cup and propping her feet up at the fire. “I’m surprised; I would have thought she’d be awake half the night.”

“A very full stomach plus a nice warm bed probably did the trick,” Nan observed. “And I would be feeling the same, were it not for Lord A’s hints tonight.”

Sarah sighed. “Christmas Eve and the dark of the moon coming together . . . he’s right. We should be on our guard at this time of year. Or at least, John and Mary should. I don’t know that our talents are going to be of any use when it is arcane perils that are most likely to walk the earth.”

“Oh? I thought the Eve was when spirits crossed, too,” Nan observed, sipping her tea. “That is quite firmly in your area of expertise.”

“But moon-dark has absolutely no effect on that, at least not that I have ever seen.” Sarah had set aside her empty teacup and toyed with the end of her golden braid like a cat with a bit of yarn. “It seems such a pity to spoil Christmas with having to worry about . . . that.”

Nan thought about that for a moment. “Well,” she observed. “There’s nothing at all we can do to prevent trouble, true?”

“As far as I know, true,” Sarah agreed.

“So whether we worry about it, or don’t think about it and enjoy the holiday, trouble will happen, or not, regardless. True?”

“Also true.” Sarah smiled at her friend. “I see where you are taking this. Yes, you’re right. There is no point in worrying about it, as long as we are prepared for trouble to come.”

“Which we always are,” Nan pointed out triumphantly, and finished her tea. “So there is no point in troubling ourselves about what might happen. Meanwhile I am going to bed now, and I plan to enjoy the holiday to its fullest from now until Boxing Day.”

“I think I shall read for a bit by the fire,” Sarah replied. “It’s too cold to read in bed.”

“There, I agree with you.” She gathered up the cups and put them on the tray outside their door for Mrs. Horace to collect in the morning. By the time she turned around, Sarah was already deeply engrossed in her book, feet to the fire. Chuckling, she sought out her bed, very grateful for the flannel-wrapped brick Mrs. Horace had slipped into it. It still had enough heat in it that she moved it down to the foot of the bed to warm her toes. She was asleep in moments, and dreaming she was feasting on Eton mess with a gaggle of Arab ballet dancers.



Sarah waited until she was sure that Nan was asleep and exchanged her book for another. Not a romantic adventure, this one was a volume from Memsa’b’s library—one of the very rare books on spirits and hauntings. Not that books about spirits and hauntings were rare—if anything, there were rather too many of them available in the shops. It was accurate books that were a rarity.

This one, in particular, focused solely on vengeful or inimical spirits. She had believed that Puck’s talisman would protect her against such things. But thanks to this book . . . she had come to realize it might not.

So far all the nasty spirits she had encountered had been those of evil but perfectly ordinary people. The talisman that Puck had given her as a child had been more than adequate protection against them, walling them off from her so that they could do her no harm. But within the pages of this book, she had found things that suggested that she had merely been lucky thus far, in that she had never encountered the vengeful spirit of someone who, in life, had been a magician, or worse, a Master. Such a spirit would not only have the knowledge of magic it had wielded in life, it would have access to whatever power was available in the spirit realm.