Entwined(96)

“Oh—oh—” Keeper cried. “Oh—ow!”

Azalea had punched him across his dainty scratched face.

Instantly the gentlemen pried them apart, gripping their arms behind their backs, looking both horrified and slightly fascinated. Both Azalea and Keeper didn’t need much binding—they shook from both weakness and anger.

The King, whose features still were twisted with tightness, took charge.

“What is all this?” he said.

Both Azaleas broke into yelling, Azalea furious and Azalea-Keeper defensive, and both of them wincing at the gentlemen’s grips over their sore wrists. The girls behind them broke into cries. The King held up his hand for silence.

“Miss Azalea,” he said.

Both Azaleas broke into cries again.

“Sir, can’t you see, I’m the real Azalea—that’s Keeper! He’s using magic!”

“You rotter!” said Azalea. “You ghastly—He’s trying to kill you!”

“You sound nothing like me!”

“Enough!” said the King.

“Oh, sir!” Lord Teddie bounced on his feet. “Sir, I read about this sort of thing once, sir! The only way to solve it is to kill both of them. It was in the Bible!”

The silence rung. Lord Teddie cowered at the King’s look.

“Ah, never mind,” he said.

“Sir, here is evidence,” said Keeper, writhing weakly against Mr. Bradford’s hold. “Keeper took the wraith cloak, and he has it now!”

“Sir, here is evidence,” said Azalea. She raked her mind for the object of hers that Keeper had taken and was using now. But then, another thought arrived, and Azalea lifted her chin.

“The handkerchief,” she said. “You know about the magic.”

The King turned to her, as though seeing her for the first time. His eyebrows rose.

“Yes,” said the King. “Yes.”

And from his waistcoat pocket, he pulled out the wadded silver handkerchief. Azalea remembered now, seeing him pluck it from the end of the fire poker. In the stained-glass lamplight of the library, the silver shone. Keeper’s green eyes flashed at it.

“Fold this for me, will you?” said the King, crisply, to Keeper.

Azalea found it oddly delightful to watch the color drain completely from his already drawn face. His eyes flitted from the door to the pistol on the ground in front of him, then back to the handkerchief.

“Him first,” he said in Azalea’s voice, jutting his chin at Azalea.

The King, without taking his eyes from Keeper, gave the handkerchief to Azalea. She folded it smartly, pressing the seams at each fold, and raised it for the King to see. The King’s voice was hard.

“Captain Bradford,” he said.

Keeper writhed against Mr. Bradford’s hold and shoved back. In a hard glissade, Keeper broke free, hitting the piano before crumpling to the ground. Before Mr. Bradford could help Azalea-Keeper up, she stumbled to her feet and raised her chin.

“Of all the silly—” she said. She thrust out her hand to Azalea. “Give me the handkerchief.”

Her hand quavered. In the other, hidden by the folds of her skirt, Azalea caught a glimpse of steel.

The pistol!

Azalea did not even think. She lunged at Keeper before he had a chance to raise it. They fell on the rug together, and the pistol skittered out of reach underneath the piano. Azalea grasped at Azalea-Keeper’s black skirts, pulling her back.

Keeper twisted around and lashed at Azalea’s arm. Drops of blood smattered across her cheek, and she lost her grip. He stumbled to his feet and leaped for the door.

“After him!” the King commanded. He swept the pistol from the ground and lunged after Keeper through the sliding door. “No—the gentlemen! Ladies stay here!”

“The devil we’re staying!” Bramble cried.

As they took off in a mass of skirts, Azalea ran after them, clutching her arm. By all rights, her feet shouldn’t have carried her up the stairs in sleek, dancelike steps. But her temper seared, the heat in her veins overpowering the ache. She passed the girls, the gentlemen, and even the King, taking a great lead and leaving them behind. She ran through the unfamiliar palace of white gilded walls and haunted portraits.

At the end of the hall, she paused, breathless. A timid light clicked out from underneath a white silk sofa. It pointed a stubby leg toward the stairs. “Many thanks!” said Azalea, leaping up. Keeper was headed for the tower.

Several minutes later, a fizz in her blood, Azalea leaped onto the creaking tower platform, heaving for air. Everything felt stifled, as though the tower held its breath. The gray-blue of the snowstorm through the clockface cast shadows of numbers across the floor. Smaller shadows whorled past them in pinpricks.

A sharp clang sounded, along with a wretched eeEeeErrEEEuh. The clock, a waking giant, creaked to life. Azalea had a moment to realize that Mr. Bradford’s clock stopping had been undone before skirts rustled behind her; Azalea ducked. The hearth shovel brushed past her head and smashed against the clockface.

The glass showered Azalea in prickles, tinkling against the wood. The blizzard billowed onto the platform. Azalea pulled away as Keeper yanked the shovel from the broken clockface and slammed it where her form used to be. She ran, leaping up the spindly stairs of the bells platform at the side, retreating into carriage-wheel-sized gears. Keeper sprang after her in graceful bounds, shovel raised.