“Yes, and I have a plan,” I replied. I knew he wouldn’t like it, so I merely smiled, but I realized my dimples were gone, the dimples that he loved, and Papa only scowled at me.
“Explain the plan.”
“It may take me a few days, but I’m hoping Phelan will give me a room.”
“At his house?” Papa demanded.
“Yes.”
“I don’t like this, Clem. Not one bit.”
“I know, but I’m a magician, Papa. You have taught me the best avertana has to offer, and I have faced many types of danger, and this . . . this is not something you should be worried about. It’s bad luck to harm a guest beneath your roof, remember? And besides, it will give me an opportunity to drain his resources.”
“Where is this coming from, Clem? Draining resources? This isn’t like you.”
He didn’t know I had given half my heart away, and perhaps I would have felt shame in the past over his disappointment. But not now. I remained quiet, waiting for his acceptance.
He sighed. But when he looked at me again, I saw that I had won this argument, and he reluctantly nodded.
“You will cast a protective charm on your bedroom door every night?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking I still had to somehow convince Phelan to even offer me a room.
“And the windows?”
“Yes, the windows as well. Don’t worry, Papa.”
“I will worry every moment that you’re gone,” he said, and I felt that terrible ache in my stone heart again. I had to glance away from him and how destitute he appeared. I played with a thread of my quilt until I felt composed.
“Is that all, Papa?”
“No. Once he gives you a room, you’re going to tell Phelan that you will have every Monday night off, new moon permitting, and you are going to use your stealth charm to check in with me here. We’ll have family dinner together so your mother, Imonie, and I don’t worry ourselves to death.”
“I can do that,” I said.
“And one last thing, Clem.” But he hesitated, and I sensed this was the reason why he had charmed the room, so no one could eavesdrop. “You mentioned that you’re doing all this because you want to know why the Vesper brothers chose Hereswith. I want to know as well. I don’t want you to risk yourself, but if the opportunity presents itself for you to . . . uncover this, I want you to share it with me on Monday nights. And if you come across any information about the countess . . . I would also like to know it, Clem.”
“The countess? Why do you want information on her?” I asked, remembering the stilted moment I had met her in the art shop. She had studied me with cold reserve and said, You look familiar. Have we met before?
“She’s an old acquaintance,” he answered, glancing away. The hair rose on my arms as I wondered what would make a selfish noblewoman interact with a rustic magician like my father. “We were never friends—I was far too lowly for that—but we worked together until we had a falling-out, years ago.”
“Do you think she told her sons to take Hereswith, as a way to slight you?”
“I don’t know,” Papa replied, a bit too quickly for my liking. “Now, do you agree to my terms?”
I nodded.
“Good. Did you drink your remedy tonight?”
“Not yet,” I said, but I reached for the small vial, which sat waiting on my bedside table.
“You’re a warden again,” Papa said. “It would be wise to continue drinking them every night. Particularly since your partner doesn’t know who you truly are.”
I didn’t say that I had been taking them every night since we left Hereswith, as he’d asked me to. And because he seemed to be waiting, I drank the remedy. It went down like a secret, and even after all these years of swallowing them night after night, I still grimaced.
But I knew what Papa implied. It would be disastrous indeed if I strove to be a vengeful eye in Phelan’s house, only to let a nightmare, of all things, betray who I was.
15
“Is your book going to bite me again?” I asked, standing in Phelan’s library. It was my first day of work with him, our first day of tenuous partnership. It was going as well as could be expected. I had been half an hour late, due to a carriage crash on the lower north quadrant, and I had swiftly come to discover Phelan detested tardiness.
His back was angled to me as he watered the plants on the table, sunlight gilding his dark hair. “No, not today.”
“But perhaps tomorrow?”
He glanced at me, noticing the wrinkles on my plaid skirt, my taupe shirt with brass buttons gleaming up the front. My hair was braided, at least, and he returned his gaze to the plants.
“You should begin to read. You have much to catch up on.”
I sat at his desk and carefully opened the book of nightmares. I sifted through the most recent of entries, and quickly realized that some of them were written in dark gold ink, while the majority were in black.
“Do you have a reason for using different colored inks?” I asked.
“Yes. The gold entries are the active ones, dreams of people who currently reside here.” If a resident happens to move away or dies, I charm their records into black ink, so I keep track of which dreams to study. He pruned a few wilted leaves and then went to work making a remedy. He chopped and scraped an assortment of leaves and petals into a glass flask, where it bubbled over a flame, casting an astringent aroma in the office.
“I suppose it’s hard to keep track of everyone who comes and goes within your territory,” I said after I had read a few of his entries. “The city is such a fluid place.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Some nightmares unfortunately escape my records.”
I left him to his task of straining and bottling the remedies, and I read through page after page of golden-hued nightmares. I began to jot down ideas for spells to counter them. The hours crept by. We worked in companionable silence, interrupted only by Mrs. Stirling bringing us a lunch tray of sliced rye bread, cold slabs of roast beef, cheese, and pickles.
Phelan and I sat across from each other at the desk, but I was too focused on eating and reading to attempt a conversation with him.
“Do you have dinner plans, Miss Neven?” he eventually asked.
“No.” I kept my eyes on the page.
“Would you like to have dinner with me and two of my friends tonight? We can walk the streets this afternoon, so I can show you the territory boundaries, and then we can go eat with Nura and Olivette.”
Nura and Olivette? I reached for my lukewarm tea, suddenly stricken with nerves. He had friends, which meant they would most likely ask me an endless stream of questions.
“I’m not sure. . . .”
“Do you have elsewhere to be tonight?” he asked, and I heard the curiosity in his voice. He wanted to know more of my history and was too polite to directly ask for it again.
I sat back, my fingertips stained gold and black from turning the inky pages.
“I’m not a very social person, Mr. Vesper.”
“Neither am I,” he quipped. “But I should warn you that if you put Nura and Olivette off tonight, they will insist on meeting you tomorrow night, and the night after that, and the night after that. . . .”