“The Grimoire Italien? Are you using the French translation of Trasformazioni della Materia?” asked Miriam. Jane nodded. “Oh!” said Miriam. “In the original medieval Italian, that passage is a bit clearer. The demon benefits, but there’s also a chance that . . .” Miriam trailed off as she saw Jane blushing angrily.
Miriam winced. The learning of ancient languages was not among Jane’s talents—which was nothing to be ashamed of, in Miriam’s opinion. Still, she should have remembered how sensitive Jane was about it.
“Miriam, as usual you’re not only correct, but your scholarship is impressively thorough,” said Nancy.
Nancy’s notice always thrilled Miriam, but it was hard for her to accept the compliment with Jane looking so unhappy and embarrassed.
“I wish I’d known you were reading that,” said Miriam. “The modern Italian translation is better, and I have it in my room to compare with the medieval, since the medieval is a bother to read. It’s barely even Italian, really—just a dog’s breakfast of medieval Venetian vernacular mixed with Latin.”
“Thank you,” said Jane, with the sort of formality and poise she usually reserved for impressions of her favorite actresses. “I’d be pleased to look at it when you can spare it.”
“Later,” said Nancy, with a tone that conveyed exactly what the girls ought to be doing just then.
Miriam began to clear the dishes, as keeping the kitchen tidy was one of her responsibilities. Jane, too, stood up from the table, but as she did, a great yowl split the air and a soft gray blur of wounded dignity streaked out the kitchen, the bell of his collar jangling merrily.
“Poor Smudge!” Jane, dismayed, hurried after the cat to check on him.
“You’d think one day he’d learn that sitting behind Jane’s chair will only get him a pinched tail,” said Miriam.
“Perhaps he enjoys the attention,” said Nancy, as she wrapped the remaining bread in a cloth. “I’m off to the stacks, my dear.”
“All right.”
“I hope you’ll join us when we walk into the village? I think it’ll be a lovely day in spite of the cold, and a merry party once Edie arrives.”
Miriam managed a smile even as her stomach churned at the thought of the long walk away from their safe, quiet home into the relative chaos that was Hawkshead. But she loved Nancy very much and wanted to please her—no, more than that: she wanted to be the sort of person who pleased Nancy.
“Of course!”
Miriam was rewarded with a smile. “I’m very glad,” said Nancy. “Now, I must see to a few things before my sister takes up all my waking hours. Ciao!” And with that, Nancy swept out of the room with more flair than was strictly necessary.
For all she was hard on Jane for being “dramatic,” Nancy, too, had a bit of the theatrical about her. And as with Jane, it came out even more when Edith visited.
2
* * *
SMUDGE WAS FINE, OF COURSE. The large gray tomcat just liked to make a scene. Jane knew that, but running after him had been a good excuse to get out of the kitchen so she could fume alone, in peace.
She was cross with her mother for being her mother, and she was cross at herself for being angry at Miriam. Miriam hadn’t meant to embarrass her, Jane knew that, but she had been embarrassed just the same.
Miriam and Nancy might not be related by blood, but they were more similar for that lack, as far as Jane could tell. While Jane might look like her mother (albeit a plainer version), Miriam thought like her. They came at problems in the same way; enjoyed the learning of languages and the quiet rustle of the turning page. They even shared a middle name: Cornelia, after the sixteenth-century diabolist Cornelius Agrippa.
Jane was glad for it. Mostly. She wanted Miriam to feel like a real part of their family, and of course that was helped by her having a real connection to Nancy. It was just hard, being the odd one out—and it was especially hard knowing Nancy wished her daughter was a little bit more like her ward.
But Jane could only be who she was—and she was someone who felt a healthy respect for the how and the why of the Art . . . but when it came down to it, Jane would really rather just do.
Jane’s mother always said that “doing” was too dangerous a method of learning many of the skills diabolists regularly relied upon. That was for “wild” diabolists, as her mother called them—practitioners of the Art who learned it without the safe and effective teachings of the Société.
Jane had no desire to be a wild diabolist—she wanted to be a Master, with all its attendant privileges. But there was no rule in the Société’s criteria for Mastery that said Jane had to enjoy the theoretical part.
Nor was there any rule about the way an aspiring Master had to think through certain diabolical problems, as far as Jane could tell. While it might please her mother and Miriam to come at every question like two scientists in a laboratory, Jane was free to think of herself as a wielder of arcane powers—as long as the results of her efforts were successful, it shouldn’t matter. So much of the Art was about imagination, and about using one’s will to change what was possible. But every time Jane used the language of the occult to explain her reasoning, her mother would try to weed it out of her like an obsessed gardener.
“We’re not witches, Jane,” her mother had said to her, time and again.
And that was true. But it was also true that neither were they scientists.
While it was possible that Nancy wasn’t as disappointed by Jane as Jane sometimes thought, it was also true that she rarely praised her daughter often or lavishly. Indeed, it was almost better at times not to hear how her mother thought her efforts good, said in that earnest but unenthusiastic way that managed to convey that perhaps if Jane tried a wee bit harder, Nancy might think her efforts very good or even excellent.
Jane had once been able to talk to Miriam about these sorts of feelings, but no longer—not since she realized that in many ways Miriam agreed with Nancy about Jane’s study habits and methods, and also about Jane’s eagerness to begin the process of transforming into the distinctive young lady she’d like to one day become.
She found Smudge by the front stairs, sitting on a middle step. She plunked down next to him, and the cat crawled, purring, into her lap, a sure sign that all was forgiven. The feel of his silky fur under her fingers was soothing, and when she scratched him behind the ears and under the chin, his eyes closed in feline bliss.
“Oh, Smudge,” she sighed. “You understand, don’t you?”
Smudge cracked open one yellow eye as if acknowledging her words. She ruffled his ears, and he nipped her on the hand hard enough to leave a wine-colored indentation in her skin before dashing upstairs as if the devil—or more probably, a demon—were after him.
She needed to get to dusting anyway.
Her mother had been right; Jane had made a hash of her chores the day before. But not because she was thinking about Clark Gable—or anyone else, for that matter.
Talking aloud through a problem often helped Jane figure out the answer, and yesterday Jane had been muttering over her latest unsuccessful attempt to make a broomstick fly. Not just any broomstick, either—the fancy one she’d bought in London with Edith last year with the polished black handle and black stitching keeping the bristles secured. Beautiful as it was, it had been unaffected by an armamentarium of flight Jane had made from a bit of dried lemon peel infused with the essence of a demon colloquially called Seven Clouds. An Egyptian diabolist, renowned for her ability to levitate, had sent it to her via a tricky little piece of diablerie involving a simulacrum of a seagull. When it had landed on Jane’s windowsill, reeking of fish and salt, it was so lifelike—but after it vomited up a wooden box, it had dissolved into smoke that smelled of autumn’s first wood fire.