“It’s not that simple,” said Bram. “Not in this house. I would like to tell you, but—”
I remembered Minnifer’s mouth clamping shut, her eyes swiveling desperately. Were Bram and Minnifer under some sort of enchantment too? But why? And who had cast it?
“What if you don’t tell me?” I said. “What if you showed me? Where is Minnifer?”
“Mrs. Cantanker gave her fifty-seven pillowcases to mend,” said Bram. He hopped off his chair and peered up at me gently. “I’m sorry. And thank you for helping me. It was very nice of you.”
Casting one last tragic look at the tufts of straw in the ceiling, he headed down the corridor, his bucket banging against his leg.
I continued to stand on my chair, feeling a bit foolish. Then I sighed, dragged the chair back to the spot where it had no doubt stood for decades, and returned to my room.
I was eager to talk to the marble prince again, but when I removed the petticoat from his head, I found him cold and immobile, his mouth shut tight. His expression had changed: the haughtiness was gone from his brow, and his sneering lips were turned down. He looked as if he had been frightened quite badly, and then frozen that way.
“What happened here?” I said.
I tried asking him careful questions, using just the right words. “The League of the Blue Spider,” I whispered. “Ephinadym mulsion.” But the prince’s lips remained resolutely closed.
What a strange place I’ve stumbled into, I thought, and set off to explore the castle on my own.
I’d not gone very far, only down the corridor and into a chamber mostly occupied by a large, leafy tree, when Minnifer poked her head in like a small, lively owl.
“Bram said you wanted a tour?” she said, and I whirled so quickly I almost lost my balance. Bram stood in the doorway too, his hands in his pockets.
“I’d love a tour,” I said, trying to regain my composure. “But don’t you have fifty-seven pillowcases to mend?”
“Yes,” said Minnifer. “Mrs. Cantanker likes to keep us busy. Says it keeps us out of mischief. But she also sends the triggles down each night to undo the work I’ve done, so she can’t be in any great hurry to have them finished. We’ll be fine unless she catches us. And she won’t. She doesn’t know the castle the way we do.”
Minnifer winked at me, and I smiled back, following her into the corridor. “What’s the matter with her anyway?” I asked. “What did anyone ever do to her that she acts like she’s got a load of hedgehogs stuffed down her—”
“Shhh,” said Minnifer, giggling and casting an anxious look down the corridor. “She failed her tests, you know. . . . She’s an underwitch and always will be. Quite the grandest society lady, but that counts for figs in the world of witches.”
“She’s not even a real witch?” I asked.
“Well, not the way your mother was,” said Minnifer, suddenly serious. “But don’t let it fool you. She’s studied all sorts of things, visited all sorts of mad folk. She’s interested in the dark arts, that one. You underestimate her for one second and she’ll eat you alive.”
I gulped. Minnifer took a candlestick from a side table and lit it. “But who cares about Mrs. Cantanker? She’s probably soaking in a tub somewhere with cucumbers over her eyes, and we’ve got a castle to explore.”
She snatched my arm, and the three of us hurried down the corridor in a little bouncing globe of light, tallow and smoke streaming behind us like a pennant.
“Shall we start in the Library of Souls?” said Minnifer, her voice echoing as we went down the dragon staircase. “Start with a bang?”
“Start with us all getting eaten, you mean,” said Bram. “I saw the bulldogs in there just this morning.”
“Oh,” said Minnifer, casting a sidelong look at me. “The spirits of seventeen bulldogs covered in horrible warts. Very unfriendly. Origins unknown. Yes, perhaps not. The Orchid Room, then! That’s a lovely one, and the orchid wallpaper hasn’t driven anyone mad in ages.”
“I say we start in the west wing and work our way east,” said Bram. “That way we’ll be well past all the really horrible corners by nightfall.” He cast a meaningful glance at Minnifer. “And Zita will see all the things she needs to.”
Chapter Six
NOTHING is quite as it seems.
That was the first thing I learned about witches’ houses. Gilt mirrors opened into corridors, long as train carriages and glittering with gas lamps. Walls folded about with the pull of a brass lever, turning a perfectly respectable-looking parlor to a potion kitchen. Some rooms had groves of mushrooms growing between the tiles, watered by little pewter pipes, and in one gallery, a staircase ran upside down across the ceiling. “For the Bellamy ghost,” said Bram, as if that explained everything.
I saw the ghost in question—a large man in old-fashioned pantaloons and a red velvet coat, sitting on the upside-down stairs, chin in hands, peering at us mournfully. I shivered.
“The house really is full of spirits,” I murmured, remembering Mr. Grenouille’s words.
“Oh, yes,” said Minnifer. “Hundreds upon hundreds. It’s a sanctuary for them. It’s not really legal to keep ghosts from passing on, but the ones who would cause more trouble in the lands of the dead, or the ones that have been expelled for political reasons . . . those are the ones Georgina allows to stay. Most witch families will banish all ghosts right away, but we were never that sort of house.”
“Most witch families?” I squinted at Minnifer. “I thought Mrs. Cantanker said the Brydgeborns were the last of the reigning witch families,” I said. “Are there others?”
“A handful,” said Minnifer, as we inched around a gaping hole in the floor. I peeked over its edge and saw all the way down to the cellars and up to the sky high above. It was as if someone had dropped an anvil on the house. “There’re the Bluejays of Manzemir, the Jelossians of Belaru, the Balaikabaradas of Rajan. . . .” Minnifer began to count on her fingers, then gave up with a dismissive gesture, saying, “But most of them are just regular high-society folk these days. Not worth the shoes they walk in, that’s what Georgina used to say. In the old days, they’d band together when there was a larger breach and work to banish the soul eaters that came pouring into the lands of the living. They would have proper battles with ranks of witches marching across the fields. But I suppose they don’t have time to fight the darkness anymore, what with all the feasts they’ve got to attend and assemblies they’ve got to speak at. I think most of them wouldn’t know a moorwhistler if it bit them on the nose.”
I wouldn’t know a moorwhistler if it bit me on the nose either, but it alarmed me that those whose business it was to know these things were just as ignorant. If the dead were indeed as terrible as I had begun to imagine, and if one had just cursed my family to eternal petrification, all these half-retired witches should be very worried indeed.
We entered a greenhouse, the air muggy, bizarre plants growing wild and untamed all the way to the leaded-glass cupola. Bram and Minnifer began to argue quietly, about what I wasn’t sure. I sometimes wondered if they were brother and sister, though they didn’t look alike and they certainly didn’t act alike. Minnifer had a rather merciless streak beneath all her giggling, and Bram, though he had seemed very serious and particular about everything at first, was patient and long-suffering. He kept busy telling Minnifer what to do, and Minnifer kept busy ignoring him.