Mrs. Cantanker looked at us both with an air of grave and graceful mourning, as if we had asked her to perform some terrible task. Then she rose and glided toward the door, taking a chatelaine from the folds of her gown. A great many keys in all shapes and sizes hung from the velvet tassel, tinkling quietly. “Follow me,” she said.
We crossed the hall to a pair of tall gilt doors. Mrs. Cantanker unlocked them and pushed one open. Beyond was a dark cavernous space. The drapes were drawn over the windows, and only the faintest bit of morning light shone down through the leaves and detritus on a skylight high above.
“They’re in here,” said Mrs. Cantanker grimly, standing aside. “Please, step in. Join them.”
I shuddered, peering into the room. Cobwebs had made empires of the chandeliers, linking them together with bridges and roads, gossamer threads leaping from gilded vaults to crystal branches, gray veils enshrouding the windows. I brushed one aside and trod carefully forward into the gloom. My feet sank into centimeters of dust, soft as velvet.
I heard nothing, not a breath, only the occasional sound of doves cooing and rats scuttling in the walls. I approached the table. A terrible stench brushed my nose, and between the high backs of the chairs, I saw rotting heaps of food, a tower of furred blackened fruit, a sagging cake, a leg of ham swarming with flies and glistening beetles. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand. . . . And then, with a start, I saw them: the Brydgeborns, sitting upright at their places.
They seemed to have melted, like candles, all over the chairs and the tablecloth. Drips of a waxy blue-gray film hung suspended from their fingertips, from noses and black brocade sleeves. But the substance was only a cocoon. The figures beneath it were flawlessly preserved, peering out as if from under the ice on a winter lake. A tall woman with a hooked nose sat at the head of the table. On her left and right were a bespectacled boy and a girl several years older than me.
I approached the girl’s chair slowly, revulsion and curiosity overtaking me. I could see her clearly through the strange veil. She had golden hair and a heart-shaped face. Her eyes were wide open—green as pine needles—and her lips were quirked into an odd little smile, as if her death had come as no shock to her. I reached out to touch the substance that had enshrined her. It was as hard and cool as marble.
I turned, staring in horror at Mrs. Cantanker and Mr. Grenouille, who stood silhouetted in the doorway. Then I fled the room, dust and cobwebs billowing behind me as I made my escape.
“What happened to them?” I whispered, once I was back in the comparative brightness of the hall. “How did they die?”
Mrs. Cantanker closed the door, locking it firmly. “Ephinadym mulsion,” she said. “A very nasty spell. Kills its victims instantly, filling every pore, every organ and vein with an indeterminate substance that cannot be broken, cracked, or melted. One minute the Brydgeborns were sitting down to an excellent dinner . . . and the next they were dead. They had no chance to defend themselves.”
I stared at the closed door. “That was my mother? My mother, brother, and sister?”
“They would be your adopted brother and sister, if you are who you claim to be,” Mrs. Cantanker said. “John and Greta Brydgeborn were not Georgina’s true children.”
“Zita was her first and only,” said Mr. Grenouille quietly. “I’m sorry you had to meet them like this.”
I swallowed, my heart aching. I had not known these people. But I should have. I should have known them my whole life, and now I never would.
“Most of the servants fled when they discovered what had happened,” said Mrs. Cantanker. “They knew the implications.”
“What implications?” I asked.
“The implications of such a spell having been performed in this house, of all houses. A house that was supposed to be a bastion against the dark arts. The implication that something crept in, past the woods, past the salt and iron and ancient wards, and killed one of the most powerful witches in the world, all but ending her bloodline.”
“So you’re saying they were murdered!” I said. “And they’re just sitting in there? Shouldn’t we call the constable—?”
“The constable?” Mrs. Cantanker tittered into her hand, a gesture I thought stupidly childish for one so elegant and refined. “And how would the constable help us? Handbills on lampposts? Ads in newspapers? ‘Wanted: a pernicious murderer, well versed in the casting of intricate thousand-year-old spells’? Save your bright ideas for your diary, little girl. The enemies of the Blackbirds are not the sort the mortal world has any sway over.”
I stared at her, stung by the disdain in her voice. “But who did it?” I asked. “How did the murderers get in, and what if—?” I stopped before the words spilled out. What if they’re still here?
“Zita,” said Mr. Grenouille, coming forward and taking both my hands. “I know you’re from Cricktown, so your knowledge of the politics of witchery and the netherworld is patchy at best. But it’s very unlikely the murderer was human. Or even alive. There are only a few things powerful enough to perform such a spell, and none of them reside in the lands of the living.”
I blinked, feeling lost in that great hall, the checkerboard tiles at my feet, the painted wings of the blackbirds forming a crown above my head. Mrs. Cantanker watched me, the keys tinkling in her hands.
“You mean . . . ,” I said in a small voice, “You mean the murderer was a ghost?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Mr. Grenouille. And then he took out his pocket watch and consulted it ceremoniously. “But you needn’t trouble yourself now! Oh no. Plenty of time to be troubled later. I’m delighted to say I’ve drawn up all the papers, and we’ll have you installed as the new mistress of Blackbird Castle in a blink, just this way, hurry hurry!”
I felt numb to my fingertips as they led me away from that dreadful room. But even in my daze I heard them whispering to each other, Mrs. Cantanker’s voice low and prickling.
“Let us not get ahead of ourselves, Charles,” she murmured. “I’ll not risk a false Blackbird in this house, not with the consequences so dire.” She turned to me, her head cocked, and it made me think of the monstrous blue jays in Mrs. Boliver’s garden, how they watched their struggling prey before pulling it to bits. “First, before anything else, we shall have to perform the test.”
Chapter Four
WHAT have I gotten myself into? I thought as we once again traversed the great hall, Mr. Grenouille scurrying from black tile to black tile like a tiny, anxious beetle, Mrs. Cantanker flowing ahead like a stormy waterspout far out at sea, and me clumping after them in my sensible shoes and borrowed finery, feeling ever more anxious and out of place. First witches, then murder, and now a test?
I’d been taught to read at the orphanage. I’d devoured every line and scrap of writing in that chilly old place, and sometimes I’d even crept into the Mother Superior’s office while she was snoring at her desk and stolen the books from her shelves. I knew all sixty-seven ways to prepare the most tasteless, unappetizing porridge possible, and also how to fix a wool-spinning machine if it jammed, since those had been the Mother Superior’s favorite things to read about. But that was where my education ended. I didn’t suppose I’d do very well at this test, whatever it was.