“Ysabeau, please,” Mr. Grenouille said, breathless in his efforts to keep up. “Do you have any idea how long I searched for this girl? She is the Brydgeborn heir, I guarantee it—”
Mrs. Cantanker waved the lawyer’s words away. “She’ll have to prove that first, Charles. Don’t be gullible. If she doesn’t have the talent, what’s the point? We might as well dress up one of the goats in petticoats and call that the heir of the Brydgeborns.”
“What sort of talent do I need to have?” I asked, and Mrs. Cantanker gave Mr. Grenouille a pointed look as if to say, See?
Then she swept up the stairs, skirts rustling. “We’ll go to the Vine Room. That should be an excellent test of her ability.”
“Ysabeau! Do you think that wise—”
“Aristotelian,” snapped Mrs. Cantanker, her eyes fixed straight ahead.
“Ysabeau, I must protest. If she fails, she will be ripped limb from limb! Or worse!”
“What could possibly be worse than being ripped limb from limb?” I started to say, but Mrs. Cantanker interrupted.
“Excellent! Then we’ll pack her up in a hatbox and send her back third-class cargo. It’ll save her the cost of a full-fare ticket.”
I let out an indignant gasp. Mrs. Cantanker smiled widely over her shoulder at me. “I jest, of course,” she said, though I was sure she didn’t. “Oh, all right. We’ll go to the High Blackbird’s study. But don’t think you’ll be able to fool me, girl. There will be no reward for trickery, and you’ll find you’ll rue the day you became a Blackbird for fine jewels and pretty dresses. A true Blackbird is graced with cunning, sly wits, a sharp tongue, and the power to repel the evils of night and fog. But! In return, they bear a great burden and are feared by both the living and the dead.”
Mr. Grenouille shook his head, but he could not bring himself to protest this claim. I looked between them, becoming more confused by the second. I had traveled here to be reunited with my family, not to become a witch. . . .
We went up a monstrously grand staircase carved from wood so dark it appeared almost black. A reddish sheen glowed in its grain, as if blood ran deep in its veins. The entire thing was built to look like a twisting dragon, the banister scaled, the spindles fashioned into claws and folded wings. We turned up another staircase and another, each one becoming progressively narrower and less ornate. No guests came here, I supposed, no one who needed to be cowed by grand halls and dragon staircases. I felt strangely honored.
Finally, at the top of the steepest, narrowest stair of all, we arrived at a large tower room. A beautiful stained-glass skylight dappled everything in petals of blue and green light, and every inch of the space below was filled of wonders: I spotted an aquarium filled with fish that seemed to be on fire. A golden cage in which slumbered a fuzzy, purple-winged moth the size of a small dog. A table covered with ingenious contraptions and bottles and curling glass tubes. I wandered, awestruck, past a sumptuous globe, taller than I was, with many little black crosses piercing its crust. Some were solitary, far out among the wastes and woods, but most stood in huddles around cities and towns. And when I looked up, I saw bookshelves, rising foot after foot, breathtaking cliffs of stories and secrets going all the way to the roof. Even the pillars were filled with books, little brass pegs running up them so you could reach the highest shelves.
I gasped. I’d never seen so many books in my life, not at the orphanage and certainly not at Mrs. Boliver’s; she bought novels twice a year and let them molder under her coffee cups. Here there were enormous grimoires bound in oxblood- and verdigris-colored leather, books with tasseled placeholders, locked with coiling salamanders. There were rows of encyclopediae stamped with gold. There were rather dirty, unassuming volumes no larger than chapbooks that looked as if they had traveled through fire and mud. I wanted to peek inside every one of them and run my fingers over the soft pages. I wanted to sit on the floor and read every line, every ancient, exciting tale.
Mrs. Cantanker went to an enormous desk and seated herself behind it, observing me imperiously. Small pewter picture frames littered its surface, no doubt displaying members of the Brydgeborn family, but they had all been snapped facedown.
“I’ve got just the test,” she said, lifting a large silver dish out of a drawer and setting it on the desk. Next she brought out a knife and an odd sort of fork.
“Are you a witch too?” I asked, and she smiled oddly and raised her chin, a gesture halfway between bitterness and pride.
“I have some knowledge,” she said, standing and filling the silver dish with water from a mossy spigot in the wall. Then she cut several strands of rosemary and milkweed with the knife and threw them into the water, along with a few flakes of ash, swirling it all together with the fork.
“Look into the dish,” Mrs. Cantanker commanded. “There is a spirit in this room. If you have talent, the scrying dish will reveal its whereabouts to you. If you have none . . .” She set down the knife and fork on a snowy linen napkin and folded it over them. “If you have none, Mr. Grenouille will return you to whichever vile alley he dredged you from. All clear?”
Mr. Grenouille mumbled something apologetic and fiddled with a button on his waistcoat. I frowned and peered into the glistening waters. I hoped I had talent. I hoped I would see something. But I saw only the ornate ceiling, curved like a fish eye across the bottom of the bowl. I looked up at Mrs. Cantanker, my heart pounding. She was staring at me, a sly glimmer in the depths of her gaze.
I returned my attention to the bowl . . . and then I saw it, high in the rafters—a small, crouched shape. I caught the vague outline of an arm, a leg, all diaphanous, as if made of the most delicate gray mist. The figure wasn’t moving. It looked as if it were hiding.
“It’s in the corner,” I said, in an awed little whisper. “Up there. It’s very still.”
“Hah!” Mrs. Cantanker exclaimed. “Charlatan! I knew it!” She swept toward me, suddenly terrifying and huge, her mouth stretched into a rictus grin. “There is no spirit in this room. They cannot get past the wards of the High Blackbird’s study. You did well until now. Wearing the young mistress’s clothes, trying to make us all think you belonged in fine silks and ribbons. But I told you there’d be no fooling me.”
“What?” I looked back into the water in a panic. What was she saying? The spirit was still there in the rafters. But it was no longer immobile. It was drifting, curling like a thread of smoke among the beams. It was a girl.
Mrs. Cantanker gripped my wrist and twisted it cruelly, dragging me toward the door. “Mr. Grenouille, she is an imposter. I’m sure you tried your best, but she is not who we were searching for. I suggest we throw her out, or take her to the Vine Room, which is still an excellent option—”
All at once a light bulb in the wall, encased in a metal cage, flared red, washing the room in a glaring, bloody light. Mrs. Cantanker froze.
Mr. Grenouille squeaked. “The spirit lamp,” he whispered. “Ysabeau . . . there is something here.”
I wrenched myself from Mrs. Cantanker’s grasp and stumbled back to the bowl. The girl in the rafters was growing clearer by the second. I saw a pair of eyes materialize, glowing like twin moons. Then the hint of a beautiful gown and strands of golden hair, all of it moving slowly, as if underwater . . .