I opened my mouth to retort with scathing words that would cut him to the heart, figuratively speaking, when Bee, the utter fool, bumped up against me. Anger streamed off her like heat. I stuck my hands to my hips, elbows akimbo, to stop her from grabbing a sword off the rack and skewering him.
Red-faced, Aunt reached the landing behind him. As she halted beside the personage, she smiled in an absolutely false way. My tongue smarted, as if I’d just licked a block of ice.
“Come down, girls,” she said, and I knew then that she’d known all along we were hiding in the window seat. The house was hers, after all; very little escaped her notice. “Are Hanan and Astraea with you?”
Bee popped out beside me, and I grabbed her upper arm and held on like I meant it, which I did. She loosed a glare at me, but she stayed where she was and fulminated.
“I’m sure the little dears are asleep,” I said. “They were quite exhausted from their day’s studies, for we are a studious family here, are we not? Are we leaving soon for the academy, Aunt?”
“I haven’t much time. I’m late already,” said the personage in the very same arrogant voice I had heard earlier today in the headmaster’s library.
I was sure it was the same voice—hard to get quite that much biting pride into such otherwise innocuous words—but his clothes were less traditional and more fashionable. Because I hadn’t seen his face in the library, I examined him dubiously. It seemed unlikely in the extreme that a magister, scion of a prominent mage House, would have entered the very academy of natural historians and scholarly philosophers that the cold mages were known to scorn and distrust.
My expression, meant to be disdainful, must have impressed him, if not in a good way.
“She is the eldest Hassi Barahal girl?” he asked, indicating me. How he stared!
“She is the eldest of the girls,” agreed Aunt, indicating me.
Uncle puffed up beside her, looking as enflamed with anger as Bee, and at these words he cast such a look at Aunt that I knew something was up. Something bad. Something very, very wrong.
8
“You are the eldest Hassi Barahal girl?” the personage asked me, an odd question given that he had just asked Aunt the same thing.
“So I have always been told,” I retorted.
“Cat,” murmured Aunt warningly. “Silence is better than disrespect.”
He ignored her and glanced almost slightingly at Bee. Bee was shorter, dainty with a plumpness that made her seem a year or two younger than she really was, and, of course, she was beautiful. His gaze fixed back on me. “It must be asked and answered three times. You are the eldest Hassi Barahal girl?”
Aunt sucked in a sharp breath. “Catherine!” she said warningly.
Uncle shut his eyes.
I just found the cold mage irritating. “As we said twice already. I am the eldest.”
“So be it. The contract was sealed with magic. You cannot lie to me.” He stared at me a moment longer, gave an abrupt, infinitesimal shake of the head as with utter disdain, and turned to Aunt. “The clothing she is wearing is simply not acceptable. You need pack only a small trunk for the journey. The House will provide all she needs once we arrive.”
“Once we arrive where?” I looked at Aunt for clarification, but she was quite deliberately not looking at me, so I looked toward Uncle instead, but he wasn’t looking, either; he’d already steered Bee toward the stairs.
“Darling, up you go. It’s well past bedtime.”
Bee caught my gaze, but we kept our mouths shut. That was the code of Bee and Cat: Keep your mouth shut and don’t say anything until you know what’s going on and how much trouble your cousin, who is also your best friend in the world, is in.
Aunt sailed past me and kissed Bee on the cheek. “Yes, darling, just kiss Catherine good night and be gone.” Trembling, Bee gave me a kiss on each cheek while Aunt kept talking to the personage. “The dear girl may wish to choose some of her clothing for herself, what she likes best. You know how girls are. They like to have special things with them, very sentimental—”
The magister whistled sharply, a piercing sound that made us all flinch. As Uncle pulled Bee away, she twisted off her bracelet and thrust it into my hand. Then Uncle dragged her up the upper stairs, him hauling with the desperation of a man in pain and she stumbling up backward as she watched me. I didn’t move. I was too stunned, her bracelet the only solid weight that fixed me to earth. The personage set a hand on the railing. A wisp of mist rose from the polished wood as he leaned on it, canting head and shoulders to look down into the foyer.
