10. 10

Although I hadn't originally planned on attending the Late Harvest Luncheon, my mother's arrival spurred Poppy into a frenzy of wrangling two more invitations. Poppy thought she was being discreet when she stepped into another room to have that conversation, but I overheard half of it.

"What do you mean, Zelda can't come because she's not a full member?"

Silence.

"Don't say she's not a real witch, that's rude—"

More silence.

"I'm not saying you have to make her a full member, just let her come to tea—" Poppy's footsteps thumped back and forth as she paced, followed by Georgiana's four-footed echo. "Right," she interrupted whoever had been speaking. "Zelda fixed your ruddy Mirror, didn't she?" A pause. "Whether it got smashed afterward is entirely irrelevant. Do I need to talk to Azure? Because I will talk to Azure—"

I smiled to myself. A threatening Poppy was like a gentle wave that slowly buried you in sand until only your eyes were showing.

"Thank you," Poppy finally said. "And her mother would like to come too…"

Her opponent probably wondered what to do to make it all stop. I could have told them: just say yes to everything.

And that's how the three of us came to be at the Late Harvest Luncheon.

A fire so hot you could feel it across the room filled the oversized marble fireplace. Urns filled with spectacular fall flower bouquets stood on banquet tables covered with rust-red velvet cloths. Leaf garlands spiraled around the grand staircase banisters, leading to arches made of sheaves of grain. A cider fountain bubbled and frothed, surrounded by mugs shaped like apples.

My mother clapped her hands with delight. "And you said they were happy to have us come?"

"Oh, yes," Poppy said. "Absolutely thrilled."

I caught Poppy's eye.

She shrugged, what-can-you-do style, then turned her attention to the cider fountain. "How lovely! I'm quite thirsty. Zelda? Effie?"

"I'm more interested in these sandwiches," Mom said. "So elegant. Don't you think so, Zelda?"

"Hmm…" I said, looking over the offerings. "Beef and mustard and pickle; chicken and some kind of chutney; the classic cucumber, dill, and cream cheese; and egg and watercress. Nice," I admitted. "But do they taste good?"

"Only one way to find out," Poppy said, scooping several onto a china plate.

"Don't you want to leave room on your plate for dessert?" my mom asked.

"That's what a second plate is for," Poppy replied, continuing to stack the little sandwiches.

"They bring all this in from a very fancy place on Fifth Avenue," I said. "Probably costs, oh, a hundred dollars a head. Give or take."

"A hundred dollars?" Mom squeaked.

"Poppy's membership dues at work," I said.

"Eat up!" added Poppy, cheerfully.

Mom grabbed a plate and went for the desserts. First she chose candy robin's eggs nestled in a shredded pastry nest, then several madeleines and a miniature parfait with bright red fruit puree, and finally some chocolate petits fours decorated with icing leaves in fall colors. "I'll come back for sandwiches," she said.

"Double the desserts and I'll get sandwiches for both of us," I said.

"Deal," she said, sneaking one of the robin's egg confections into her mouth.

We carried our goodies to a nearby table. The other Ladies Who Witch glanced at us curiously but mostly seemed content to load up on treats and gossip.

As we made wreckage of the fancy food, the exterior doors were closed and the curtains drawn. Several witches wearing sparkling autumn-colored robes began to make their way through the crowd, performing small acts of elemental magic. One juggled colorful maple leaves with air streams alone. Another rotated a miniature planetary system of water globes through the air while a fire witch created seasonal constellations from small pops of flame. The fourth witch carried a cornucopia of apples. The apples blushed, then rotted, then burst into tiny apple saplings from the remaining seeds, bearing small apple blossoms amid green leaves.

Everyone smiled and clapped, including my mother. "Did you see that?" she said, slapping me lightly on the arm.

I was about to reply when I heard another voice. A voice, seemingly coming from far away, deep and vibrational as if it traveled through the marble floor beneath my feet and up the bones of my legs, directly into my ribcage. Squeezing my heart instead of assaulting my ears.

Zelda.

I stopped breathing.

"Zelda?" Mom said. "Don't you like it?"

I puppeteered my head up and down. Then I made my lips do that thing where they curve upward. "Excuse me for a minute. I'll be right back."

"Do you want me to come with you, honey?"

"I'm fine," I said, quickly patting her on the shoulder before near-jogging to the hallway.

Where was it?

I looked left, then right. Upward, at the ceiling, with its elaborate crown moldings.

Zelda.

Again it vibrated up through my feet.

I looked down at the floor, which was covered by richly patterned carpet. What lay beneath the ground floor? Poppy had once taken me down a curving staircase to an art-filled chamber containing a magical dancing statue. I hurried in that direction, almost skidding on the landing before gripping the staircase railing and running down, the room twisting around me as I descended. I took the last two steps with a two-footed jump, then stumbled to the center of the room.

Colorful portraits of witches stretched the height of the room. The dancing statue, on its high, isolated perch, stood still.

"Where are you, you ghostly bastard?" I said.

Silence. Or almost silence—somewhere in the distance, water plinked like an antique piano. I hurried to a door on the other side of the room and pulled it open.

Another hallway. Unlike the hallways on the ground floor, this below-street-level hallway was dim. Stone-colored.

I stepped inside. No, not stone-colored. Actual stone. I touched the wall and condensation cooled my fingertips. "This is where you go back for help, Zelda," I said. My voice shivered back to me, a distorted echo.

I followed the hallway straight ahead to a blind right turn. I made the turn without slowing down—and had to stop on a dime, because I was three steps away from walking straight into a swimming pool.

Golden light wavered through the water, illuminating a cave-like room with an arched stone ceiling. Geometric mosaics covered the walls and the ceiling in abstract patterns; the plink-plink I'd heard came from a shell-like fountain set in the far wall above the pool.

"I heard you," I said, feeling like an idiot for talking to the empty air but pushing on. "I felt you. Where are you?"

Plink. Plink. Plink. Seconds dripped by.

"Don't call my name if you don't want me to show up!"

A disturbance shimmered the water, causing the light bouncing off it to shatter like pieces of a mirror. Tiny waterspouts spun across the pool, extending narrow tentacles upward as if they were looking for something to touch. The watery funnels threw off moisture that struck the stone floor with a sound like fat raindrops.

But not all the moisture struck the floor. Some of it levitated upward, centralizing, taking form.

Blue light.

A cane.

Clothing as stylish as it was ghostly.

"Prospero," I said.

The figure that was Prospero lost shape and reformed, shedding droplets and gathering them back into itself. I had a strange urge to adjust the reception on a TV antenna, although this was no broadcast and TV antennas hadn't existed for decades.

Zelda. This time I saw his mouth move even as the word vibrated my shin bones.

"Yes, we all know my name." I sounded brave, at least, even as the cold, damp air crawled through the gaps in my clothes. "What do you want?"

Zelda… My name dragged out like a heavy weight on a chain.

Cold, so much cold. My bones hurt. I didn't want to be here. I wanted to be upstairs, warm and laughing with Mom and Poppy, clinking mugs of cider. No more regrets. No more ghosts. Maybe I couldn't have normal, but couldn't I—for once—have peace?

He was falling apart. His hands were going first; I could see clearly because he was reaching toward me like he had in the alley.

"What do you want?" I cried.

A pause. A sound like static as his eerie blue glow shuddered and cracked.

Beware!

And with that one word, the figure of Prospero blew apart, throwing water in every direction.

My mouth, I realized too late, had been open.

I spat Prospero-droplets on the stone deck. I'd been so thoroughly soaked I didn't even have a dry patch of clothing to wipe my mouth on.

I wasn't scared anymore. I was mad. Mad that Prospero still thought he could reach out and torment me. Wasn't he supposed to be dead? Wasn't that how it worked?

And, for a moment, rage kept me warm.

But the cold crept back in, unstoppable as remembering why he was dead in the first place.

Do you think you could have made a better choice? Berron had said.

"I don't know," I said, to which only the fountain replied, with drips like tears. I turned away and squelched out of the pool cave, down the hallway, up the stairs, and back into the Late Harvest Luncheon.

Where I ran smack into Azure Washington, Witch Presiding, and her mad-eyed owl, Aloysius.

"Zelda!" Azure said. "You're all wet!"

"Oh, this?" I said, looking down at myself. "It's nothing." I tried to brush past her, but you don't brush past Azure Washington. Not if she doesn't want you to.

She put a hand out, freezing me in place without a single glimmer of magic. She gave me a onceover. Her owl did the same, its golden eyes rolling. "Do you want to explain what you've been up to?"

"I fell in the pool."

"In the pool." The way she echoed me dripped with doubt like I dripped water.

"Yes, I… was admiring it, and I leaned over too far, and, well…" I trailed off with a helpless shrug and what I hoped was a goofy grin.

"Uh-huh," she said. "And what exactly were you doing down there?"

"Doing?"

Her eyebrows went up another level, like side-by-side elevators. Aloysius reared back in alarm.

"I was…" Suddenly the fire witch with the tiny levitating fire stars came into view. "Hot! I was hot." I fanned myself. "It's the change, you know. All hot flash-y and sweaty." I plucked at my soaked shirtfront, realizing I might have been overdoing it.

Azure blinked in tandem with the owl. "Well. Well, then. I'm glad you were able to… cool off"—she waved her hand around—"or whatever."

"Thanks," I said, moving past as quickly as I could without seeming outright rude.

"Oh, and Zelda?" Azure said. The owl clacked its beak like punctuation.

I froze.

"Falling in the pool doesn't usually leave your back dry."

I winced but didn't dare turn around. Instead, I hoofed it over to our table.

"Where have you been?" Mom said. "I was about to send out a search party."

"I ran into an old acquaintance."

Poppy looked up from what appeared to be her third plate. "An old acquaintance? I wouldn't have thought you knew anyone here apart from me. And Azure and Malkin, of course."

I shifted in my seat and leaned over to examine the tea sandwiches on Poppy's plate. "Are those good? They look good."

"They are quite, quite yummy," Poppy said, brandishing one happily. "At first I thought I liked the chicken curry and mango chutney one, but then the smoked salmon one snuck up on me and—" She put the sandwich down. "Hello, are you trying to change the subject?"

"I'm just hungry." I swiped one off her plate and crammed it in my mouth, removing the possibility of talking.

"She is definitely changing the subject," Mom said. "She's no better at lying now than when she was a teenager, sneaking out of school to go someplace exotic to eat."

I swallowed. "It wasn't exotic, Mom. It was a chain teppanyaki restaurant."

My mother leaned close and lowered her voice. "What happened? You're soaking wet and you look like you've seen a ghost."

Leave it to Mom to nail it in one. "I'll tell you everything," I said. "Just let me eat all this nice, expensive food first."

"You act like it's your last meal," my mother joked, possibly to cover the fact that she looked worried.

"It's not my last meal. I promise," I said. "But I have a feeling I'm going to need my strength."