13 Curses (33 page)

“So that’s not the connection, then,” said Fabian glumly.

“What about the owners of the bracelet?” Tanya asked. “I know it’s old, but how many people have owned it? It must’ve been lots. Perhaps it could be linked to them!”

“It’s a good idea,” said Fabian. “Although if that
is
the link, then it could involve both you and Florence—you’ve both owned it.”

Tanya went very still as she considered that prospect.

“In that case,” she said, “the best place to start is with Elizabeth Elvesden—the first owner of the bracelet.”

“That means that at least one of the charms could be in the house,” said Fabian, jumping to his feet. “We should start with her room. I bet there are loads of good hiding places in there… under that thick rug, maybe, or behind the portrait.”

“But that isn’t the only place linked to Elizabeth Elvesden,” Tanya said. “There’s also the place she died—the asylum.”

“Maybe we should also think about where Elizabeth lived before she came here,” Fabian added. “The bracelet was given to her by Lord Elvesden as a gift after she agreed to marry him.”

“Do you know where that was?” asked Red.

“No,” said Fabian. “But I know how we can find out.”

“Of course,” said Tanya. “We have some of Elizabeth’s diaries! The ones she stashed around the house. Maybe we can find clues in them. Shall I ask my grandmother to let us see them?”

Fabian shook his head.

“I don’t think we should tell Florence anything until we know what we’re dealing with. She’s got enough trouble looking after Amos and Nell, without
finding out what’s really happened to my father. And if things get dangerous, she’ll stop us from searching for the charms. It’s better if she doesn’t know—at least for now.”

“But what about me?” said Red. “If she sees me she’ll want to know where Warwick is!”

“So we’ll hide you,” Fabian said calmly. “Tanya did it before. We can do it again. Only, this time”—he nodded at her fox-skin coat—“you’ve already got the perfect disguise.”

“Let’s do it,” said Tanya. She turned to Gredin and Raven. “You’ve heard our reasoning. I’m begging you not to tell my grandmother, at least not yet. We’re Warwick’s only chance, not to mention Red’s brother.”

“As you wish,” said Gredin. “There is little else we can do for you.”

With that, they left.

“Let’s go upstairs,” said Fabian urgently. “Put that coat on—we’ll have to smuggle you up, just in case anyone else sees.”

Obligingly, Red put the fox-skin coat on, feeling their eyes on her as the startling transformation took place.

Looking around the kitchen, Fabian grabbed a pile of clean bed linen that was ready to go upstairs and lifted it from the basket. “Get in,” he said.

Red leapt into the basket, and Tanya tucked the folded sheets around her until only her nose was visible.

“My grandmother will never go for this in a hundred years,” she muttered. “If she sees us with this basket, she’ll know we’re up to no good—we’re never helpful.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Fabian. “All she’ll find is a fox. And we can say it’s injured and we’re trying to look after it. That’s the beauty of it.”

They need not have worried. As they carried the basket upstairs, they saw no one.

“It feels strange being here again,” said Red as they passed the grandfather clock on the landing.

“Shh,” said Tanya. “Foxes can’t talk, remember?” She pushed her bedroom door open and went in, placing the basket on her bed. Red leapt out, leaving muddy prints and fox hair on the laundry. She threw the coat off once more.

Fabian sniffed and wrinkled his nose as it landed near him. Tanya caught the hint, and was subtler.

“If you want to go ahead and use the bathroom, I’ll sort out some fresh clothes for you. They might be a bit small, but I’m sure I can find something. Meantime, Fabian—you go and see if you can make any progress with the diaries.”

“What about newspapers?” Red asked as Fabian left. “Has there been anything more about me, or the children I took?”

“Nothing in the papers,” Tanya answered. “But I remember a radio bulletin about a changeling you took in Suffolk—Lauren Marsh?”

Red nodded.

“She’s been returned,” Tanya said. “Warwick and I both heard it together, but we guessed it couldn’t have been you who brought her back if you were in the fairy realm.”

Red shook her head. “No, it wasn’t me. Remember I told you before that I have contacts? Someone else must have brought her back, which can only be a good thing for me.”

“They’re still looking for you, though,” said Tanya.

“Yes,” said Red. “But now, all the children—or changelings—I took, have been replaced with the human children who were stolen, which means that the only missing child connected with me now is James—and they know I’m not responsible for his disappearance. At least if I’m caught now they’re likely to be more lenient than they would be if the children were still missing.”

Red went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Hunting through her bag, she pulled out her toothbrush eagerly, then helped herself to a generous dollop of toothpaste. The cool explosion of mint in her mouth after so long a time of only using water to brush her teeth was extraordinary—and wonderful. She brushed, spat and rinsed, then repeated the whole thing again out of sheer indulgence.

Afterward, she wiped her tingling mouth with the small hand towel on the rail and turned on the tap over the bathtub. Her scalp and skin itched with dirt, and she stared as the bath filled annoyingly slowly.

When she climbed out of the tub twenty minutes
later, the water that slid down the drain was tepid and gray. Scrubbed and clean, she dressed in a baggy T-shirt and some too-short jeans of Tanya’s, then went into the bedroom.

Fabian was standing sheepishly in the fox-skin coat and Tanya was sitting on the bed with a plate of food raided from the kitchen. Fabian slipped the coat off and laid it meekly on the bed.

“It only works for me,” Red explained.

“Tell us everything that happened to you in the fairy realm,” said Tanya, pushing the plate of food toward her.

Red tore into a chunk of bread and swallowed without chewing properly, trying to figure out where to begin. When she eventually started, the story came out in a jumble. Tanya and Fabian listened in silence, their eyes growing wider with each incident related. Finally, as Red’s story came to an end, Tanya reached for a pile of shabby, battered journals from beneath her bed.

“Are those Elizabeth Elvesden’s diaries?” Red asked.

Fabian nodded.

“We’ll need to be careful, and as quick as we can. Because if Florence finds out we’ve got them, it’ll ruin everything.”

For the next two hours, the shuffling of papers was the only sound that could be heard.

“Bookmark any pages of interest,” Tanya said before they started. “Places, events, anything at all that could be important. We’ll read for two hours, then discuss our findings.”

“We should just search the house,” Fabian grumbled. “It’s not as though we don’t know what we’re looking for.”

“It’s all very well knowing what you’re looking for if you know where to find it,” said Tanya. “But this would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. We need to know where to look. The diaries are the best way forward. Once we’ve been through them, we can take a closer look at the bracelet’s other owners.”

There were six diaries in total, two for each of
them to read. The final one had been split into parts, with pages secured together with twine.

When two hours had passed, they set the diaries down.

“Who wants to go first?” said Red.

“Me,” said Fabian promptly. “I’ve got the first part, which begins when she was sixteen and ends when she was eighteen. Her maiden name was Sawyer, Elizabeth Sawyer. She lived with an old woman called Miss Cromwell, who took her into her care when Elizabeth’s parents died. Elizabeth describes her as a mean old spinster—she basically treated Elizabeth as a slave and paid her very little. She was also spiteful to her every chance she got. She never knew Elizabeth could read and write, and Elizabeth kept it a secret from her—saving her wages to buy paper and ink and hiding the diary under her mattress. She only ever wrote in it when Miss Cromwell had gone to sleep. She writes about the fairies—how she’d always seen them and how, when her mother was dying and delirious with fever, she told her she’d suspected that Elizabeth had been switched for one of the ‘little folk’ when she was born.

“She met Lord Elvesden in the marketplace one day. She was there selling eggs from Miss Cromwell’s hens and she caught his eye. Everyone in the town knew he was rich—but Elizabeth was wary. He started to hound her, bringing her gifts of jewelry and clothes. Still, Elizabeth turned him away. But soon she realized that marrying Elvesden was her best chance of
escaping Miss Cromwell. So the next time he asked, she said yes. The bracelet was his wedding gift to her; he’d commissioned it from a jeweler in Tickey End—”

“What was the name of the jeweler?” Red interrupted.

“Stickler and Fitch,” said Fabian. “There’s a card here with the address. And as we’d already guessed, Elizabeth had asked for those particular charms. She’d read about the Thirteen Treasures in a book, though she didn’t tell Elvesden about the fairy connection. Apparently they’re mentioned in stories of King Arthur too, so Elvesden was happy with this explanation. The diary ends when she moved into this house, which Elvesden had just had built.”

“So we have the name of the shop where the bracelet was made,” said Red. “We might be able to trace it. Same for the house where she lived with this Cromwell woman—does she give an address?”

Fabian nodded. “In the front of the diary.”

“Good. What next?”

“That would be me,” said Tanya. “Elizabeth found it hard to adjust to having money for the first time in her life, and also began to feel trapped very early on by the expectations that were now upon her. One of her pet hates was posing for the portrait that hangs in their room—it took months to complete and she detested having to sit still for hours on end.”

“No wonder she looks miserable in it,” said Fabian.

“When she’d been married a year, she was lonely,
and bored, and spent most of her time outside, near the woods, making a friend of the local wise woman, Agnes Fogg.”

The name made Red’s skin crawl. “Who later became the Hedgewitch,” she said, continuing as Tanya shut her diary. “She was given a little black kitten by Agnes Fogg, whose cat had just had a litter. Elizabeth adored it, so much so that she had one of the charms taken off her bracelet to adorn the kitten’s collar. Soon after, the witchcraft rumors began.”

A creaking sound from the door made everyone turn. With no time to put the fox-skin coat on, Red dropped to the floor and rolled under the bed.

Tanya went over to the door. Opening it, she craned her neck to see out into the hall, and sighed with relief as she saw the culprit.

“It’s only Spitfire,” she said, watching as the fat ginger cat loped off. “All the same, we’d better hurry up and finish the diaries. If my grandmother finds out they’re missing…”

“If we haven’t finished reading them by tomorrow, I’ll put them back for a while anyway,” said Fabian. “Just in case she suspects. But we’ve got enough information to make a start.”

Red crawled out from under the bed.

“It makes sense to start with what’s closest, and that’s the house and the shop in Tickey End,” said Fabian.

“We can search the house later on,” Tanya said. “We should try the shops first—they’ll be closing in
just over two hours. What’s the address on the card you found, Fabian?”

Fabian checked his notes.

“Thirteen Wishbone Walk.”

“We can find it,” said Tanya. “The likelihood is that the shop won’t still be there—but the building might. It’s worth a look.”

“I’m coming too,” said Red.

“But what if you’re recognized?” asked Fabian. “Maybe you should stay here.”

Red shook her head stubbornly.

“I’m going. No one will recognize me—it’s been too long. I doubt they’re even looking for me in this area anymore. Plus, they’ve always known me to be alone, or with a young child. If I’m with you two, no one will look twice.”