A Breath of Frost (8 page)

Primrose raised an eyebrow. “Cormac, you’re covered in frostbite and soot.”

“There was a fire in the Pickford ballroom,” he said impatiently, herding them toward the street. “Talia must have dreamed of it and panicked. You know how she feels about fire.”

“That doesn’t explain the frostbite—argh!”

Colette had just caught sight of the first Sister. Cormac swore viciously and with great feeling. There was no getting them away now. Colette already had a knife in her hand and a mad smile on her pretty face. Birds woke squawking in the treetops as Georgiana spun around to see what everyone was gawking at.

His plan had worked. Problem was, he was no longer protected.

And neither were his sisters.

“Primrose,” he snapped. Adrenaline sang through him, making the situation clear as a bell jar. He didn’t have magic to rely on but he had the Order and their training. He hadn’t had the
chance to grow complacent, not like regular witches. “Tobias Lawless is wounded two streets east of the gate. Help him. All of you.” Primrose had a particular talent for healing. Her interest in the Sisters evaporated. Even fear didn’t have a chance to sneak under her determination to save a life. She took off running in the opposite direction. “Go with her!” Cormac told the others. “You can’t leave her alone.”

“And we can’t leave you alone either!” Colette exclaimed. She met Georgiana’s eyes. Georgiana nodded and ran after Primrose, trailing agitated robins, sparrows, and pigeons. The hawks remained, screeching at the Sisters. “I’m staying with you,” Colette declared. “So save your breath, big brother.”

And then there was really no more time left to argue.

Cormac stepped in front of her and lifted the ribbon, feeling ridiculous.

The Sisters swarmed, shrieking. The trees shivered, either from the unearthly sound, or Colette’s reaction to it. A rain of acorns pelted them. The white horse glowed between the branches as it approached, neighing loudly. The ground trembled under its hooves.

“Where’s your shield-charm?” Colette asked in a small voice.

“Gone,” he said succinctly.

“Bollocks.”

He half laughed despite himself. “Stay behind me.” He shifted, blocking her although he knew it was futile.

“We might prefer witches,” Magdalena spat at Cormac. The jewels on her crossed girdle glistened and her skin was brighter,
more moonlight than lavender. She’d fed deeply on Tobias, and on Cormac’s amulets. “But any life feeds us,” she added silkily. “And I think yours will be sweetest if you die screaming.”

Ice sheened the trees, the leaves, and individual blades of grass at their feet.

“Come on then,” he called out, stalking toward them. They were so accustomed to people fleeing from them, both uninitiated and witches alike, that they hesitated, confused. Lark began to weep without a sound, her tears the most corporeal part of her, as if they were all she was made of. Cormac smiled his most condescending, taunting smile, the one that had once caused Georgiana to order a bird to mess on his shoulder.

It never failed.

They circled him counterclockwise, and he circled against them clockwise to undo their work. The horse approached, like the moon between the dark tree trunks. Moths, hawks, and roses battled in the air. The Sisters clawed at Cormac, cackling. He squinted through the debris of dead leaves and dust, disoriented. The True Sight amulet in his pocket glowed briefly, fighting to clear his sight. The Sisters keened like a winter storm.

He knew the exact moment they sensed Colette’s power. She felt it too, and the wind raked at them, filled with flowers and shredded petals. The trees tossed back and forth, clawing at the Sisters. They abandoned Cormac for sweeter fruit.

He fell slowly, toppling like a ship’s mast struck by lightning.

“Cormac!” Colette shouted.

He sprawled on the cold ground, ice blocking his nostrils
and sealing his eyes shut. He had to drag his fist across them to loosen the frost. He coughed, pushing himself up on one elbow. The world tilted and spun like a game of tops.

Colette stood tall, pale but determined. She pushed her magic out, taunting and tempting the Sisters. She focused on Rosmerta, feeding power at the poisonous flowers draped all over her. The nightshade vines tightened.

“What are you doing?” Rosmerta clawed at the green tendrils bruising her head and crawling down around her neck, choking her. Real plants couldn’t do her harm, but these were connected to her magic, and the lives she’d taken when she’d been just another Greymalkin warlock. The bryony berries burst, leaking juices that seared through her dress, through her flesh and right down to ghostly bones.

Magdalena shimmered right behind Colette, touching her on the back of the head. Cormac smelled burning hair, just as Colette crumpled. Colette’s hawk-familiar exploded out of her back, from between her shoulder blades, to peck viciously at the Sisters.

Cormac dragged himself through the grass. Gritting his teeth at the confounding weakness, he crawled inch by inch, the pink ribbon tucked in his pocket. Colette began to convulse, just as Tobias had.

The end of the ribbon unfurled.

At this proximity, he could see the tiny letters, hastily written in blurred ink.
The Greymalkin Sisters
, followed by a string of symbols.

Talia had sent him a binding spell.

Cormac fumbled for the iron nail all Keepers carried after their initiation into the Order. It was wrapped in black thread and tucked into a special pocket sewn inside all his jackets. He rolled the ribbon tightly into a little ball, holding Colette’s gaze until he was sure she wasn’t staring blankly through him. Then he flicked his wrist in one sharp motion and sent it unraveling to her hand. Her fingers twitched. The horse’s back hoof slammed into the ground beside her head. Sweat melted the ice in her hair as she forced her arm to move. Finally, finally, she grasped the ribbon. Grass grew over her fist, securing it to the ground even as the tree beside her shed its leaves.

Cormac drove the nail through his end of the ribbon and into the earth. Colette’s magic seeped through the roots of dandelions, oak trees, and rosebushes. The power of the iron nail shivered through the ribbon, unleashing the binding spell.

Magdalena and Rosmerta froze and Colette let out a long, ragged breath.

It wouldn’t be strong enough to hold them there, but combined with the white horse it should be enough to send them away. If they tried to return to the area they’d be sucked into the binding, which was a painful affair.

Above him, the horse grabbed Lark’s plaid, dragging her into the binding spell. Colette pushed herself up, teeth chattering. Relief flooded through Cormac. He pushed dizzily to his feet, still holding onto the ribbon.

Confined by iron and magic, the Sisters could only huddle together as the white horse trampled through them until they
fell apart like moldy lace. Then it vanished as well, turning back into a handful of banishing powder.

Which was, of course, the precise moment the Order arrived, finding Cormac holding a pink hair ribbon, with flower petals in his hair.

Worse yet, Virgil was with them.

A murderer and three cannibal Sisters were no longer the worst thing he’d dealt with that night.

The older Keeper was a stranger, but the scars on his hands proved him to be a veteran of the Order. He took one look at Colette and the grass dying around her and her frantic hawk-familiar, and handed her a piece of jet dipped in rivulets of silver. It cracked to dust the minute she touched it, absorbing the residue of dark magic contaminating her.

“No need to worry,” Virgil announced. “We’ll take care of this for you. Unless you wanted to keep this for your hair?” He yanked the pink ribbon out of Cormac’s hand before he could say anything.

Magic spent, the white horse had fallen apart, but the binding ribbon hadn’t completed its work quite yet.

The Sisters whirled back into spirit form, blasting frigid air so sharp it left bloody nicks on exposed skin. Virgil stumbled back a step, knocking the third Keeper, Prescott, off his feet. Magdalena made a grab for him, singeing through the sleeve of his coat. The odor of charred wool mingled with the wet mist. Prescott’s teeth chattered as his magic leeched from his body. Virgil looked ill. The older Keeper swore under his breath, shoving between the Sisters and the others. He tossed iron shavings
into the air, muttering in Gaelic and resecuring the ribbon with a spelled dagger.

There was a crack of violet light and the Sisters were gone.

“Good thing your little sister was here to help you,” Virgil said with the kind of sweet politeness that made old ladies seem downright rude. “Wouldn’t you say, old chap? At least someone in your family has power.”

Cormac didn’t reply. It wasn’t the first time Virgil had insulted him and it wouldn’t be the last.

It might be the last time he had his own teeth though. The image of his fist plowing through Virgil’s face was deeply satisfying.

“I came out looking for the Sisters,” Colette declared, shielding him the way he’d tried to shield her from the Sisters. “I cast a spell to summon them. So actually, Cormac saved
me
.” To underscore her point, an oak branch slapped Virgil across the face. He stumbled, letting out a thin shriek. Colette burst out laughing.

Cormac shook his head. “Never mind, Colette,” he said gently. “You don’t have to lie for me.”

“But it’s rather funny to hear him make that noise,” she said. “And I do feel dreadful,” she added. “I could probably throw up on his shoes. They look new.”

Cormac only smiled and turned to the other Keepers. “Tobias is two streets over,” Cormac said. “They nearly drained him.”

“I’ll go,” the older man offered, loping away. Virgil and Prescott remained.

“Cormac saved Tobias’s life.” Colette taunted Virgil with all
the maturity of a three-year-old after too many sugar biscuits. “What did
you
do tonight, you pompous ingrate?”

Cormac grabbed her arm when she wove on her feet, still exhausted despite her temper. He didn’t bother to hide his grin when Virgil avoided Colette’s glare the way he’d have avoided an escaped asylum patient.

“The Sisters,” Prescott whistled through his teeth. “Rotten luck, Blackburn.”

“We banished them,” Colette pointed out crisply.

“They’ll be back,” he said, shrugging.

“Probably,” Cormac agreed. “But not tonight. And that’s good enough for me.”

“The Order wants to talk to you.”

“Yes,” Cormac sighed, running his hand through his hair. “I imagine they do.”

“They’re waiting in the carriage around the corner.”

“Of course they are.”

Emma knew full well
that being caught sneaking into bachelor apartments in the middle of the night would ruin her utterly. She would be cast out of society, shunned, and very likely locked in the cellar by her very irate father. All that, without even taking into account the dangers that lay in the dark streets between here and there.

So she’d just have to make sure she wasn’t caught.

She was wearing her most voluminous cloak, her face tucked back into the deep shadows of the hood. There wasn’t enough money in the world to bribe her father’s coachman to run her out in the family carriage, even if her father had owned an unmarked one, which he did not. He thought it only proper that he be recognized wherever he went. He could travel between gaming hells, Parliament, and brothels with impunity since earls were accorded special allowances.

Earls’ daughters were not.

Emma stopped long enough to slip a small paring knife from the kitchen into her reticule. The newspapers were forever reporting on people getting robbed at night—even in the glittering neighborhood of Mayfair. Sometimes especially then.

Besides, she was enjoying the thought of brandishing it at Cormac.

She kept to the hedges, darting from cover to cover as she made her way down the street to the nearest ball. Luckily, she didn’t have to go far to find the road clogged with carriages, ladies in diamonds, and men in crowned hats. She used the crowd as a shield, dashing between the horses until she found an empty hansom cab for hire.

She tossed the driver a coin and an address, slamming the door behind her. The seats were squashed and the dim interior smelled like rosewater and cabbages. She bounced along the worn cushions, holding onto the edge of the window when the carriage turned sharply. Peeking out between the curtains, she saw gentlemen laughing together outside a tavern, the windows of her father’s club lit with oil lamps, and a woman wearing a very questionable gown standing inside a doorway. Torches and gas lamps gave everything a yellow glow, like gold coins at the bottom of a very deep wishing well.

The carriage stopped in front of a large house with a clean front step flanked with burning torches. She jumped out, unable to make the steps lower properly. The coachman was huddled in a greatcoat, yawning. “If you wait for me, I’ll double your fee,” she said.

He grinned. “Aye, miss.”

She hovered on the pavement, trying not to imagine what he must be thinking of her and what she was doing here. She certainly had bigger problems than that. For one thing, this particular street was most disobliging. There wasn’t shrubbery anywhere in which to hide; there were only lampposts and paving stones and the clatter of wheels on the cobblestones behind her, none of which were especially helpful. Also, a formidable butler now stood in the open doorway, eyeing her.