few feathers. She was the most nosy and bitchy of all the town elders. She seemed to be asking what was going on, and they were all answering at once, and then someone pointed right at my window.
I jumped back in panic.
A few minutes later, I heard a banging on the door. It didn’t let up until someone answered.
I climbed inside Jenny’s cedar chest and lowered the lid on myself, then turned into a toad and burrowed under the dresses that didn’t fit me anymore. I doubted I could hide for long if something really bad was happening. I didn’t even feel as if I’d be able to travel to Etherium anymore.
They were so loud I could hear them.
“Something’s happened to the realms again! And it’s affecting the familiars!”
“They aren’t connected to us in the same way as they were!”
“Igor was able to travel to all three realms!”
“What do you think I have to do with it?” Bernard asked them.
“We know you’re keeping that familiar trapped in your house! Did she do something? Cast some spell to get revenge on you?”
“What on earth are you trying to say? That I’ve done something wrong and my familiar would turn on me? That never happens,” Bernard scoffed.
Did he have such confidence in my loyalty? After everything he’d done to me?
“It’s against the laws of nature to keep her like that! Calling her after your sister!”
“Don’t look at us like that,” another woman cut in. “Like we don’t know what you’ve been doing. We’ve tolerated it long enough.”
“Is she still here or did she escape you?” another one asked.
“This is ridiculous,” Bernard said. “You’re distressing my mother.”
The voices got a little quieter. Of course, I did know something happened to the familiars. That was why we were able to escape our wizards. It had something to do with the Way of Paths, but nothing to do with me. After all, I was stuck here once again.
Now I heard them coming up the stairs.
“Are you here, Celeste?” Madame Solano’s voice was infused with enchantment and cold practicality, and she invoked my real name, so I was forced out almost immediately without dignity as I turned into a girl and my back lifted the lid of the chest, while a cotton slip was caught on my head. I yanked it off.
I huddled in the chest as she walked up to me with a small sniff of displeasure. “What an altogether pathetic situation,” she said, glancing at the room. “Do you know anything about why familiars are suddenly able to travel between worlds and even, perhaps, to escape their wizards?”
“I’m here,” I said. “Not between worlds.”
“That is not an answer.”
Lying wasn’t an option with the spell work that filled the room. I didn’t really know what was happening, but I felt like they would all be furious if they knew there was an artifact that let familiars escape their wizards, and then they might go after Helena. “Please, Madame. I am just a humble toad who has spent her life right here…” I tried to evade.
Maybe it didn’t hurt that my eyes were already red, and that no one had ever expected much from me. She tsked. “Poor thing,” she said. “I can’t help but feel sorry for you.”
“Some familiars have escaped their wizards? Even now?” I asked.
I wondered why I was dragged back here, if other familiars could still escape. Was it my fault? Did I not fight against my bonds with Bernard fiercely enough? I didn’t know what more I could do.
“Oh, I imagine you must dream of escape,” Madame Solano said. “You don’t belong here. Get out of that box. This is too serious to indulge the Franches any longer. I’m calling a meeting of the town elders and we’re going to evaluate your position here, as well as the other familiars.”
That sounded ominous. “What—what will you do to me?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said, and she looked half-distracted, but also like she would do whatever served her aims. I expected she might finally enforce the laws of the town and keep the Franches from using me as a house servant or a substitute daughter. Maybe I could spend my time in the magical world, then, but could I get back to Etherium?
If I knew how to return to Bevan, I would be with him right now.
“Get up,” she said, and then another town elder walked up behind her with a small cage.
“Let’s put her in here,” he said. “We can’t have her