was here.
Still, that was enough. It meant we were on the right track.
Through the flap, beady amber eyes squinted at what little they could see of us. “What d’ye want?”
A gruff tone, but I was pretty certain she was female. Was it Melisande?
“Well?” Beady-eyes was growing impatient.
“My sister’s had a bad accident,” Gabriel said in a low voice, starting on the story we’d concocted. “She’s not healing, and I fear she may be disfigured for life. She needs help.” Lowering his voice still further, he added, “From Melisande.”
The beady eyes swept over me, then fixed on Gabriel again.
“I can pay.” He held up a gold sovereign.
He’d hit on the right password. The slot shut. The door opened.
“In with you,” came the gruff order. “Be quick.”
The room inside was even darker than the alley, but there was enough light to see that I was right. It had been a woman at the door, though she was younger and slighter than I’d expected. Behind my veil, I sniffed the air again. This time I smelled no magic.
The woman put out a scrawny hand and said to Gabriel, “Your sword.”
We’d expected this, but he gave a show of reluctance before pulling it out of its scabbard and turning it over.
The woman clenched her hand around the hilt. “And the gold?”
Gabriel handed it to her.
She tested it with her teeth, then eyed us both. “So what’s behind the veil?”
I shrank back, feigning maidenly shyness.
“Cat got your tongue?” She chuckled—not a pleasant sound. “Melisande’s used to grand visitors like you, you know. Even gets highborn Court ladies coming to ask for help.”
Court ladies? I wondered who.
“It’s usually love-potions they want, of course,” the woman went on. “Perhaps that’s what you really want too.”
I shook my head violently.
“No?” The woman cackled. “Well, your money’s good, so we’ll let Melisande ferret the truth out of you. I’ll see if she’s ready to receive visitors.”
Turning away from us, she opened the door to the back room. I couldn’t hear anything that sounded like magic, but I caught the scent of it again, and that was warning enough. I tensed, ready to sing at any second.
Rustles and whispers came from the back room. Then the beady-eyed woman returned. “She’ll see you now. But you’ve interrupted her work, and she’s not best pleased, so mind your manners.”
She ushered us into an even darker room, lit only by scattered candles floating in bowls, which threw weird shadows on the cluttered walls. As my eyes adjusted, I saw a steamy white plume of smoke rising from a squat cauldron in the center of the room. My head clouded as a strong smell overpowered me. Not magic, I thought dizzily. Was it incense?
Veiled by the smoke, a shape stepped forward from the darkest corner. The beady-eyed woman curtsied so low, she was almost bent double. “Melisande,” she breathed.
Trying to see the figure through the smoke, I stepped forward. For just a moment I caught sight of her. She was a woman, and very tall, but what I noticed most were her intense sea-green eyes.
At the same time, she saw me—even through the veil. She turned on her servant. “You fool! It’s the Chantress.”
Through the smoke, Melisande lunged for me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WATER AND WALL
Even before Melisande came barreling toward me, I started to sing. The boiling water in the cauldron leaped up, forming a wall around her like searing, bubbled glass. Trapped, she looked at me in fury.
As I finished singing, I heard Gabriel say, “Oh, no, you don’t! That sword is mine.” When I turned, it was safely in his hand. The servant, however, was gone.
Gabriel pointed downward. “She went out through there.”
Squinting hard, I could just make out a hole in the floor. Leaving Melisande behind her boiling wall, I knelt by it and heard the river. “It goes out to the Thames.”
“I can’t fit through the hole, or I’d follow her,” Gabriel said.
I probably would fit, but if I went down there, it would mean leaving Melisande behind. It was too big a risk to take.
Moments later, my men piled in, crowding the room. “We heard you sing,” Barrington explained.
“Well done.” That was what we’d agreed beforehand: If I sang, they were to come immediately to our aid. “Simpson, Uddersby, you’re the smallest. See if you can get through this hole. Lord Gabriel, if you could tell them what to look for?”
Leaving them to it, I turned my attention to Melisande, still trapped behind the wall of water. My men had brought