Creatures of Charm and Hunger (The Diabolist's Library #1) - Molly Tanzer Page 0,3

the back. That was when Miriam’s mother and father had written to Nancy to ask if their daughter could live with her, in England . . .

No—she could not think on that now. Miriam pushed the memories away, shoving them down inside a shadowed place deep within her that served as a repository for her fear, her rage, and her disappointment. That silent shadowed hollow never judged, never rejected, never asked questions—it just took what she offered it, and absorbed it, and made it go away.

“All that happened a long time ago,” Miriam said to the ducks and the geese as they nibbled at the grain. She couldn’t let her mind wander away down those unpleasant paths—there was too much to do today in anticipation of the arrival of another “aunt”: Aunt Edith.

Edith was Nancy’s sister. She, too, was part of the Société, though, unlike Nancy, she was not an elected official. The position of Librarian meant living in the Library, which was here, in rural Hawkshead. Why the Library was in Hawkshead no one knew, but it had been there in various forms since the Middle Ages—long before the Société formed in Paris, a hundred years ago—and there it would remain after the Société gave way to some new organization, whenever it inevitably did.

Once she had finished feeding the poultry, Miriam returned to the farmhouse. Nancy was awake and in the kitchen, frying a bit of their weekly ration of bacon in a skillet on the cooktop of her ancient beloved AGA. The smell of it was mouthwatering and, even after all this time, a little guilt-inducing. But hunger was hunger, and rationing was rationing.

“How are they this morning?” asked Nancy, as Miriam shrugged out of her coat.

“Snug and warm and fed.” Miriam tied her apron around her waist with a satisfied tug. It was a relief to once again be within four walls and under a sturdy roof.

“I wish I could say the same,” said Nancy’s daughter, Jane, as she bustled into the kitchen to put on her own apron. “I’m starving!”

Miriam’s “cousin” had obviously gotten up early to set herself to rights. Jane’s hair was coiffed and shining, and she was already dressed, nicely, in a dark gray skirt and a fashionably stark white blouse. The cardigan she wore over it was also gray, but the color of smoke rather than charcoal.

Miriam unconsciously glanced down at her tweedy ankle-length skirt. It was one of Nancy’s hemmed and patched-up hand-me-downs, lumpy and too large but suitable for keeping her calves free of muck when she went out to the barns or her legs warm as she worked in the lab and Library. She’d not thought of dressing for Edith’s arrival; perhaps she should have.

“Is it ready?” asked Jane, reaching for the tea before she even really sat down. “I think I shall starve to death if I have to wait any longer!”

“Must you be so dramatic?” said Nancy, turning around with a tray full of bacon and toast, which she set down in the center of the scarred wooden kitchen table alongside the small pat of butter they must share. Jane scowled at the word dramatic and slurped her tea.

“A lady is as a lady does,” remarked Nancy airily, as if this wisdom had just come to her mind unprovoked. At last she sat down and poured herself a cup of tea. Then, from a pocket in her apron, she withdrew a little dropper bottle of smoked glass. She squeezed a bit of clear fluid into her tea before taking her first sip, doctoring the beverage not with milk and sugar, as Miriam liked it, but with a distillate of the essence of her demon, the Patron of Curiosity.

In order for diabolists to comfortably maintain contact with their demons, they had to regularly consume their essences. Every diabolist had their preferred way of doing so, some more elaborate or decadent than others. Nancy, being a no-muss, no-fuss sort of woman, produced a tincture from the unusually beautiful and robust chives she cultivated in pots on her sunniest windowsill.

“And speaking of dressing nicely,” said Nancy, after taking a sip, “I don’t know why you’ve done that so early. You still have to dust and sweep, you know! I won’t have you begging off smartening up the house just because you’ve already smartened up yourself.”

“But I dusted and swept yesterday!” cried Jane.

“It could do with another going-over. This time, use the dust rag on the woodwork instead of talking to