was—and she was someone who felt a healthy respect for the how and the why of the Art . . . but when it came down to it, Jane would really rather just do.
Jane’s mother always said that “doing” was too dangerous a method of learning many of the skills diabolists regularly relied upon. That was for “wild” diabolists, as her mother called them—practitioners of the Art who learned it without the safe and effective teachings of the Société.
Jane had no desire to be a wild diabolist—she wanted to be a Master, with all its attendant privileges. But there was no rule in the Société’s criteria for Mastery that said Jane had to enjoy the theoretical part.
Nor was there any rule about the way an aspiring Master had to think through certain diabolical problems, as far as Jane could tell. While it might please her mother and Miriam to come at every question like two scientists in a laboratory, Jane was free to think of herself as a wielder of arcane powers—as long as the results of her efforts were successful, it shouldn’t matter. So much of the Art was about imagination, and about using one’s will to change what was possible. But every time Jane used the language of the occult to explain her reasoning, her mother would try to weed it out of her like an obsessed gardener.
“We’re not witches, Jane,” her mother had said to her, time and again.
And that was true. But it was also true that neither were they scientists.
While it was possible that Nancy wasn’t as disappointed by Jane as Jane sometimes thought, it was also true that she rarely praised her daughter often or lavishly. Indeed, it was almost better at times not to hear how her mother thought her efforts good, said in that earnest but unenthusiastic way that managed to convey that perhaps if Jane tried a wee bit harder, Nancy might think her efforts very good or even excellent.
Jane had once been able to talk to Miriam about these sorts of feelings, but no longer—not since she realized that in many ways Miriam agreed with Nancy about Jane’s study habits and methods, and also about Jane’s eagerness to begin the process of transforming into the distinctive young lady she’d like to one day become.
She found Smudge by the front stairs, sitting on a middle step. She plunked down next to him, and the cat crawled, purring, into her lap, a sure sign that all was forgiven. The feel of his silky fur under her fingers was soothing, and when she scratched him behind the ears and under the chin, his eyes closed in feline bliss.
“Oh, Smudge,” she sighed. “You understand, don’t you?”
Smudge cracked open one yellow eye as if acknowledging her words. She ruffled his ears, and he nipped her on the hand hard enough to leave a wine-colored indentation in her skin before dashing upstairs as if the devil—or more probably, a demon—were after him.
She needed to get to dusting anyway.
Her mother had been right; Jane had made a hash of her chores the day before. But not because she was thinking about Clark Gable—or anyone else, for that matter.
Talking aloud through a problem often helped Jane figure out the answer, and yesterday Jane had been muttering over her latest unsuccessful attempt to make a broomstick fly. Not just any broomstick, either—the fancy one she’d bought in London with Edith last year with the polished black handle and black stitching keeping the bristles secured. Beautiful as it was, it had been unaffected by an armamentarium of flight Jane had made from a bit of dried lemon peel infused with the essence of a demon colloquially called Seven Clouds. An Egyptian diabolist, renowned for her ability to levitate, had sent it to her via a tricky little piece of diablerie involving a simulacrum of a seagull. When it had landed on Jane’s windowsill, reeking of fish and salt, it was so lifelike—but after it vomited up a wooden box, it had dissolved into smoke that smelled of autumn’s first wood fire.
It hurt that Nancy assumed her daughter’s thoughts were so frivolous, especially given the ambitious undertaking Jane was attempting—so ambitious it might, in fact, be impossible.
Magical items like the fairy dust of Peter Pan, the flying carpet of One Thousand and One Nights, or—Jane’s favorite—the witch’s broomstick had captured the public imagination since time immemorial. But actually getting objects—let alone people—to fly was seemingly impossible, even for a Master diabolist.
Therefore,