He lifted it from churches and charnel houses and factories. Like a blanket he lifted it up from the marshes, from the shining still river, from the great parks. He tossed it up into the sky like a blanket, and it drifted away.
The full moon gazed down, new and clean. It shone into the moon funnel, and the machine below fed. It was full of dark magic and ready for him. The house bulged with shadowlings. They swarmed in rooms and on the staircases. They filled the ballroom. They tapped their claws at the windows. They mimicked the sound of the machine, its great whirring and sighing and whining, as it waited for its last meal.
“When out walking, a young lady does not stop or turn to stare at those she passes. She keeps her gaze steady and pays little attention to that which does not concern her.”
—Miss Finch’s Little Blue Book (1855)
Annabel flew through the air in the claw chair, the shadow carriage around her, rustling and hushing and saying her name. Up and down the thing went, riding the wind, until she felt dizzy and sick. She gripped the seat, and just touching it terrified her, but there was nothing else she could do. Her bottom lifted off the seat with each undulation, only to slam down hard again.
“Oh,” she cried. “Please stop.”
But it wouldn’t. They wouldn’t. She could see their open empty mouths, and all about her they breathed. Through the little spaces between them she caught glimpses of moon-washed parks and churches and road after endless road. The shadowling carriage flew her over London. It swept her over rooftops; it rushed her through the night air.
When it did come down, finally, it was into a street of well-to-do houses with well-to-do gardens. Without warning the shadowlings unlaced their claws and dropped her onto the grass before one such house.
“Ouch,” she said, and stared at the tall, dark building.
She shivered, for she knew it at once.
The curtains were drawn, and the black windows stared back at her. It was the house from her visions. The shadowling carriage dissolved and vanished in a plume. The shadowlings twisted and turned like a murmuration of starlings, up to the rooftop and inside.
Annabel stood.
She felt instinctively for her broomstick and the Morever Wand.
She was empty-handed.
The front door opened slowly, and Mr. Angel appeared. He bowed deeply.
“Annabel Grey,” he said. “At last. We have been waiting for you.”
His black hair fell over his shoulders, and his cheeks were filled with darkness. He was horribly crooked and more wickedly gleeful than ever. Behind him in the house she heard a noise now. It was a droning and thrumming. She realized that the pavement shook beneath her and the roof groaned and the walls creaked as though they might explode.
“The moon is high, Annabel,” said Mr. Angel. “The time is nearly come.”
He bowed again and motioned for her to enter.
Annabel looked at the house and remembered her vision: the black wave washing out from this place, ready to smash everything in its path. Here she was, the most magical girl, standing empty-handed at her destination. She had failed. She had failed her great-aunts. She had failed the wizards. She had failed all of the Great & Benevolent Magical Society. She put her hand to her heart and took a deep breath.
She would not cry.
“Come inside,” Mr. Angel said quietly in his lonely voice. The loneliest voice Annabel had ever heard.
Annabel raised her chin. She straightened her spine. She smiled just the way she had been taught at Miss Finch’s Academy for Young Ladies, for when things were terrible or even just a little bit bad.
“Thank you, Mr. Angel,” she said, as though he had asked her in for tea, and she followed him inside.
The trouble with Annabel Grey, thought Kitty as she picked up the broomstick and the wand from the ground, was that she talked too much. She was like a clanging bell, and she liked everyone she met and wanted to know their story and how she might help them—even trolls—and it was exactly that sort of thing that had gotten her swept up by a shadowling carriage and into the sky.
Kitty had crouched. She had heard the thing coming and had crouched. She knew such things. She looked at the Morever Wand and felt its weightlessnes but knew it to be magical. She turned it over in her hand. It had faery magic written all over it.
Hafwen lay on the ground,