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After she had taken her turn in the bath—left with nothing but cold water in the pipes—Fia hurried down to the parlor and found Penbrook lazing on the emerald chair, Andromeda lounging on the sofa, and Finnick rounded into a fluffy ball before the fire. They’d brought in an overflowing tray of breads and cheeses, apple wedges and almonds, and that amber concoction from the Stardrop Isles.
“Do you mind?” Penbrook asked, lifting the bottle by the neck.
“Have what you want,” Fia said, curling up at the opposite end of the sofa from Andromeda when she patted it with her foot. Unable to deny either of them anything.
Penbrook hadn’t bothered with glasses and swigged directly from the bottle, because his dismal mood must have called for it.
“Pass it here.” Andromeda waved her hand.
“You ask so much of me,” Penbrook said, but after another pull, he slowly hauled himself up and handed her the drink, as though it would require less effort than arguing.
Andromeda smiled. “Thank you.” She took one sip and another, then handed the bottle off to Fia.
But Fia didn’t want to dull her senses. Didn’t know if it was a good idea for them to be drinking either, or if it wouldn’t make any difference at all. Either way, she set the bottle on the table as Penbrook selected some morsel from the tray that looked worrisomely like one of Norie’s strawberry (not-at-all) sweet squares and sank into his chair again, exhaling a contented sigh as if he’d never been more comfortable.
And he looked it—his body low in the chair, arms long over the sides, and his customary suit coat nowhere in sight. Tonight he’d donned a midnight-blue sweater, the first casual item she’d ever seen him wear, and his damp hair flopped across his forehead.
“I almost wouldn’t recognize you, except for those socks,” she said, eyeing the polka dots.
“Then I’d better live to see another day, as I can’t possibly die with my hair looking this woefully sodden.”
“The horror.” Andromeda frowned at her own frizzy ends.
“No, this is the true horror.” Penbrook grimaced even as he chewed the rest of the too-tart treat. “Strawberries aren’t meant to be this sour.”
His words plucked at something in Fia’s memories—that spell she’d glimpsed the other day in the shop’s ledger, penned for the owner of Sugarplum Sweets in the dark after hours.
“I think Norie must have used the wrong spell in Mrs. Allory’s recipes when baking,” she said. “The one my mother had written to sour the sweetest berries.”
“Spell? More like a curse. My taste buds will never be the same.”
Fia rolled her eyes. “My mother didn’t write curses.”
Penbrook said nothing, only let that absurd eyebrow of his arch skeptically.
“She didn’t.”
“I wonder, though,” Penbrook said softly, “about those spells that cost a single secret.”
Fia didn’t want to wonder, but now, of course, she was. It did seem rather strange that Mrs. Allory would want to sour her own berries. Hadn’t there been a rumor all those years ago of another baker whose blackberry pie rivaled her own? Had she actually cursed him? Fia sifted her memory for other spells so innocently written on the page that might have been more than they seemed—that could be a gift or a curse, depending on the perspective. Like the one her mother had written to dam any tears from falling. Standing across from Sebastian Smith today, she’d had the desperate need to cry, and everything had remained pent up inside her, feeling entirely wrong.
“I wonder, too, about her spells that aren’t in the ledger at all.” Penbrook’s somnolent voice allowed his words to fall more gently. “If they might be at the very heart of things.”
“You think…” Fia swallowed. “You think Sebastian is using my mother’s spellbook to cast the ruin of curses?” It was a disturbing, unwanted thought, and Penbrook seemed to realize his suggestion had upset her.
“I do. I’m sorry.”
Andromeda twisted the frizzed ends of her hair around her finger. “That would explain why Sebastian refused to give the spellbook back to you.”
Fia was only thinking of her mother, though, and the possibility that she’d meddled in curse work. Maybe the idea should have been shocking, something Fia would wholeheartedly dismiss, but it actually wasn’t so hard to imagine. Sable would have been tempted by the coins (or secrets) offered, and the opportunity to explore her magic—thinking of what she would gain instead of the people to be cursed.
Fia groaned, swiping the bottle from the table and taking a big gulp, more than making up for declining earlier. Her mother might not have cast the curses, but if she’d written them, then wasn’t she in some way responsible for their release? “I can’t believe…” No, she absolutely could believe. “I don’t—”
“There’s no reason you would have known,” Andromeda reassured her.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Fia wiped her mouth and pounded the bottle on the table, recalling how only that morning she’d considered that her mother might have written curses over the years. “I feel sick.”
“Our parents aren’t always exactly who we want them to be,” Penbrook said, voice tight.
