Snow (26 page)

She reached up and kissed him.

Raven was surprised, but she put her hand around the back of his neck to keep him from pulling away. Her fingers entwined in his hair and feathers, and she remembered the ravens she used to watch from her window….

Remembered?

“Raven,”
the name came back to her, with all of its original meanings.

Her memories rushed in, hurting her head.

“Raven,”
she whispered again. Her stomach turned; her head felt crazy. “What … happened? I
was with the duchess. In her apartment. She
did
something to me….”

“Snow? You remember everything? The duchess put a—” Raven said, a little conftised and very flushed. He touched his lips and looked at the strange iron nail in his hand. “I guess I didn’t need this…. How …?”

She smiled. “They say true love can always break a spell.”

Raven opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He closed it again. Finally he changed the subject. “Do you remember visiting the duchess? In her house? She attached things to you…. It was more than two years ago….”

Jessica—Snow—
thought
, and it was hard, like digging a hole. If she concentrated the hole widened a little. Layers of memory: her time with the Lonely Ones, two years of dreaming, her life before at Kenigh Hall …

“I slept for almost three years,” she realized, sinking into a chair. “I lost three years of my life….” She shivered at the memory of sleep: always dreaming, almost waking up, but never quite.

“You did sleep, but I don’t think you lost three years … you haven’t changed at all.”

She looked up at him and realized he was right. Raven, once her height, was now several inches taller than she. His chest had broadened and he stood straighten There were little creases around his eyes, not quite wrinkles, and a light in his eye that wasn’t
there before. He had a scattering of freckles, and some of his hair were actually feathers.

He was almost three years
older
than her now.

Jessica—
Snow
—opened her purse and took out a pocket mirror. She looked at herself and realized she did look the same, and that should have been strange. Why had no one on the estate noticed it? “I
have
changed,” she whispered. “Just not on the outside.”

She still possessed the wisdom her erased memory had brought her; she still saw everyone at the estate as if for the first time, but now it was overlaid with layers of memory. The duke and duchess as people, not parents.
Flawed
people.

And, now that she matched up what she knew about the duchess with her revelation,
insane
people, she realized.

Raven knelt so that their faces were level. “You’re all right now, you’re safe with me. And the rest of us are here, too.”

“Cat. Chauncey. The Mouser.
Sparrow
” She repeated them like a mantra, afraid of slipping away again. Raven helped her rise and led her to the door of the parlor so she could look out over the dancing crowds. At first, it just looked like a sea of silk, fans and ruffles. Then she looked again, as a Lonely One.

In one corner a beautiful young woman posed, with black hair high on her head and a wicked, wicked grin, a cat mask held flirtatiously to her side. She was laughing loudly at something someone said…. She saw Snow and grinned at her.
Candlelight caught her eyes just enough to show the slits; a flash of white revealed her fangs. The Mouser didn’t bother with a mask; he was talking politics with some men in the corner, but he too smiled at her. Sparrow was strolling casually up and down one of the hors d’oeuvres tables, looking too intently at the treats to see her. Alan actually waved; the harlequin mask he wore didn’t cover his smile, which she remembered like the back of her hand.

The blond duke was there as well, chattering inanely at someone; Henry looked bored beside him.

“Those two have been very kind to me,” Snow said. She saw Raven tense out of the corner of her eye. “Oh, settle down. I can see you have a lot to tell me once we get away from all this. What happened to the feathers on your hands?”

Her fingers entwined in his hair and feathers, and she remembered the ravens she used to watch from her window….

“Wait a moment,” she said uncertainly. “It cannot be …”

A connection …

A
movement
.

She and Raven both turned at the same time, both realizing the presence of an intruder. She threw her mirror without thinking, at where she thought the persons head should be. It connected.

“You didn’t learn
that
from your tutor,” the duchess said wryly, coming out of the shadows and
touching the blood on her forehead. “And who is this? One of your little thieving friends—”

The duchess stopped short. She and Raven were caught in each other’s stares.

With exactly the same eyes.

“You couldn’t have a child,” Snow—Jessica—said slowly, fitting clues from her childhood into place. “You tried all kinds of things. All of Alan’s strange tasks …”

“You?”
Raven cried« “You made us? Abandoned us?
You
, murderer?”

“My … son …”

“No son of yours!”

Snow was putting it together now. The kitten that disappeared. Cat? But
that
cat was white … maybe it failed the first time. The mice whose babies went missing. Alan, stealing fledglings from the raven’s nest. The black blood leaking under the duchess’s door. The fact that she and the Lonely Ones came from nearly the same place.

“Alan …” She knew she should do something about the murderous look in Raven’s eyes, but one remaining thing bothered her. She remembered the day Alan helped her escape, his sweat and fainting. “You had him under a spell….”

“Not a spell,” the duchess said, never taking her eyes off Raven. “Not exactly. Mesmerism. His golden necklace resonates at the same wavelength as his brain. How many of you survived?” she asked Raven.

“You have five
children
, you witch,” Raven spat,
“who must hide from the sun and other people—five
outcasts
.”

“Why are they so old?” Snow asked, “If you … made them as babies just a few years ago?”

“They weren’t babies, exactly, when I …
operated
on them,” the duchess answered slowly. “Animals age much faster than humans. That is also one of the reasons it had such a … high mortality rate.”

“’High mortality rate? And is that all Snow was, too?”

“Attempting to use her heart was ill-thought and probably a little mad,” the duchess admitted. “But it might have worked.”

And that was what made Raven leap for her throat; the simple coldness with which she spoke.

“Raven, no!” Snow leaped between them, pushing the duchess out of the way. “No good can come of this!” She saw her father sending for the police, imagined her Raven stained with murder. Her hand brushed the duchess’s arm as she pushed the older woman out of the way.

A bad spell turns back on the caster times three.

She remembered Alan’s words as sparks blew purple around the two women.
The spell on my memory—she cast it before I slept. What will it do to her?

“What … where am I?” The duchess started to collapse; Snow caught her before she fell and lowered her gently to the couch.

The duchess put a hand to her head. There was something slack about her features, Snow realized. A
dullness to her eyes that wasn’t there before. “
Maman
…? Where is
my maman
?”

She sounded …
old
. Confused. Her hair was still bright, and nothing physical had changed that Snow could see, but there was something missing in her face.

The duke appeared in the doorway with two men. “What the devil is going on here?”

Snow clasped the duchess’s hand. “My stepmother started to say something and pitched forward. Her cheeks are burning up! Get the doctor!”
Where do such lies come from so easily?
She thought about the Lonely Ones, and then remembered her childhood, full of lies.

T
he doctor was called. The party ended.

Alan’s grandmother had been right—whatever mind-befuddling spell the duchess had cast on Snow had trebled back on the older woman. She could remember nothing except long stories from when she was a child. She had no short-term memory. The duchess had, in fact, turned into the somewhat lovable, scatterbrained grandmother type Snow had always wanted in her life.

At first Snow doubted it was anything but an act. To test her theory she threatened to burn one of the duchess’s precious arcane books in front of her. Anne had shrugged helplessly and said she didn’t care, but that it might cause a bit of a mess. Shocked but convinced, Snow was forced to swallow her feelings of rage; the old woman before her had little or no connection to the duchess of a few days ago.

The old duke had a manly breakdown over all of the recent mishaps in his family. He shed manly tears and was pitied and admired by all. When he emerged from his rooms a few days later he was a sadder but calmer man, who treated his wife carefully, but with a kindness and loving Snow could not remember witnessing before.

Snow pretended to regain her own memories over the next few weeks even as it was obvious Anne had lost hers. Some cheerfully said that it must be some sort of sickness in the household, and if the girl had recovered her mind so would the old woman. Expensive doctors privately told the family that they did not think this was the case; it was more like the old duchess had had a stroke.

Snow revisited with all of her old friends and people on the estate she had not remembered before: Dolly, Gwen, Craddoc, and many others who were glad to see her again … but who were changed from who they had been. She made the decision not to tell anyone about the duchess’s attempt on her life; the old duchess was dead, and there was little point in troubling the new, feebleminded one about it.

Amid these pleasanter conversations, she forced herself to have a private conversation with the blond duke of Edgington, politely but firmly explaining that as a result of recent events she was in no position to marry.

“And,” she added honestly, feeling the young man deserved the truth, “frankly—I have been asleep for the past two years. I have not—
lived
enough to make any sort of decision about the rest of my life.”

“I … understand completely,” he said, and gave a small smile. Snow looked at him, surprised. “My whole life I’ve searched for … another world, with adventures, and magic, and now that I’ve had a taste—I want to see
more
. I think highly of you,
Jessica, but I must admit I am relieved. Proposing to you just seemed … what was expected.”

She smiled, “I cannot speak for you, but I for one am tired of doing what’s expected.”

“Excellent, I am glad we agree. Also, I think Raven would have killed me on the spot if I had gone through with it,” he added nervously.

They parted friends. Everyone in the estate and town was disappointed with her, resentful that she had spoiled their fairy tale.

Her own secret fairy tale of the Lonely Ones joining her on the estate and living with her was also revealed to be the flimsy stuff of dreams it always was. They didn’t
want
to be servants, and there was no place at Kenigh for them, anyway—in a small town, someone would eventually discover the truth about them. And Alan, who was the closest thing she had to a brother, well, he couldn’t stay forever either. He had a talent and a life ahead of him.

She took over some of the duchess’s estate duties, which made her feel useful but left her bored.

Snow cried for hours, then found she couldn’t cry anymore.

Snow was left wandering the rooms of the estate and the lawns, feeling let down. Her father had accepted her back and as his daughter now, but she didn’t care anymore. The duchess had been defeated, but in a very sad, unsatisfying way. Sometimes Snow read the duchess’s old magic books and scientific journals and angrily wished that Anne could have
been cured of her evil tendencies without losing her mind. Snow had questions about electricity, rituals, and chemicals, and now no one could answer them for her.
She could have been a great woman if she had not been so vain
. She imagined the good things the old duchess could have done with her equipment, knowledge, and intelligence.

“It’s like it’s all over, with a whimper. There’s no perfect, happy ending. Nothing
fits
into a grownup life,” she told Anne as she held a skein of yarn for the old woman. Snow found it very easy to talk to her stepmother now; it was like speaking to a wall that answered back occasionally with something meaningless but charming.

“I’m surprised you’re still here,” the old duchess said, slightly chastising. She thrust a needle for emphasis. “Turning down a handsome young duke! My word! My father never would have stood for it, I can tell you that much. What with all the scandals this family has had, you should have done it already, let things quiet down a bit. The whole bit with the ball. What nonsense. That’s what we did in
my
day,” she said, clucking her tongue.

“Done
what
already?” Snow asked, expecting something dull.

“Taken the Grand Tour, you silly goose. Of Europe. All the best lords and ladies who were victims of scandals did in
my
day.”

“H
urry, the second whistle has blown!”

Snow surveyed her entourage—
entourages
were allowed, even encouraged, she discovered, when people of the highest class were touring Europe to escape scandal. The ship they were about to board was large and fine; they each had a first-rate first-class cabin and their own chairs on the deck for sun, if they chose. They probably wouldn’t, however. Currently it was night, and until such time as they found a place where they would all be accepted, the Lonely Ones—and Alan and Snow—would travel only by dark.

Porters scuttled up and down the gangplank, getting the last trunks and packages on. Sparrow, Chauncey, and the Mouser were already aboard, on deck high above her. Snow waved at them. The Mouser raised his glass; Chauncey tapped his cigar overboard in greeting. Sparrow jumped up and down.
He’s going to get sick,
she knew as surely as the sun would rise, Alan and Cat were just about to board. Cat was dressed in a very modern dress with a low-cut bodice and sported an absolutely fantastic hat, Alan was trying very hard to pretend he was ignoring her—but grinned all the time she batted her eyelashes at him.