Worldweavers: Spellspam (10 page)

B
EFORE ZOË HAD A
chance to wrestle Thea’s two suitcases out of the trunk, the door swung soundlessly open to reveal a middle-aged woman with her hair swept back into a loose chignon and wearing a tidy ensemble of blouse and knee-length skirt.

“You must be Galathea Winthrop,” the woman said, glancing at Thea, and then at Zoë, who slammed the trunk lid shut.

“I’m Zoë,” she said. “I’m Thea’s aunt. I’ll be staying down in the city for a week or so while she’s…studying here, and I’ll probably be in and out, taking her for an occasional lunch or something. Are you Señora de los Reyes?” Zoë spoke Spanish, and she gave the name the correct lilt and pronunciation, but the woman she was addressing responded with a tight little smile that implied a grievous error of some kind.

“I am Madeline Emmett…the housekeeper,” she said primly. “Your room is ready, Miss Winthrop; your colleague hasn’t arrived yet, but we expect him by dinner. The professor will see both of you then.” She grabbed the smaller suitcase and started back up the steps again, turning to glance at Zoë. “You can make an appointment to see the professor himself, concerning any outings,” she said. “He is unable to see you now, but perhaps if you telephone this evening…?”

“Aunt Zoë…?” Thea said, balancing her backpack and hefting the second suitcase with both hands.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back tomorrow,” Zoë said, reaching out with one hand to brush Thea’s cheek.

“If you will follow me, Miss Winthrop…”

The housekeeper waited at the foot of a wide spiral staircase that curved around a central well ending in a high cupola ringed by windows. “This way,” she said as Thea hesitated, looking around at the opulence of it all.

Thea brought her gaze back to the staircase. “Yes, thank you.”

She was conducted to a room nearly four times the size of her own bedroom at home, with
a canopied white bed against the far wall and a pair of French doors opening onto a tiny balcony with a wrought-iron balustrade. The doors were open, and a breeze stirred the filmy white drapes that framed them; beyond, Thea could see the city spread out below her.

“Wow,” she said, dropping her suitcase by the door.

“The professor had this house built when he was first married. Every corner of it is special,” Madeline said. “I’ve cleared the closet for you,” she added, opening the closet doors for emphasis, “and there’s a chest of drawers over there for your use. There’s a laundry chute in the closet floor, and the bathroom is across the hall. For the duration of your stay, those facilities have been set aside for you and your colleague to share. He will have the room next door. I will leave you to settle in; dinner is at six.”

She walked precisely through the spot where Thea could have sworn she had dropped her suitcase and left, closing the door behind her. Thea registered briefly, with a degree of surprise, that the suitcase in question was now tidily stowed on a luggage rack across the room—but her attention was not on the things she had brought with
her. She stared at the open doors, transfixed by the view; there was something about the light outside that made her hands ache to bury themselves into it and weave a pattern that was rich and strange—twisted strands that encompassed breadth of space and light, and old magic, and power.

But first she wanted a computer, that step between worlds; she scrabbled in the smaller suitcase, which contained a laptop. Thea’s parents had not been happy about letting her out of the house with her own computer, but she had pointed out that the things she could do with that computer were the main reason that she was being sent to Professor de los Reyes, and the Nexus might not be the best tool with which she could demonstrate those abilities to the professor. Her brother Ben had finally suggested that she borrow his laptop for the few weeks, and Paul and Ysabeau had agreed—though not without misgivings.

She had barely managed to pull the zipper all the way open before the suitcase appeared to take on a bizarre life of its own. Thea jumped back with a startled yelp as the closet doors sprang wide open and the contents of her suitcase
began to unfold, piece by piece, levitating out of the suitcase and draping around hangers in the closet or tucking themselves tidily away onto the shelf beside the hanging rail. The underwear Thea had packed folded itself up neatly and then hovered expectantly in place just above the suitcase as though waiting for a place to be made for it. Thea glanced over to the chest of drawers, then crossed the room and carefully pulled the top drawer partway open. It immediately slid all the way out and the underwear settled into one corner.

Thea yanked on the zipper of the second suitcase, the bigger one, and watched, astonished and entertained, as that, too, emptied itself with swiftness and precision. A vanity bag, hairbrush, a handful of clips and barrettes, and Thea’s favorite rose-perfumed shower gel were deposited in a tidy pile on top of the chest of drawers. Less than five minutes later both suitcases were empty, the smaller one nesting inside the larger one, the outer zipper of the larger suitcase zipping itself neatly closed. Thea’s laptop and an assortment of things the unpacking spell didn’t quite know what to do with were left sitting on the bed, awaiting manual disposition.

“Wow,” Thea said again. “This is quite a place.”

She thought better of messing with the computer for the time being, and decided to explore instead. Hoping she wouldn’t accidentally blunder into the professor’s study, she opened the door to her room just a crack and peered up and down the corridor outside. It was empty. She scooped up her vanity bag and crossed the hall to where a door, left ajar, indicated the presence of the bathroom Madeline had said she was to share with Terry; she wondered whether the unpacking spell was in force there, too. She switched on the light, taking stock of the large room with its glassed-in shower and a double-sink built-in vanity, and placed the bag of her odds and ends beside one of the sinks, still closed. Before she had a chance to step back properly, the bag had been opened and its contents distributed—toothbrush and toothpaste in a rose-pink ceramic cup, lip gloss and deodorant in the mirrored cabinet above the sink together with her barrettes and elastic ponytail bands, hairbrush neatly on the counter beside the sink. Even the lint inside the bag was meticulously shaken out over the sink, and then the faucet came on briefly to sluice it all away.

“This will be quite a month,” Thea muttered.

She left the bathroom to its ablutions and went to the spiral staircase that wound up toward another floor and swept down to the entrance hall where she had come in. Thinking that the other floor, in someone else’s house, would be better left alone, Thea made her way down the stairs into the hallway, feeling rather like an old-time movie star making a grand entrance.

The hallway was full of light, spilling down from the skylight dome. It was paved in cool pale tiles, and large tubs of some plant with huge pink flowers flanked the curved ends of the stairs. Thea stood in the midst of the hall, peering at half-open doors. Through one, she could see wooden paneling, a glimpse of a fireplace with a huge portrait of a woman in an old-fashioned dress hanging above it, books piled artfully on a side table. Through another door, a set of heavy, high-backed carved wooden chairs surrounded a massive table. A third room looked more promising—a wash of sunlight spilling over a burgundy rug on a warm hardwood floor, and a chocolate-brown sofa peering out from underneath a chenille throw that matched the rug on the floor. On a side table along the wall there was a vase
filled with tall blue flowers.

Thea stuck her head around the door to peer in. The room appeared to be a sitting room, with a double set of French doors opening out onto a patio framed by rough-plastered brick walls half-covered with vine and a creeper with large, trumpet-shaped bright red flowers. A wrought-iron table and four matching chairs were set out on the brick paving, and beyond them a stretch of perfect lawn covered a gentle slope that led the eye straight out into yet another spectacular view of the city. The lawn was bordered by flowering shrubs, trees, and a flower bed riotous with color.

The French doors were unlocked, and Thea stepped out onto the patio, feeling the sun-warmed bricks beneath her sandaled feet. She thought about her own backyard, a patch of grass surrounded by natural cedar woods and a row of old rhododendrons, and couldn’t help shaking her head, thinking of how much time and energy
this
garden’s upkeep must take.

“Would you like me to show you around?”

An unfamiliar female voice made Thea spin around. She saw a slender girl with golden-blond hair held back from her face by a pair of combs;
she wore a white T-shirt, jeans, and casual open-toed woven leather slides, yet she still managed to give out an air of being a queen about to hold court.

“You must be Galathea,” the girl added, inclining her head slightly by way of introduction. “I am Isabella de los Reyes.”

Thea suddenly thought of Terry caught in that regal gaze, and fought a wild urge to giggle out loud—and then suddenly flushed.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to impose,” she said. “I just got here, and since the room took care of the unpacking and my friend—the other student who’s supposed to come here over the summer—isn’t here yet, and the housekeeper said dinner isn’t until six, and I…”

“As I said, would you like me to show you around?” Isabella said, smiling. “This house…can be a bit disconcerting to people who are new to it. I see you’ve been admiring the gardens.”

“They’re beautiful,” Thea said sincerely. “You must have an army of gardeners.”

“Not a one,” Isabella said. “You know the Lawnsmooth spell?”

“The one that lets the grass grow only so high so the lawn never needs mowing? Sure. Our
own lawn at home is just a postage-stamp-sized square compared to that, but my dad has the spell in place.”

“No self-respecting mage is seen mowing his own lawn,” Isabella said. “But my father created that spell, and holds the license to it. Even if he weren’t wealthy before, he would be from the money
that
brings in. That and the Housetidy.”

“You mean what hefted my suitcase from the floor to the rack?” Thea asked.

“Indeed. You don’t drop things around this house and expect to find them where you left them. If you kick your shoes off at the door, you’ll find them in your closet the next time you look. If you drop a half-finished novel on the table and forget about it for five minutes, it’ll be back on the shelf. Sometimes with a bookmark in it…if the spell is working particularly well. The laundry chutes from every room collect dirty stuff and then it’ll be delivered back to your closet the next day, washed and ironed.”

“It would drive me crazy,” Thea said without thinking, and then flushed again, biting her lip. “Sorry. But I’m not the world’s tidiest person and I live in a house where six brothers came before me. My mother gave up a long time ago. We pick
up our own messes…when we remember.”

“This is the library,” Isabella said, pushing open the door of the room with the portrait above the fireplace. Isabella pointed to the portrait. “That’s Estella, Father’s first wife, the one for whom this place was built. He has several…
photographs
of my mother in his study.”

“Is your mother…,” Thea began carefully, but Isabella gave a short, sharp laugh that made Thea stop dead.

“My mother,” Isabella said, “gave up too. She left this place a long time ago, when I was barely five, and left us to my father to raise.”

“I’m…sorry,” Thea said, feeling exceedingly lame.

Isabella turned and crossed the hall to the room where Thea had seen the huge old table. “That’s where dinner will be,” she said. “I’d better go and get ready. We dress for dinner in this house, just so you know.”

“What am I supposed to wear?” Thea asked, astonished.

“If you get it wrong, he’ll let you know,” Isabella said. “Well, I’ll see you at dinner, Galathea.”

“It’s
Thea
,” said Thea.

Isabella shook her head. “Not in this house. Father doesn’t hold with nicknames. You go by the name you are given by the Gods when you are born. You’re Galathea, get used to it. Don’t be late, by the way—Father hates it when dinner has to be held for latecomers.”

She inclined her head at Thea by way of dismissal, and turned to waft her way up the spiral staircase. Thea wasn’t sure what Isabella would be wearing for dinner, but she knew that she wouldn’t be surprised at a tiara.

She went back to her room, where she discovered that someone had closed the French doors and tidied away the laptop onto a small desk. She wondered about plugging it in to recharge the battery, but quickly realized she would have to ask for instructions. What she had taken for an electrical outlet was no more than just a blank white socket-shaped plate set into the wall. She left that problem for later and opened up her closet instead, wondering if she had packed anything elegant enough for the professor’s dinners. In the end she decided on a dark-red dress with a scooped neckline, dressed up with a belt made from old silver coins and a pair of dangly earrings. She was still standing before the mirror, wondering whether or
not to add a draped silk scarf to the ensemble, when there was a knock on her door.

“Thea? You in there?”

She crossed the room in a couple of long strides and flung the door open. “Terry! I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life!”

“Well, thanks,” he said with a grin. “What brought that on?”

“This place…is weird,” she said. “I think we’d better pull a slipstream world fast, before you get into trouble. This place…is packed with magic.”

“I know,” he said. “I’d better not say any more just yet. What’s this dinner? That housekeeper woman told me to wear a tie.” He suddenly realized what she was wearing and did a double take that made Thea suddenly blush almost the same shade as her dress. “Wow,” Terry said, “you look pretty.”

“Thank you!” she said, genuinely pleased. And then remembered something else. “But I am not even in the running,” she added.