When his head came into view, she said, “Slap the—” but he knocked her hand away and scowled at her. “Ach, what the skiffle, lad?” she asked, surprised.
“I didn’t come all this way to play eejit sports,” he growled, climbing up onto the windowsill. “Or to maraud manny schools with some lass who’ll tell her secrets to some plucked chicken but not me—”
Magpie stared at him.
“I saved your life,” he went on, “and I got you that skiving knife back that you near slit my throat with and you just scolded me for it like I’m some sprout, and I helped knit your wings and I haven’t asked you who you really are, even though I’ve seen you do things no faerie can do and for all I know you’re in with that devil yourself!”
Magpie flushed and replied hotly, “I didn’t ask you along, if you’ll recall,” she said, “and I’ll be happy to ‘maraud’ without you! But I am sorry if I insulted you by including you in ‘eejit’ games I’ve been playing with the crows since I was wee. You want to get back to Dreamdark and sit around fretting with all the others, you go. Better still, go on to Never Nigh, where they’re saying I’m in with the devil. You’d fit right in! But about the knife . . .” Her hand went to Skuldraig. “The only reason I didn’t want you touching it is ’cause it’s cursed and if you’d tried to use it, it would have murdered you!”
There was a thick silence between them until Talon said with an awkward frown, “Oh. Well, maybe you shouldn’t leave it lying around then.”
Magpie’s mouth dropped open, and she chuffed indignantly. “I’m sorry if nearly dying, I didn’t keep better inventory of my things!” Then a flicker of shame came into her expression and she chewed her lip and said roughly, “But about saving my life . . . of course, thank you. Of course! I’m sorry I didn’t say so sooner. I could barely even think; I just lost my friends. . . .”
Now Talon looked ashamed, and his blush deepened. “I know,” he said quickly. “It’s okay; I’m not grubbing for thanks. Just, all the secrets . . . I thought maybe you’d tell me, but you told that shindy—”
“I didn’t! Strag knew it all before I did! I only just found out myself—”
“Found out what?”
“Er,” Magpie said, coloring crimson as she tried to imagine telling him what she’d learned. Even in her own head it sounded preposterous, so after a long pause she blurted, “The imps and creatures gave me a blessing ceremony. I don’t even remember it. They gave me gifts, like that glamour and seeing in the dark and all. First I knew of it was when Snoshti . . . er, took me, yesterday!”
Puzzled, Talon asked, “Why? Why’d they bless you?”
Magpie shrugged. “Look, you want to maraud or neh?” she asked in a surly voice. “Or you can leave. Whichever.”
Scowling, Talon said, “Okay then, let’s go,” and they turned their attention to the window.
THIRTY-ONE
Inside was an empty schoolroom with two neat rows of desks facing a world map and a globe, and shelves of books on the far wall. “It looks like the schoolroom at the castle,” Talon said, “only huge.”
They leapt to the floor and crossed on foot to the door. Peering out, they saw they were at the end of a corridor, with two more doors facing them. The first room was cluttered with painting easels and lumps of clay in sad replicas of manny heads, and it stank of turpentine. The second room stank too, but the odor wasn’t turpentine. Magpie fluttered up to the top of a cabinet, and Talon climbed up beside her. Grimly they surveyed the room.
On shelves high and low creatures stood and crouched, frozen still, their eyes peeled open but lusterless. There were varmints with their tiny claws outstretched, tails curled, whiskers eerily still. Mice, voles, raccoons. A long row of dull-eyed birds stood upon the highest shelf and below them, a sad little collection of their nests and eggs. Nothing moved. For a moment Magpie thought the creatures were under some enchantment, but then she saw the jars.
They were jars not unlike those in a manny’s pantry, from which she’d once or twice pilfered jelly. But in these were no apricots or honey, only creatures afloat in stinking liquid. Skinks, snakes, tiny frogs. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. So many eyes in the room, and nothing blinked.
“All dead . . . ,” murmured Talon, stunned. Ill from the stink and the horror of it, he quietly took Magpie’s hand. She held it tight.
“It’s a collection,” she whispered, seeing how each dead thing was labeled in neat letters.
“It’s murder,” Talon answered.
They heard muttering at the same moment their eyes fell on the butterflies. Case after case hung on the wall, of butterflies and moths pinned open dead and arranged like art.
And there in their midst was Batch Hangnail.
He stood poised at the edge of a tall cabinet. He seemed to be wearing wings. As Magpie and Talon watched, he brought his hands together, bent his legs, and sprang. It was the imp version of a swan dive, and for a moment he seemed to float, his luna moth wings catching the air, and a pure and nearly beatific look of hope came into his face. The next moment he dropped like a stone and hit the ground cursing.
“Come on,” Magpie said, dropping Talon’s hand and taking to her wings. Talon followed, leaping easily from cabinet to cabinet. They reached the corner the imp had plunged from and found there a sickening sight. The luna moth wings had not been Batch’s first attempt, clearly. One of the framed displays had been smashed open and plundered, and the cabinet was littered with butterfly carcasses bereft of their wings. One glance over the edge at the floor showed what had become of them. A litter of wings had gathered below in a drift, like leaves beneath an autumn tree, and Batch lay on his side in them, half buried and moaning.
With an icy look Magpie stepped off the edge and dropped to land sharply in front of him. He peeled open one eye and saw her, snapped it shut again, and redoubled his moaning. “Oh, woe . . . ,” he whimpered in scamper. “Woe to poor Batch . . .”
“Get up,” Magpie said impatiently, nudging him with her foot, then harder when he didn’t respond. “I said get up!”
Snuffling, he sat upright. A pretty blue morpho wing was plastered to the dribbling mucus on the side of his face.
“You’re lucky those butterflies were already dead, imp, or you’d have a bitter time of it!”