Creatures of Charm and Hunger Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH

  Copyright © 2020 by Molly Tanzer

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  hmhbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Tanzer, Molly, author.

  Title: Creatures of charm and hunger / Molly Tanzer.

  Description: Boston : Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. | Series: The diabolist’s libraryIdentifiers: LCCN 2019039872 (print) | LCCN 2019039873 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358065210 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780358066729 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Occult fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3620.A7254 C65 2020 (print) | LCC PS3620.A7254 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6–dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039872

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039873

  Cover design by Jennifer Heuer

  Cover photograph © Lia G. / Arcangel Images

  Author photograph © Max Campanella

  Prologue

  * * *

  EDITH BLACKWOOD CAREFULLY SELECTED ONE of the cut-crystal perfume atomizers from the narrow table by her front door. Holding it in her palm for a long moment warmed the pink fluid within—just a touch; just as she needed.

  I hate London, complained the demon Mercurialis in a voice only Edith could hear. Decades of familiarity with her constant, invisible companion meant she understood it in words, but its speech registered more to her mind as a series of plucks and whirs and chirps, as well as the occasional chime.

  “I know,” she said aloud to the silence of her Paris flat. “I don’t like England either, but go we must. Jane Blackwood is my only niece, and I will not miss her Test. Nor could I! I agreed to give it to her and to her friend Miriam. But even more than that, I want to be there to see her progress beyond her apprenticeship. She’ll celebrate in style even if it means I must sojourn to the northern wilds of England. Otherwise, my sister will likely just let Jane stay up half an hour late as a treat. She deserves more for taking such an important step along the path to becoming a Master diabolist.” Edith’s demon agreed wholeheartedly with all of this. “And it will be good to be somewhere quiet for a few days. It’s been months since we went out without always looking over our shoulder.”

  Mercurialis conceded this point too. The Occupation might be over, but the war was not; the streets of Paris were not yet safe. They hadn’t won until they’d won—and they hadn’t won. Not yet.

  Edith misted herself with a few spritzes from the warmed bottle, then set it aside, picking up a long silver needle. She pricked her finger with it. As the blood beaded up, she took hold of her valise in her other hand and stepped within a slate circle set into the marble floor of her foyer. She let the welling blood drip down, and as soon as it hit the floor, pale blue electricity began to crackle all along her body, currents of lightning running up her legs, encasing her like bright vines. After a moment, they receded, save for a few extra flashes along the jet beadwork of her black dress and the black fur collar of her cape . . .

  And she was somewhere else entirely: a disused kitchen in a shabby London boarding house, standing upon a slate circle similar to the one in her own apartment. The morning sunlight filtering through the dirty windows was dreary and watery, wintery and unmistakably English.

  The demonic sigh in Edith’s mind sounded more like the twittering of a distant bird, but its point was clear and inarguable.

  Edith was surrounded by a column of woven golden mesh that ran from floor to ceiling. Through the fine holes she could see the shape of a man sitting in a chair. She could also see the glint of the gun he had trained on her.

  She had come here expecting such a welcome. Edith was a spy, and this was a spy’s gate into the UK. Protecting it was of utmost importance.

  “Swift wings, swift victory,” said Edith.

  “Swifter wings, swifter victory,” said the man with the gun.

  Edith stepped through the door of the mesh cage, set down her valise, and rucked up the sleeve of her dress to reveal a tattoo on her forearm: a stark white equilateral triangle and, within that, a talaria—the winged sandal of Hermes. The brightness of the white ink against her black skin was itself evidence of the mark’s diabolic nature, but the group she was part of—the Young Talarians—hadn’t gotten as far as they had by cutting corners when it came to security.

  The man with the gun used his teeth to pull the cork out of a phial and dribbled an oily fluid upon her tattoo. It fizzed and popped and sizzled away into silver smoke, at which point he curtly nodded once.

  Edith, like most diabolists, was also a member of an international organization known as the Société des Éclairées. While the Société had long ago denounced the Nazis, their sympathizers, and their ideology, due to its worldwide nature it could not be aggressively political without causing internal problems. The Young Talarians—the group to which Edith belonged—were technically independent . . . but not forbidden from using the Société’s resources.

  It was impossible to say how much the Young Talarians had done for the Allies over the course of the war. Their help had been as invisible as it was invaluable. The Nazis, of course, had their own diabolists.

  Edith had been a founding member of the Young Talarians, along with a few of her closest friends—Maja Znidarcic, Zelda Lizman, and Saul Zeitz. She could not sit idly by, not being who she was. Edith had been a small child when the Blackwoods adopted her, taking her from her West African homeland after her parents had died, to travel the world with them and their daughter, Nancy—but Edith had never forgotten her roots.

  “Welcome to London, Edith,” said George, lowering his Webley and holstering it. “You’re right on time.”

  “Is my car waiting for me?” she asked, readjusting her sleeve. She wasn’t late, but she’d need to get moving if she wanted to arrive in Hawkshead by the afternoon, given the distance and uncertain state of the roads.

  “At the garage on St. Mark’s,” he said. And then, with a complete shift in his manners, he grinned. “Good luck to the young hopefuls, too.”

  Edith cocked a manicured eyebrow at George. “Young hopefuls?” she asked, conveying with her tone that it was an improper thing for him to have said. “To whom are you referring?”

  George straightened up. “Sorry. It’s only that Monsieur Durand had mentioned Jane and Miriam were to undergo their Test.”

  Of course it had been Patrice Durand who had blabbed! Edith frowned at George as Mercurialis quietly chuckled to itself over her consternation. When an apprentice diabolist underwent their Test, it was supposed to be a private affair. Patrice Durand and his former lover, Edith’s sister Nancy Blackwood, were estranged, yes,
but he knew that Nancy had always been a stickler for the rules.

  “What else did Patrice have to say about my niece, my sister, and her ward?” asked Edith, her tone icier than the streets beyond the windows of the kitchen.

  “Nothing,” said George, blushing now. All his earlier cool had left him. Edith sighed—new recruits were always a bit jumpy.

  “Let’s forget we had this conversation,” she said. This new evidence that Patrice had not changed, in spite of his claims to the contrary, cast quite a shadow over another reason for Edith’s visit: Edith had finally resolved to at last tell Jane who her father was, even though this was explicitly against her mother’s wishes. Jane had always longed to know, and as she had just turned sixteen a month ago, Edith had thought to give this knowledge to her as a belated birthday gift. Now, she was even less certain this was a good idea.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just use the ladies’ before I depart,” said Edith. George nodded and Edith swished by him, her heels clicking on the tile.

  In the washroom she opened up her makeup bag and applied a light dusting of powder to her cheeks and some mascara to her dark lashes. Both cosmetics were specially formulated with diabolic essences to conceal her appearance. Glamour, indeed! Now, anyone who looked at Edith would see a white woman . . . unless they took a careful second look. For anyone who did, she put on a black hat with a little veil. No one wanted to look at a widow for too long—at least not here in England.

  If she’d needed a better disguise, she would have drawn on the power of her demon. Mercurialis lent its host unusual power over many amusing types of illusion, changing one’s appearance being one of them. But for just a short walk along busy streets, Edith did not need to tax her resources in that manner.

  George looked a bit surprised when she emerged, but then quickly recovered. “When will you be returning?”

  “Within a week. Do you need a specific date and time?”

  “No, ma’am. I’ll be here.”

  “I promise to be in at a decent hour.” She favored him with a smile.

  He returned it. “It’s not that; the gate just takes a moment or two to set up, and I wouldn’t like to make you wait.”

  “It’s still faster than the Night Ferry!”

  Edith was in a good mood. She was pleased to have a little shopping to do and then a nice long unbroken drive ahead of her, two things almost impossible in Paris.

  Edith peeked out the door to find a light drizzle falling upon the gray paving stones of the street. She claimed an umbrella, black of course, from the umbrella stand.

  “I promise I’ll return it,” she said, before stepping out into the morning gloom. Her foot immediately found a puddle.

  Mercurialis sighed.

  1

  * * *

  IT WAS A COLD MORNING in early February, but outside the windows of the old farmhouse, the world was still cloaked in blackest night. Not even the sliver of a moon silvered the frost and snow crusting the yard and the rock-strewn hills beyond. Only the pale starlight showed Miriam Cantor the barn where she must go to feed the geese and the ducks.

  She hesitated before opening the back door and venturing forth into the profound stillness only found just before the dawn in deep winter. But it was not the silence that made her hesitate, nor the darkness, nor the chill—nor was it fear of what predators might be between her and the barn. At least, not animal ones. Foxes and weasels did not frighten her; it was the threat of who might be out there, not what, that caused sweat to prick at her neck and under her arms even in the raw predawn.

  Her worry was absurd, she knew it was. There were no Nazis prowling through the frigid gloom. There were no Nazis anywhere nearby, not down the lane in the picturesque village of Hawkshead, not in the houses of their distant neighbors. Here in the north of England, she was safe—and yet every morning, Miriam had to remind herself of that before she could pick her way along the path that wound its way through the hoary remains of last year’s victory garden.

  “Who’s the real goose here?” muttered Miriam as she let herself into the barn. The truth was, if Nazis ever did intrude upon their privacy, her “aunt” Nancy, whose treasured flock impatiently pecked at Miriam’s shoes, would know. Mrs. Nancy Blackwood was no mere widow living quietly with her daughter and ward on a farm in England. Nancy Blackwood was a diabolist—a natural scientist who had summoned a demon and worked with it and its essences rather than more traditional chemicals or creatures. Her demon lent her certain unusual abilities in exchange for sharing her experiences and her body.

  Nancy was also the official Librarian for the Société des Éclairées, the current worldwide organization of diabolists. The Société formally oversaw the education of individuals interested in working with demons—or rather, the powerful, ineffable beings they called demons. That meant Nancy had more methods of protecting herself than the average widow—more than the average diabolist, even—to protect her home and the books within the Library beneath it.

  It was also true that Miriam, as Nancy’s apprentice, was not entirely helpless. Even so, she was only fifteen and had not yet passed her Test.

  Miriam rubbed at her numb and dripping nose before starting to scoop grain onto the ground. She, like most apprentices, spent a lot of time pondering demons and their abilities, but actually summoning one was something only Master diabolists were allowed to do. As an apprentice, she was limited to minor works of diablerie, such as concocting armamentaria—the diabolical potions, pills, and powders that were the essence of the Art. Before she advanced beyond that, Miriam would need to pass her Test, and then submit the results of her Practical for judgment by the Société before she would be deemed qualified.

  Even an apprentice diabolist could do much without actually summoning a demon, however. For instance, by using diabolic essences culled from plants and minerals, Miriam had created a potion that let her assess an opponent’s weaknesses if she had to strike out with fist or knife, and a pastille that granted her increased strength and speed. Keeping a phial of the former and a small tin of the latter in her pocket helped Miriam stay calm when she needed to venture into the village.

  The trouble was that the effects of apprentice armamentaria did not last long. Creating them was a process intended to educate, not endure. But once Miriam had summoned her own demon, she, like Nancy, would be a powerful diabolist, capable of ever so much more.

  As she scattered grain on the ground, Miriam’s mind strayed to a different farm, in a different country, where she’d fed different ducks. Her aunt—a real aunt, her father’s sister Rivka, whose farm outside of Weimar had been seized by the Nazis—had also kept poultry, and goats too.

  They’d stopped visiting her long before that, when the laws had made it difficult for their family to do much of anything without being harassed. The last time they all went out as a family, a boy had thrown a stone. A policeman had laughed when it hit Miriam’s father in the back. That was when Miriam’s mother and father had written to Nancy to ask if their daughter could live with her, in England . . .

  No—she could not think on that now. Miriam pushed the memories away, shoving them down inside a shadowed place deep within her that served as a repository for her fear, her rage, and her disappointment. That silent shadowed hollow never judged, never rejected, never asked questions—it just took what she offered it, and absorbed it, and made it go away.

  “All that happened a long time ago,” Miriam said to the ducks and the geese as they nibbled at the grain. She couldn’t let her mind wander away down those unpleasant paths—there was too much to do today in anticipation of the arrival of another “aunt”: Aunt Edith.

  Edith was Nancy’s sister. She, too, was part of the Société, though, unlike Nancy, she was not an elected official. The position of Librarian meant living in the Library, which was here, in rural Hawkshead. Why the Library was in Hawkshead no one knew, but it had been there in various forms since the Middle Ages—long before the Société formed in
Paris, a hundred years ago—and there it would remain after the Société gave way to some new organization, whenever it inevitably did.

  Once she had finished feeding the poultry, Miriam returned to the farmhouse. Nancy was awake and in the kitchen, frying a bit of their weekly ration of bacon in a skillet on the cooktop of her ancient beloved AGA. The smell of it was mouthwatering and, even after all this time, a little guilt-inducing. But hunger was hunger, and rationing was rationing.

  “How are they this morning?” asked Nancy, as Miriam shrugged out of her coat.

  “Snug and warm and fed.” Miriam tied her apron around her waist with a satisfied tug. It was a relief to once again be within four walls and under a sturdy roof.

  “I wish I could say the same,” said Nancy’s daughter, Jane, as she bustled into the kitchen to put on her own apron. “I’m starving!”

  Miriam’s “cousin” had obviously gotten up early to set herself to rights. Jane’s hair was coiffed and shining, and she was already dressed, nicely, in a dark gray skirt and a fashionably stark white blouse. The cardigan she wore over it was also gray, but the color of smoke rather than charcoal.

  Miriam unconsciously glanced down at her tweedy ankle-length skirt. It was one of Nancy’s hemmed and patched-up hand-me-downs, lumpy and too large but suitable for keeping her calves free of muck when she went out to the barns or her legs warm as she worked in the lab and Library. She’d not thought of dressing for Edith’s arrival; perhaps she should have.

  “Is it ready?” asked Jane, reaching for the tea before she even really sat down. “I think I shall starve to death if I have to wait any longer!”

  “Must you be so dramatic?” said Nancy, turning around with a tray full of bacon and toast, which she set down in the center of the scarred wooden kitchen table alongside the small pat of butter they must share. Jane scowled at the word dramatic and slurped her tea.

  “A lady is as a lady does,” remarked Nancy airily, as if this wisdom had just come to her mind unprovoked. At last she sat down and poured herself a cup of tea. Then, from a pocket in her apron, she withdrew a little dropper bottle of smoked glass. She squeezed a bit of clear fluid into her tea before taking her first sip, doctoring the beverage not with milk and sugar, as Miriam liked it, but with a distillate of the essence of her demon, the Patron of Curiosity.