Creatures of Charm and Hunger Read online

  In order for diabolists to comfortably maintain contact with their demons, they had to regularly consume their essences. Every diabolist had their preferred way of doing so, some more elaborate or decadent than others. Nancy, being a no-muss, no-fuss sort of woman, produced a tincture from the unusually beautiful and robust chives she cultivated in pots on her sunniest windowsill.

  “And speaking of dressing nicely,” said Nancy, after taking a sip, “I don’t know why you’ve done that so early. You still have to dust and sweep, you know! I won’t have you begging off smartening up the house just because you’ve already smartened up yourself.”

  “But I dusted and swept yesterday!” cried Jane.

  “It could do with another going-over. This time, use the dust rag on the woodwork instead of talking to it like it’s Clark Gable.”

  For a while now it had been Jane’s joy to go see every picture she could at the theatre in Ambleside. She talked endlessly to Miriam about the sophistication and beauty of the women on the silver screen, but Miriam had only Jane’s word for how wonderful they were. She had never gone. It was five miles to Ambleside, and the thought of the bus made Miriam dizzy. In a way, though, she felt she’d seen Meet Me in St. Louis, Cover Girl, and other films; Jane liked to talk over the plots after she got back, doing impressions of the actresses Miriam knew only from still photographs in Jane’s magazines.

  Jane was good at impressions—so good she’d managed to incorporate a few little turns of speech and gestures into her everyday manners. And as they were at that age where it was common for girls to quickly become young ladies, only Miriam was pained by her friend growing up.

  Nancy, for her part, seemed to find it amusing.

  “Edith won’t arrive until around two, so you’ve plenty of time to do your chores and reapply that lipstick before we leave if it gets smudged. Yes, I noticed,” said Nancy, who disapproved of cosmetics. Miriam thought that a bit funny, given that Nancy was a Master diabolist; most people would likely see trafficking with demons as a far greater offense against nature than a bit of mascara.

  Jane looked like a little girl as she sullenly poked at her breakfast.

  “You’ll trip over that lip if you don’t pick it up,” said Nancy, but her teasing did little to mollify her daughter. “Oh, come now. What would your beloved Edith have to say if she saw you like that?”

  “Mother!”

  That was another change—Jane had always called her mother “Mum” until lately.

  “Oh, come now. If you’d known Edie as long as I have, you wouldn’t feel there was some great need to make yourself up for her,” said Nancy. “She was once your age, you know—and a lot wilder and more scabby-kneed than either of you.”

  “Scabby-kneed!”

  Miriam was now the sullen one as she stared at her plate. Jane’s affected horror at this information exasperated her. Why should it surprise Jane that Edith had had to put away childish things, just like anyone else? Did Jane really believe her aunt had sprung forth into the world as a stylish adult?

  And anyway, squeamishness was not for the ambitious when it came to the Art. Master diabolists saved their hair trimmings, their nail clippings, their scabs, sometimes even their menstrual fluid—anything that could become infused with the essences that diabolists regularly consumed to maintain their connection with their demons. Some diabolists had been known to harvest permanent parts of their own bodies in the service of empowering a particularly powerful preparation—such things could be rendered down to enhance the overall potency of diabolic armamentaria. Scabby knees weren’t a patch on, say, extracting one’s own perfectly healthy molar.

  But Miriam didn’t say any of this. She took a discreet, calming breath and pushed her annoyance and anger down inside her, where the shadow within her welcomed her feelings with open arms.

  “Edie played rugby with our brothers until the day she moved away,” said Nancy.

  “And yet she seems so civilized. I suppose there’s hope for me yet,” said Jane, before finally stabbing a piece of bacon with her fork.

  “Oh, no,” said Nancy, with an appraising look at her daughter. “There’s no hope for you—or there won’t be if you don’t finish your breakfast and your chores.”

  Jane’s childish, long-suffering sigh made Miriam smile to herself, but she quickly sobered when her aunt turned her attention to her.

  “Aren’t you excited about Edith’s visit, Miriam?”

  Nancy’s question caught her off guard.

  “Of course I’m excited,” she said, but when that sounded a bit flabby even to her own ears, Miriam added, “I’ve been wanting to ask Edith about her research into diabolically enhanced cosmetics. I think it might help me understand the theory behind the Fifth Transmutation.”

  This was all true. The only lie was in what she’d omitted.

  “Oh, I’d like to hear that too.” Jane wasn’t pouting now. She was bright, alert, and focused: the Jane that Miriam liked.

  Jane was also an apprentice diabolist. They’d learned side by side since Miriam had come to stay, but they couldn’t be more different. Where Miriam was pleased to think through the theoretical aspects of an act of diablerie before attempting it, Jane jumped right in to learn how deep the water was.

  “The Fifth Transmutation is necessary when attempting Campanella’s Substantive Exchange,” said Jane. Jane was currently working her way through the Twelve Transmutations, a set of practical exercises. “I can’t quite parse it, and I’d like to see a practical demonstration. The Grimoire Italien says that demonic vapors and their impure properties are beneficial, but it’s not clear if it means for the demon or the diabolist.”

  “The Grimoire Italien? Are you using the French translation of Trasformazioni della Materia?” asked Miriam. Jane nodded. “Oh!” said Miriam. “In the original medieval Italian, that passage is a bit clearer. The demon benefits, but there’s also a chance that . . .” Miriam trailed off as she saw Jane blushing angrily.

  Miriam winced. The learning of ancient languages was not among Jane’s talents—which was nothing to be ashamed of, in Miriam’s opinion. Still, she should have remembered how sensitive Jane was about it.

  “Miriam, as usual you’re not only correct, but your scholarship is impressively thorough,” said Nancy.

  Nancy’s notice always thrilled Miriam, but it was hard for her to accept the compliment with Jane looking so unhappy and embarrassed.

  “I wish I’d known you were reading that,” said Miriam. “The modern Italian translation is better, and I have it in my room to compare with the medieval, since the medieval is a bother to read. It’s barely even Italian, really—just a dog’s breakfast of medieval Venetian vernacular mixed with Latin.”

  “Thank you,” said Jane, with the sort of formality and poise she usually reserved for impressions of her favorite actresses. “I’d be pleased to look at it when you can spare it.”

  “Later,” said Nancy, with a tone that conveyed exactly what the girls ought to be doing just then.

  Miriam began to clear the dishes, as keeping the kitchen tidy was one of her responsibilities. Jane, too, stood up from the table, but as she did, a great yowl split the air and a soft gray blur of wounded dignity streaked out the kitchen, the bell of his collar jangling merrily.

  “Poor Smudge!” Jane, dismayed, hurried after the cat to check on him.

  “You’d think one day he’d learn that sitting behind Jane’s chair will only get him a pinched tail,” said Miriam.

  “Perhaps he enjoys the attention,” said Nancy, as she wrapped the remaining bread in a cloth. “I’m off to the stacks, my dear.”

  “All right.”

  “I hope you’ll join us when we walk into the village? I think it’ll be a lovely day in spite of the cold, and a merry party once Edie arrives.”

  Miriam managed a smile even as her stomach churned at the thought of the long walk away from their safe, quiet home into the relative chaos that was Hawkshead. But she loved
Nancy very much and wanted to please her—no, more than that: she wanted to be the sort of person who pleased Nancy.

  “Of course!”

  Miriam was rewarded with a smile. “I’m very glad,” said Nancy. “Now, I must see to a few things before my sister takes up all my waking hours. Ciao!” And with that, Nancy swept out of the room with more flair than was strictly necessary.

  For all she was hard on Jane for being “dramatic,” Nancy, too, had a bit of the theatrical about her. And as with Jane, it came out even more when Edith visited.

  2

  * * *

  SMUDGE WAS FINE, OF COURSE. The large gray tomcat just liked to make a scene. Jane knew that, but running after him had been a good excuse to get out of the kitchen so she could fume alone, in peace.

  She was cross with her mother for being her mother, and she was cross at herself for being angry at Miriam. Miriam hadn’t meant to embarrass her, Jane knew that, but she had been embarrassed just the same.

  Miriam and Nancy might not be related by blood, but they were more similar for that lack, as far as Jane could tell. While Jane might look like her mother (albeit a plainer version), Miriam thought like her. They came at problems in the same way; enjoyed the learning of languages and the quiet rustle of the turning page. They even shared a middle name: Cornelia, after the sixteenth-century diabolist Cornelius Agrippa.

  Jane was glad for it. Mostly. She wanted Miriam to feel like a real part of their family, and of course that was helped by her having a real connection to Nancy. It was just hard, being the odd one out—and it was especially hard knowing Nancy wished her daughter was a little bit more like her ward.

  But Jane could only be who she was—and she was someone who felt a healthy respect for the how and the why of the Art . . . but when it came down to it, Jane would really rather just do.

  Jane’s mother always said that “doing” was too dangerous a method of learning many of the skills diabolists regularly relied upon. That was for “wild” diabolists, as her mother called them—practitioners of the Art who learned it without the safe and effective teachings of the Société.

  Jane had no desire to be a wild diabolist—she wanted to be a Master, with all its attendant privileges. But there was no rule in the Société’s criteria for Mastery that said Jane had to enjoy the theoretical part.

  Nor was there any rule about the way an aspiring Master had to think through certain diabolical problems, as far as Jane could tell. While it might please her mother and Miriam to come at every question like two scientists in a laboratory, Jane was free to think of herself as a wielder of arcane powers—as long as the results of her efforts were successful, it shouldn’t matter. So much of the Art was about imagination, and about using one’s will to change what was possible. But every time Jane used the language of the occult to explain her reasoning, her mother would try to weed it out of her like an obsessed gardener.

  “We’re not witches, Jane,” her mother had said to her, time and again.

  And that was true. But it was also true that neither were they scientists.

  While it was possible that Nancy wasn’t as disappointed by Jane as Jane sometimes thought, it was also true that she rarely praised her daughter often or lavishly. Indeed, it was almost better at times not to hear how her mother thought her efforts good, said in that earnest but unenthusiastic way that managed to convey that perhaps if Jane tried a wee bit harder, Nancy might think her efforts very good or even excellent.

  Jane had once been able to talk to Miriam about these sorts of feelings, but no longer—not since she realized that in many ways Miriam agreed with Nancy about Jane’s study habits and methods, and also about Jane’s eagerness to begin the process of transforming into the distinctive young lady she’d like to one day become.

  She found Smudge by the front stairs, sitting on a middle step. She plunked down next to him, and the cat crawled, purring, into her lap, a sure sign that all was forgiven. The feel of his silky fur under her fingers was soothing, and when she scratched him behind the ears and under the chin, his eyes closed in feline bliss.

  “Oh, Smudge,” she sighed. “You understand, don’t you?”

  Smudge cracked open one yellow eye as if acknowledging her words. She ruffled his ears, and he nipped her on the hand hard enough to leave a wine-colored indentation in her skin before dashing upstairs as if the devil—or more probably, a demon—were after him.

  She needed to get to dusting anyway.

  Her mother had been right; Jane had made a hash of her chores the day before. But not because she was thinking about Clark Gable—or anyone else, for that matter.

  Talking aloud through a problem often helped Jane figure out the answer, and yesterday Jane had been muttering over her latest unsuccessful attempt to make a broomstick fly. Not just any broomstick, either—the fancy one she’d bought in London with Edith last year with the polished black handle and black stitching keeping the bristles secured. Beautiful as it was, it had been unaffected by an armamentarium of flight Jane had made from a bit of dried lemon peel infused with the essence of a demon colloquially called Seven Clouds. An Egyptian diabolist, renowned for her ability to levitate, had sent it to her via a tricky little piece of diablerie involving a simulacrum of a seagull. When it had landed on Jane’s windowsill, reeking of fish and salt, it was so lifelike—but after it vomited up a wooden box, it had dissolved into smoke that smelled of autumn’s first wood fire.

  It hurt that Nancy assumed her daughter’s thoughts were so frivolous, especially given the ambitious undertaking Jane was attempting—so ambitious it might, in fact, be impossible.

  Magical items like the fairy dust of Peter Pan, the flying carpet of One Thousand and One Nights, or—Jane’s favorite—the witch’s broomstick had captured the public imagination since time immemorial. But actually getting objects—let alone people—to fly was seemingly impossible, even for a Master diabolist.

  Therefore, to do so as an apprentice would be quite a feather in Jane’s cap, if she could manage it.

  Most diabolists who wished to fly made the Pact with a demon that granted such an ability. But Jane had looked at the Bilinen Şeytanların Kitabı—The Book of Known Demons—and none of those demons seemed like her idea of a life’s companion. Especially Seven Clouds; beyond granting levitation, all it did for its diabolist was “calm the nerves,” and Jane could make herself a cup of tea for that.

  And anyway, she didn’t want to levitate. She wanted to fly. Diabolists were like unto gods and goddesses; why should they not have the powers of such?

  As she rinsed out her dust rag in the kitchen sink, Jane blushed, her eyes tracking nervously toward the door to the stairs of the Library. Her mother would not like to know that such a thought had crossed Jane’s mind. Nancy was always quick to remind them that diabolists were not gods; they were not kings and queens.

  Fine with Jane. She didn’t want to rule anyone. Plenty of gods didn’t seem to care a fig for the struggles of men. They just wanted to have a good time, and that was Jane’s goal too. She longed to escape Hawkshead and Cumbria altogether so she might go on adventures in the deserts of Egypt wearing gauzy white; attend parties in fabulous flats in Paris wearing scandalous, alluring black, a color currently forbidden to her by her mother because, well . . .

  We’re not witches, Jane.

  Jane sincerely hoped her mother would enjoy the taste of her own words when Jane was zooming about the countryside on a broomstick like Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz.

  Jane didn’t have her own looking glass, much to her chagrin, and the bathroom’s tin mirror revealed what could be only charitably described as an Impressionist interpretation of her face. For her final inspection, only her mother’s vanity would do, so just before noon, Jane took off her apron and went upstairs to see if she was at all mussed from her labors. But when she entered Nancy’s rooms, she found the vanity already occupied.

  “I don’t know why braiding my hair makes me fly to pieces w
hen I can create a potion of binding from memory,” snarled Miriam.

  Jane felt an overwhelming rush of affection for her friend that did much to dispel her earlier pique.

  “Let’s see what we can do,” she said, coming up behind Miriam. She freed Nancy’s comb from where her friend held it twisted in her fingers and then set to detangling the mess before her. There was no salvaging any of whatever Miriam had been trying to do; they’d have to start over entirely. Jane began by trying to find all the pins in Miriam’s hair with her nimble fingers.

  Jane envied the dark waves that cascaded over Miriam’s shoulders. Her own mousy-brown tresses were so thin and fine that there were few fashionable styles that looked well on her—oh, to have Hedy Lamarr’s mane to start out with!

  “Let’s do a few pinned rolls and then use a ribbon,” she said, running the brush through Miriam’s hair. A bit of blue would accentuate her friend’s dark hair and high color.

  “I trust you,” said Miriam.

  “You’ll look beautiful,” said Jane. It was true, she would, with her big dark eyes and her thick brows that would make Miriam really stand out if only she’d let Jane tame them a bit.

  But, of course, the last thing Miriam wanted was to stand out.

  “You manage it so easily,” sighed Miriam, as her hair began to take on an actual shape and style.

  “I find it fun,” said Jane. “A harmless distraction from the war, if a bit pointless when one lives in a tiny village. Why, the only person around our age who lives within ten miles and seems remotely thoughtful is the blacksmith’s son—hey!”

  Miriam had lurched around, her elbow narrowly missing the box of hairpins Jane had set upon the vanity. “Sam?” she asked, mouth hanging open in childish astonishment. “Do you fancy him?”