He shook his head. “There is powerful magic at work here. Something stronger than a glamour. A true ward. Someone very much does not want us to know what is happening here tonight.” He glanced down at the invitation in her hand, shrugged, and went up to the gate. There was a bel there, and he rang it, the noise jangling Tessa’s already stretched nerves. She glared at him. He grinned. “ Caelum denique, angel,” he said, and melted away into the shadows, just as the gate before her opened.
A hooded figure stood before her. Her first thought was of the Silent Brothers, but their robes were the color of parchment, and the figure that stood before her was robed in the color of black smoke. The hood hid its face completely. Wordlessly she held out her invitation.
The hand that took it from her was gloved. For a moment the hidden face regarded the invitation. Tessa could not help but fidget. In any ordinary circumstance, a young lady attending a bal alone would be so improper as to be scandalous. But this was no ordinary circumstance. At last, a voice issued from beneath the hood:
“Welcome, Miss Lovelace.”
It was a gritty voice, a voice like skin being scraped over a rough, tearing surface. Tessa’s spine prickled, and she was glad she could not see beneath the hood. The figure returned the invitation to her and stepped back, gesturing her inside; she fol owed, forcing herself not to look around to see if Wil was fol owing.
She was led around the side of the house, down a narrow garden path. The gardens extended for a good distance out around the house, silvery-green in the moonlight. There was a circular black ornamental pond, with a white marble bench beside it, and low hedges, careful y clipped, running alongside neat paths. The path she was on ended at a tal and narrow entrance set into the house’s side. A strange symbol was carved into the door. It seemed to shift and change as Tessa looked at it, making her eyes hurt. She looked away as her hooded companion opened the door and gestured for her to go inside.
She entered the house, and the door slammed behind her. She turned just as it shut, catching a glimpse, she thought, of the face beneath the hood. She thought she had seen something very like a cluster of red eyes in the center of a dark oval, like the eyes of a spider. She caught her breath as the door clicked shut and she was plunged into darkness.
As she reached, blindly, for the handle of the door, light sprang up al around her. She was standing at the foot of a long, narrow staircase that led upward. Torches burning with a greenish flame—not witchlight—ran up the sides of the stairs.
At the top of the stairs was a door. Another symbol was painted on this one. Tessa felt her mouth go even dryer. It was the ouroboros, the double serpent. The symbol of the Pandemonium Club.
For a moment she felt frozen with fear. The symbol brought bleak memories rushing back: the Dark House; the Sisters torturing her, trying to force her to Change; Nate’s betrayal. She wondered what Wil had said to her in Latin before he had vanished. “Courage,” no doubt, or some variant of that. She thought of Jane Eyre, bravely facing down the angry Mr. Rochester; Catherine Earnshaw, who when mauled by a savage dog “did not yel out—no! she would have scorned to do it.” And lastly she thought of Boadicea, who Wil had told her was “braver than any man.”
It’s just a ball, Tessa, she told herself, and reached for the knob. Just a party.
She had never been to a bal before, of course. She knew only a little of what to expect, and al of that was from books. In Jane Austen’s books the characters were constantly waiting for there to be a bal , or arranging a bal , and often an entire vil age seemed to be involved in the planning and location of the bal . Whereas in other books, such as Vanity Fair , they were grand backdrops against which scheming and plotting occurred.