House of Furies (House of Furies #1)
Madeleine Roux
Dedication
For Jane Austen, who definitely doesn’t get enough books
about the occult dedicated to her
For Smidge, who is almost certainly a hellhound in real life
And for Ren, who pulled the sword from the stone
Epigraph
Those who play
with the devil’s toys
will be brought by degrees
to wield his sword.
—R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER
I am Wrath.
I had neither father nor mother:
I leaped out of a lion’s mouth
when I was scarce half an hour old, and ever since I have run up and down the world, with this case of rapiers,
wounding myself when I had nobody to fight withal.
—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE,
THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS
North of England, 1810
My name is Louisa Rose Ditton. I work and live at Coldthistle House, a house for boarders and wanderers. A house owned by the Devil.
The usual reaction, and my own once upon a time, is to give a gasp of outrage if you are of one moral persuasion, a guffaw of skepticism if you’re of another. But I assure you—promise you—that it is so. The Devil owns this house and all of his who live and work within it. The walls are his, and the gardens. The food we eat for sustenance and the sweets we have for pleasure—everything belongs to him, and he gives it to us at his leisure.
It is not so hard a life when you happen to be someone like me. An outcast, a foreigner, and, some would venture, a Changeling. We are all of us odd and cursed in Coldthistle House, and growing more cursed and odd by the day. The only requirement of employment here is to do your job thoroughly and without complaint. My particular post is that of host and maid. I welcome our guests. I tidy their rooms. And when they meet their untimely and certain demises, I see to the mess.
He takes care of us, the Devil, and in return we do as we are told. Cook, clean, sweep, mend, and frighten to death the rogues, villains, and crooks that ever darken the door of Coldthistle House.
Chapter One
Malton, England
Autumn, 1809
The road to Coldthistle House was dark and dangerous. So said the woman taking me there, the English rain driving as slow and steady as the wagon.
She found me at the Malton market, where I told fortunes and read palms for pennies. It earned me clucked tongues and black looks from passersby, God-fearing folk who would alert the local parson and see me driven out of their town. But pennies, even ill-gotten ones, will feed you.
Telling a fortune is no easy thing. Indeed, it appears simple, but to tell the future convincingly, one must make the deed all feel as natural and wending as a river cutting its path. Truly, it comes down to reading what resides in people’s eyes, how they breathe, how their glance shifts, how they dress and walk and hand over their coins.
I was on my last fortune of the morning when the old woman stumbled upon me. The market day would happen rain or shine, and this was another day of rain in a long, drizzly spell of dreary days. Nobody lingered. Nobody but me, it seemed, and I lacked the respectable reasons of the farmers and craftsmen selling their wares.
The girl in front of me blushed and kept her head down under a thick woolen scarf. It matched her plain, sturdy frock and the coat buttoned over it. Little bursts of tufted yellow-and-gray wool peeked through the weave. She had a fanciful streak. A dreamer. Her ruddy cheeks grew redder and redder still as I told her future.
“Ah, I see it now. There is a love in your life,” I said softly, echoing her expression. An old, cheap trick, but it worked. She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded. The teachers at Pitney School had all but beaten the accent out of my voice, but now I let it come back, let the soft Irish lilt color the words the way this girl wanted them colored. Pinks and purples as vivid as her cheeks. “But ’tis not a sure thing, is it?”
“How did you know that?” she whispered, her eyes opening on a gasp.
I didn’t.
A dreamer. A reacher. Truly girls of this age—my age—were as open to me as a map. I’d traded such fortunes for sweets and books at Pitney, risking the rod or worse.
“His family dislikes the match,” I added, studying her closely.
Her expression fell, her gloved hands in mine clutching with a new desperation. “They think I’m low because of the pig farm. But we never go hungry! So much snobbery and over pigs!”
“But he is your true love, aye?” I could not help myself. Just as I needed the pennies to eat and that eating to live, I needed this, too. The power. Did it work every time? No. But when it did . . . The girl nodded, wetting her lips and searching out my gaze.
“I would do anything for him. Anything at all. Oh, if you could only see Peter. If you could see us together! He brings me apples at luncheon, apples he buys with his own coin. And he wrote me a poem, the sweetest poem.”
“A poem?” Well, then they were practically married. I gave her a secretive smile. “I sense a future for you two, but it will not be easy.”
“No?”
“No. ’Tis a hard road unfolding ahead, but if you take the greatest risk, you will reap the greatest reward.” Her mouth fell open a little, the desperate thing, and I let my smile dwindle to deliver her fate. “An elopement is your only hope.”
Running away. A choice that would likely end in the two lovers being disowned and shunned. He might get another chance at a life and a wife, but she would not. The words burned a little in my throat after the fact. Why tell the girl such a thing, Louisa? It felt different, even wrong, when in the past, tricking my snobby schoolmates at Pitney had felt like a personal victory.
The young woman’s eyes widened at me in alarm. “E-Elope?”
It was as if it were a curse, so hesitantly did she say it.
“Or find another to love,” I hastily added. There. Well enough. I had offered an alternative, and that made me feel less the cur for taking the girl’s pennies. The casual way I offered the substitute made her grimace. She did not believe true love was a thing to throw away, as I do. “But you knew that already.”
“Surely I did,” the girl murmured. “I only needed to hear you say it.” She placed two pocket-warmed pennies in my palm and looked up at the gray, sinister clouds. “You have the gift, do you not? You can see the future, tell fates. I see it in your eyes. So dark. Never have I seen eyes so dark or so wise.”
“You’re not the first to say it.”
“I hope I’m the last,” the girl said, frowning. “You should find yourself a better path. A God-fearing path. Maybe it would brighten those eyes.”