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"You succeed Do you think Fernando could rescue Sarah?" I lowered my voice "The house has jammed the stillroo to need a cigarette when she gets out, and a stiff drink"

"Fernando hasn’t rescued a woman in distress for some time, but I’m sure he remembers how,"

Matthew assured me "Will the house let him?"

"Give it five minutes or until the music stops, whichever comes first" I pulled free and blew him a kiss It had rather h air behind it to land with a decided smack on his cheek

I returned to the worktable and dipped my mother’s quill pen into the ink It smelled of blackberries and walnuts Thanks toimplements, I was able to write out the charle splotch

[des: see comment above; spells have been styled as poetry; author had

thee she intends this one to be an ovoid shape, like a

htently to set the ink Very respectable, I decided It was h for children to re rubbed off, I’d write the charer to shoork to Sarah, I slid down from the stool One look at her face convinced me to put it off untilfor decades that I’d show an interest in rade in Sleeping Charhostly presence aas soft as down settled around my shoulders

"Nice job, peanut," whispered a familiar voice "Excellent taste inexcept a faint sreen, but I didn’t need to see my father to know that he was there

"Thanks, Dad," I said softly

11

Matthew took the news about ic better than expected He had long suspected that so existed between the hoht spectacles of eleic He was not at all surprised that I, in another ic What shocked hih my mother’s blood

"I’ll have to take a closer look at yourone of ood" It was the first tienetic research Days had gone by without any e

And while he enetic information bound up in Ashmole 782, I had not Once we had theto need his scientific skills to decipher it

"You’re right There’s definitely blood in it, as well as resin and acacia" Mattheirled the ink around Acacia, I’d learned this uht as much The inks used in Ashmole 782 had blood in it, too It ht," I said

"There’s so ives it that exotic scent" I ru else to catch his biochemical curiosity

"That and the blood, of course," Matthew said drily

"If it’s ht on ic, too"

"Hmm," Matthew said noncommittally

"What about this one?" I drew the stopper out of a bottle of blue-green liquid, and the scent of a suarden filled the air

"That’s reen ink in London?"

"So this is what Master Platt’s fantastically expensive ink looked like!" I laughed

"Made from roots imported from Florence Or so he said" Matthew surveyed the table and its blue, red, black, green, purple, and h ink to keep you going for soh the next feeeks And that was as far as I illing to project, even ifin anticipation of the future

"This should be plenty, even with all the jobs Sarah has for reed Each of the open jars on the table had a s handwriting "Mosquito bites," read one "Better cell-phone reception," read another Her requests made me feel like a server at a fast-food restaurant "Thanks for your help"

"Anytiood-bye

Over the next few days, the routines of daily life began to anchor us to the Bishop house and to each other--even without the steadying presence of Eravity

Fernando was a does to Sarah’s diet and exercise plan were radical and inflexible He signed raetables like kale and chard every week, and he walked the property’s fence line with her whenever she tried to sneak a cigarette Fernando cooked and cleaned and even plu about his life with Hugh

"When we didn’t have servants--and that was often the case--I kept the house," he explained, hanging up clothes on the line "If I’d waited for Hugh to do it, we’d have lived in squalor He didn’t pay attention to such mundane h was either writing poetry or planning a three-e There was no tilass?" I asked, handing hilass is worse Not even the furniture--or lack of it--ht to find our house robbed and Gallowglass sleeping on the table like a Viking warrior ready to be sent out to sea" Fernando shook his head "Besides, I enjoy the work Keeping house is like preparing weapons for battle It’s repetitive and very soothing" His confession

Fernando’s other domain, aside from the kitchen, was the toolshed He’d cleared out as broken, cleaned and sharpened what re, like a scythe The edges on the rose secateurs were now so keen you could slice a tomato with the common household i us for coiot cranky--which was often--she took it out on the house It was still not fully awake, but periodic rus of activity re to a close Most of its energy was directed at Sarah Oneoke to find that all the liquor in the house had been dumped down the sink and a makeshift mobile of eht fixture