Phoenix and Ashes Read Online Free Page B

happened. That
night and the nights and days that followed had given her the answer, which
only posed more questions. And if she told anyone—not that she ever
saw
anyone to tell them—they’d think her mad.
    For
it was madness, to believe in magic in these days of Zepps and gasworks and
machine guns.
    Nevertheless,
Alison was a witch, or something like one, and Warrick Locke was a man-witch,
and Lauralee and Carolyn were little witch’s apprentices (although they
weren’t very good at anything except what Alison called “sex
magic” and Eleanor would have called “vamping”).
Alison’s secret was safe enough, and Eleanor was bound to the kitchen
hearth of her own home and the orders of her stepmother by the severed finger
of her left hand, buried under a piece of flagstone.
    She
dipped the brush in the soapy water and moved over to the next stone. Early,
fruitless trials had proved that she could not go past the walls of the kitchen
garden nor the step of the front door. She could get that far, and no farther,
for her feet would stick to the ground as if nailed there, and her voice turn
mute in her throat so that she could not call for help. And when Alison gave
her an order reinforced by a little twiddle of fingers and a burst of sickly
yellow light, she might as well be an automaton, because her body followed that
order until Alison came to set her free.
    When
her hand had healed, but while she was still a bit lightheaded and weak, Alison
had made her one and only appearance in Eleanor’s room. Before Eleanor
had been able to say anything, she had made that
gesture
, and Eleanor
had found herself frozen and mute. Alison, smirking with pleasure, explained
the new situation to her.
    Her
stepdaughter had not been in the least inclined to take that explanation at
face value.
    Eleanor
sighed and brushed limp strands of hair out of her eyes, sitting back on her
heels to rest for a moment. Under the circumstances, you would have thought
that the moment would have been branded into her memory, but all she could
really remember was her rage and fear, warring with each other, and Alison
lording it over her. And then a word, and her body, no longer her own, marching
down to the kitchen to become Mrs.Bennett’s scullery maid and tweenie.
    Perhaps
the eeriest and most frightening part of that was that Mrs.Bennett and
all
the help acted, from that moment on, as if that was the way things had always
been. They seemed to have forgotten her last name, forgotten who she really
was. She became “Ellie” to them, lowest in the household hierarchy,
the one to whom all the most disagreeable jobs were given.
    The
next days and weeks and months were swallowed up in anger and despair, in
fruitless attempts to break free, until her spirit was worn down to nothing,
the anger a dull ache, and the despair something she rose up with in the morning
and lay down with at night.
    She
even knew
why
Alison had done this—not that the knowledge helped
her any.
    She,
and not Alison, was the true owner of The Arrows, the business, and fourteen
manufactories that were making a great deal of profit now, turning out sacks
for sandbags to make trench-walls, and barricades, and ramparts along the
beaches… for in all of her plotting and planning, Alison had made one
tiny mistake. She had bewitched Charles Robinson into marrying her, she had
bespelled him into running off to be killed at Ypres, but she had forgotten to
get him to change his will. And not even Warrick Locke could do anything about
that, for the will had been locked up in the safe at the Robinsons’
solicitor’s office and it was the solicitor, not Alison, who was the
executor of the will. There was no changing it, and only because Eleanor was
underage was Alison permitted to act as her guardian and enjoy all the benefits
of the estate. That was why she had been so angry, the night that the death notice
came
.
    And
after Warrick Locke investigated further, that was why she was forced