But maybe there was no chick at all, I comforted myself. Not every egg was fertilized. My third eye peered under the surface of the shell, through the thickening layers of albumen to the yolk. Traces of life ran in thin streaks of red across the yolk’s surface.
“Fertile,” I said with a sigh. I shifted on my hands. Em and Sarah had kept hens for a while. It took a hen only three weeks to hatch an egg. Three weeks of warmth and care, and there was a baby chicken. It didn’t seem fair that I had to wait months before our child saw the light of day.
Care and warmth. Such simple things, yet they ensured life. What had Matthew said? All that children need is love, a grown-up to take responsibility for them, and a soft place to land. The same was true for chicks. I imagined what it would feel like to be surrounded in a mother hen’s feathery warmth, safely cocooned from bumps and bruises. Would our child feel like that, floating in the depths of my womb? If not, was there a spell for it? One woven from responsibility, that would wrap the baby in care and warmth and love yet be gentle enough to give him both safety and freedom?
“That’s my real desire,” I whispered.
Peep.
I looked around. Many households had a few chickens pecking around the hearth.
Peep. It was coming from the egg on the table. There was a crack, then a beak. A bewildered set of black eyes blinked at me from a feathered head slicked down with moisture.
Someone behind me gasped. I turned. Annie’s hand was clapped over her mouth, and she was staring at the chick on the table.
“Aunt Susanna,” Annie said, dropping her hand. “Is that . . . ?” She trailed off and pointed wordlessly at me.
“Yes. That’s the glaem left over from Mistress Roydon’s new spell. Go. Fetch Goody Alsop.” Susanna spun her niece around and sent her back the way she came.
“I didn’t get the egg into the bowl, Mistress Norman,” I apologized. “The spells didn’t work.”
The still-wet chick set up a protest, one indignant peep after another.
“Didn’t work? I am beginning to think you know nothing about being a witch,” said Susanna incredulously.
I was beginning to think she was right.
20
Phoebe found the quiet at Sotheby’s Bond Street offices unsettling this Tuesday night. Though she’d been working at the London auction house for two weeks, she was still not accustomed to the building. Every sound— the buzzing of the overhead lights, the security guard pulling on the doors to make sure they were locked, the distant sound of recorded laughter on a television—made her jump.
As the junior person in the department, it had fallen on Phoebe to wait behind a locked door for Dr. Whitmore to arrive. Sylvia, her supervisor, had been adamant that someone needed to see the man after hours. Phoebe suspected that this request was highly irregular but was too new in the job to make more than a weak protest.
“Of course you will stay. He’ll be here by seven o’clock,” Sylvia had said smoothly, fingering her strand of pearls before picking up her ballet tickets from the desk. “Besides, you don’t have anywhere else to be, do you?” Sylvia was right. Phoebe had nowhere else to be.
“But who is he?” Phoebe asked. It was a perfectly legitimate question, but Sylvia had looked affronted.
“He’s from Oxford and an important client of this firm. That’s all you need to know,” Sylvia replied. “Sotheby’s values confidentiality, or did you miss that part of your training?”
And so Phoebe was still at her desk. She waited well beyond the promised hour of seven. To pass the time, she went through the files to find out more about the man. She didn’t like meeting people without knowing as much about their background as possible. Sylvia might think all she needed was his name and a vague sense of his credentials, but Phoebe knew different. Her mother had taught her what a valuable weapon such personal information could be when wielded against guests at cocktail parties and formal dinners. Phoebe hadn’t been able to find any Whitmores in the Sotheby archives, however, and his customer number led to a simple card in a locked file cabinet that said “ de Clermont Family—inquire with the president.”
At five minutes to nine, she heard someone outside the door. The man’s voice was gruff yet strangely musical.
“This is the third wild-goose chase you’ve sent me on in as many days, Ysabeau. Please try to remember that I have things to do. Send Alain next time. There was a brief pause. “You think I’m not busy? I’ll call you after I see them.” The man made a muffled oath. “Tell your intuition to take a break, for God’s sake.”
The man sounded strange: half American and half British, with blurred edges to his accent suggesting that these weren’t the only languages he knew. Phoebe’s father had been in the queen’s diplomatic service, and his voice was similarly ambiguous, as though he hailed from everywhere and nowhere.
The bell rang, another shrill sound that made her flinch, despite the fact that Phoebe was expecting it. She pushed away from her desk and strode across the room. She was wearing her black heels, which had cost a fortune but made her look taller and, Phoebe told herself, more authoritative. It was a trick she’d learned from Sylvia at her first interview, when she had worn flats. Afterward she’d vowed never to appear “adorably petite” again.
She looked through the peephole to see a smooth forehead, scruffy blond hair, and a pair of brilliant blue eyes. Surely this wasn’t Dr. Whitmore.
A sudden rap on the door startled her. Whoever this man was, he had no manners. Irritated, Phoebe punched the button on the intercom. “Yes?” she said impatiently.
“Marcus Whitmore here to see Ms. Thorpe.”
Phoebe looked through the peephole once more. Impossible. No one this young would warrant Sylvia’s attention. “Might I see some identification?” she said crisply.
“Where is Sylvia?” The blue eyes narrowed.
“At the ballet. Coppélia, I believe.” Sylvia’s tickets were the best in the house, the extravagance claimed as a business expense. The man on the other side of the door slapped an identification card flat against the peephole. Phoebe reared back. “If you would be so kind as to step away? I can’t see anything at that distance.” The card moved a few inches from the door.
“Really, Miss . . . ?”
“Taylor.”
“Miss Taylor, I am in a hurry.” The card disappeared, replaced by those twin blue beacons. Phoebe drew back again in surprise, but not before she’d made out the name on the card and his affiliation with a scientific research project in Oxford.
It was Dr. Whitmore. What business did a scientist have with Sotheby’s? Phoebe pushed the release for the door.
As soon as the click sounded, Whitmore pushed his way through. He was dressed for a club in Soho, with his black jeans, vintage gray U2 Tshirt, and a ridiculous pair of high-top Converse trainers (also gray). A leather cord circled his neck, and a handful of ornaments of dubious provenance and little worth hung down from it. Phoebe straightened the hem of her impeccably clean white blouse and looked at him with annoyance.
“Thank you,” Whitmore said, standing far closer to her than was normal in polite society. “Sylvia left a package for me.”
“If you would be seated, Dr. Whitmore.” She gestured to the chair in front of her desk.
Whitmore’s blue eyes moved from the chair to her. “Must I? This won’t take long. I’m only here to confirm that my grandmother isn’t seeing zebras where there are only horses.”
“Excuse me?” Phoebe inched toward her desk. There was a security alarm under the desk’s surface, next to the drawer. If the man continued to misbehave, she would use it.