As nearly as Cordelia was able to tell, Peggoty passed her days as a ghost in the same way that she had passed them as a living child—wrapped in some strange dream world, half-awake and half-asleep. What it was that she daydreamed about, no one would ever know, for she lacked the means to tell them.
Whatever it was, she seemed content to “live” there in her daydreams between times when Cordelia needed her.
In that half world of mist and shadow, Cordelia moved, cutting through the mist to wherever it was in the townhouse that Peggoty had put herself. She could have summoned the child to her, of course, but she knew from past experience that would frighten the waif, who associated being “called” with punishment. Normally, this would not be a problem, but if Isabelle’s pupil was somehow able to see and interact with Peggoty, the last thing that Cordelia wanted was for Peggoty to cling to that little girl for protection.
No, Cordelia wanted Peggoty to be her usual dreamy self, with nothing to cause alarm in her behavior. That way, the worst that would happen if she were discovered would be that Isabelle would succeed in sending Peggoty on to the next world—
Wherever, whatever the “next world” was for Peggoty. She was such a passive little spirit that “the next world” might only consist of a brighter version of the fog of dreams she moved through now.
Passing through the real world in her ghostly equivalent, Cordelia found Peggoty physically haunting the attic of her town house. The child stood dreamily at the window staring at what to her must have been a sea of gray, marked only by vague, shadowy forms, appearing, disappearing, looking more like ghosts to her than she did to the world of the living. Even here, halfway into the spirit world as Cordelia was, the child was nothing more than a wispy wraith, a sketch in the air of transparent white on dark gray. Although her head, hands, and chest were detailed enough, the rest of her was blurred, as if the drawing was incomplete and unfinished.
“Peggoty,” said Cordelia, in her sweetest, gentlest voice.
The child turned and looked up at her mistress with large, dark eyes in a colorless face, a face thin with years of constant near-starvation, and as expressionless as a tombstone. Those eyes seemed to look through her, and Cordelia, although she was used to that look, still felt just a fraction or two colder than she had a moment before.
“Peggoty, I need you to go and find someone,” Cordelia continued. “It is another little girl.”
There was one thing that the Berkeley Square misadventure had produced; a handful of small feathers, gray and black. Peggoty could not touch them, of course, but she could get a kind of “scent” from them, and follow it the way a bloodhound would follow an actual scent.
Of course, Cordelia could have used the feathers to locate the girls with magic—had they not been protected by Masters of all four Elements. Cordelia made no mistake in underestimating her opponents just because they were women. They were, in fact, rather more likely to be supremely competent than not.
Any magical probe would be met by alarms, and if she was very unlucky, the instant response from whoever was responsible for setting up the Fire Wards. Cordelia knew that she was good, but she was not good enough to erase her tracks before another Master could identify her. Her magical “signature” was quite unique.
But a spirit, especially a harmless little thing like Peggoty, could slip in and out without ever being noticed.
She led Peggoty to her workroom, drifting through the walls, where she had left one of the tiny feathers on the table, and Peggoty’s big eyes rested on it. “The little girl I want you to find has a bird, and this is one of its feathers. If you find the bird, you’ll find the girl. I want you to go and find her, and when you do, come back here and show me where she is. Can you do that?”
Peggoty nodded, slowly, her eyes fixed on the tiny feather as she “read” whatever it was that told her where it had come from. Then, without looking again at Cordelia, the wraith turned in the air and floated silently through the wall.
Cordelia sighed, and with a mental wrench, brought herself straight back into her own body again.
This would take time, but Peggoty did not need to sleep, did not even tire, and was not easily distracted once she had been set a task. Perhaps the children enjoyed being given tasks as a change in the unvarying condition of their lives. It was difficult to tell, especially with one like Peggoty, who had never been a normal child.
Of course, the annoying thing was that none of this would have been needed if Cordelia had just been born a man.
She rose carefully from her chair—carefully, because after a session like this she was rather stiff—and left her workroom. After the chill of that room, the summer warmth felt like the sultry breath of a hothouse in July, and she winced. Burgeoning growth… meant burgeoning decay.
There had been another tiny line in her face again today, near the corner of her eye. She had preserved her beauty for so long—but even magic could not hold time back forever, it seemed.
Soon people would stop wondering if David was her lover and start wondering if David was her son.
It was enough to make her break into a rage, but rages were aging, and she had already indulged in one today.
If she had been born a man, no one would think twice about wrinkles and gray hair. In fact, such signs of aging would have been marks of increased wisdom and she would have more respect, not less, for possessing them.
Galling, to have to depend on someone else for the power she should rightfully have had on her own. And doubly galling to see David making his own decisions, without consulting her, as he had been doing more and more regularly of late.
She hated summer. She hated the heat, the unrestrained growth of nature. She hated being forced to relocate to that wretched house on the Thames just so she could continue to attract the right people to her parties. She hated the relaxation of etiquette that summer brought, although the relaxation of conversation was useful, very useful—but the same relaxation could be brought about with the proper application of fine spirits and a warm room.
It was far, far more difficult to collect children to make into her ghostly servants in the summer. Sleeping in alleys and staircases, even on rooftops and in doorways was no longer such a hardship in summer. It was easier to find food; things spoiled by the heat were tossed out all the time. Haunting the farmers’ markets brought plenty of bruised and spoiled fruit and vegetables. They didn’t come to her recruiters, and it was harder to summon the cold to kill them.
She stood at the window, looking out unseeing at the street just beyond her walls.
It was such a waste, too… those lives, those years that she could use, that youth she needed, all going for nothing. There was no way to capture that youth and transfer it to someone else, and even if she could, there still remained the insurmountable barrier of her sex. As long as she was a woman, she would never be taken seriously enough to achieve any kind of power in her own name. She breathed in the scent of summer life, green and warm, and hated it. From hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and from hour to hour we rot and rot, and thereby hangs a tale, Shakespeare had said. Ripe turned to rot all too soon, but sooner for women than men.
And it was a bit too late now to try masquerading as a man. Even if she wanted to. It would take far too long to establish that male persona in the position to which she had gotten David. The door of opportunity was slowly closing.