Sorcerers, Spirits, and Ships Read online

Annabella looked around them. “How are we supposed to get you into your rounds as the Duke and still cover that?”

  Smiling, Tillie answered. “It won’t be that hard. The two of you will take on this one last job, together this time, and then you’ll return to his new duties as the Duke.”

  Annabella didn’t look convinced, but Armand tried to reassure her. “The rumors may be nothing. At worst, it will probably be a simple exorcism. I doubt it will even last a couple of days.”

  Annabella raised an eyebrow but wasn’t allowed to go on, Tillie interrupting.

  “It looks like you’ve got it all in hand. Don’t forget about visiting Freddie in the basement . . . well, the dungeons.”

  Annabella looked even more surprised, and Armand tried to hide his smile. Although she had been living in this house—castle, really—for a few years as Errol’s secretary, there had been quite a few secrets kept from her before.

  Like the fact that magic even existed.

  Her voice was pointed. “You’re keeping someone in the dungeon?”

  She appeared ready to run to their immediate rescue.

  “No-no,” Tillie shook her head. “He’s a troll, and he’s much more comfortable down there than in one of the guest rooms. He threatened to quit the last time we put him in the Blue-Paneled Room.”

  Annabella just stared at her. “I’m not surprised. Those panels have satyrs on them, and what some of them are doing to the women around them would make a porn star blush.”

  Hmm, okay. Scratch the garden walk. Annabella and I need to examine those panels.

  Giving a small “pfft,” Tillie waved away her concern.

  “Three dukes before Errol was a satyr. Believe me, his partner was delighted by those panels.” She rolled her eyes. “He will not shut up about them.”

  Armand broke in. “Living in the dungeons probably has more to do with his size. Trolls are often 400-500 pounds with very dense bones. Put them in a delicate, antique bed, and it’s in splinters before they’ve barely sat down.”

  Tillie nodded. “Besides, Freddie has a unicorn companion, and, if you like your linens, you do not put a unicorn in a bed.”

  Annabella seemed to reluctantly agree, as Tillie went on.

  “Just let him do his gardening and go down from time to time to see if he needs anything, and he’ll be quite contented.”

  As Tillie nodded a goodbye, Errol waving behind her, Armand hoped so, and the mirror went back to only being a mirror. Despite Duke Boot Camp, he really didn’t feel ready for this job.

  Smiling, Annabella looked once more like the woman she’d become these last few months, taking his arm and leaning into him. “You’ll be fine, My Lord.” Her eyes shone.

  Part of him wanted to encourage the wicked glow, especially since she’d started calling him that in bed occasionally. Neither of them were complaining about the results—and he couldn’t imagine a time they wouldn’t be gleeful equals.

  “I’m certain of it,” she beamed.

  Sighing, he nodded. With her at his side, he hoped so.

  Fighting demons, he was good at. Acting as though he were to the manor born was going to take a lot more work.

  Chapter 2

  Annabella

  As a child, Annabella had wondered what it would be like to have an animal companion. Somehow the staring contest she was having with an extremely beautiful woman hadn’t been part of that imagined world.

  Finally, she spoke, which was probably an ex-cat victory, but whatever.

  “All right, Sheba. You may have that blue dress.”

  The cat/woman was already wearing it anyway, so why make a fuss? Besides, it was silky and clung to Sheba’s every curve as though it were in love with her. On Annabella, it more resembled a sack.

  “But you may not wear it without underwear.”

  Annabella saw her start to open her mouth.

  “I know you don’t like them, but you cannot be let out around strange men looking like that.”

  Because, especially with her catlike aura, the outfit pretty much put out a Hey, baby! sign to anyone passing.

  Sheba sulked slightly and started to slink away.

  “Hubert will take you to a lingerie store.”

  It would serve the man right for the way he’d laughed when she’d first started trying to learn magical words. Sorceress she might be becoming, but her language skills still sucked, and magical words had originated in all portions of the globe. Hopefully Brutus, who was always with his old master and friend, would survive the longing of sitting and watching Sheba choose her undies.

  Armand, who was sitting on the bed near her, gave her a look which was half-amusement and half-concern, which was pretty standard lately. The man loved her, but he sometimes didn’t seem to get her.

  Still, seeing him sitting there made her start pondering ways to get everyone else out of the house for other, definite reasons. His modern black suit fit him beautifully well, emphasizing the tone he’d gained from years of fighting all the meaner denizens of the magical world. His long, auburn hair was down to his shoulders and showed a few of the curls he tried so hard to hide, and the green eyes in that handsome face just made her want to climb into his lap.

  Sadly, now wasn’t the time.

  Her warning look was the only sign of what she was about to do, which sort of backed up why she left him so perpetually confused, as, with an effort, she refocused on Sheba.

  It occurred to her that most women were very lucky that there weren’t more ex-cats in the world. Sheba was beyond beautiful, so much so that no other woman could compete. And the fact that there was this sweet sort of innocence to her, too, just made anyone with eyes want to hold her. Although Annabella didn’t really swing that way, she understood why poor Brutus drooled.

  It also meant that she had to play the wet-blanket, maiden-aunt chaperone to her—or would soon, anyway.

  “You’ll need them if you’re going to join us on the Queen Mary.”

  Armand’s eyes went wide, but he said nothing in front of his ex-pet.

  Sheba’s eyes went even wider but she let out an excited, “Mweorl!” and took off down the hall, although whether to tell Brutus or to demand that Hubert take her to that store right now was uncertain.

  “And no cat noises!” Annabella yelled after her. There was only so much they could explain away to the mundanes.

  Waiting for a moment, undoubtedly to be certain the ex-cat was out of hearing, Armand moved closer to his partner. Probably understandably, he looked worried.

  “She’s not ready for that.”

  Sighing, Annabella put her hand over his. They’d both been packing their suitcases for this last akukar job, and, honestly, the magic had been helpful. One small bag couldn’t otherwise hold several of his—or her—immaculate suits plus other necessities and all that exorcism equipment.

  In a lot of ways, she was sorry to always be springing things on him, but she had started to understand her new role, too, in a way she never had when Tillie had been occupying it with Errol. The duke’s main assistant was the guiding force, the one who made all the real decisions which the duke then claimed to be his. She was the one no one really noticed, the silent presence half a step behind him.

  It was why—although, apparently, it was normal for her to be the duke’s actual partner—it was traditional to pretend that there was no romantic relationship between them. The duke was the actor, ever on stage, both looking for and making connections between souls who should be together as well as deflecting the questions of those who might wonder about whether anything he claimed were true. It was he who would have to maneuver through an entire ballroom of people, charming, manipulating, softly coercing, while the assistant sailed along quietly in his wake.

  He didn’t have time to make big plans. He had to concentrate on being “on.”

  Sometime, Annabella thought, they really should discuss this, as it had to be difficult for him to adjust to the change in her. When they’d met, she�
�d been a scared and completely ignorant girl. By a few days later, she had been—quite literally—controlling almost every aspect of his life. Had their positions been reversed, she doubted she would have been comfortable, although Armand somehow never objected.

  Still, now wasn’t the time. Now was a time to talk about cats and Queens.

  “She needs this,” Annabella assured him, just as she saw a clair-lume message Hubert had sent sparkling before her eyes.

  It read: Fine. But you are SO going to be studying transmogrification when I get back.

  Annabella groaned, and Armand let out a chuckle, as he too knew it was the subject she hated the most. He still carried around her first assignment, which was supposed to be turning a matchstick into a compass. Instead, she’d created a small, green mechanical frog which croaked whenever danger was near. Clearly, it wasn’t where her magical talents—whatever those might prove to be—lay.

  Still, Armand looked back to her, waiting for more. At least they could talk without ex-cat interruptions for a while.

  She put her hand on his arm, trying to explain.

  “I know you still see her as a cat, and she’s a companion you love, but she’s not an animal anymore. You can’t just leave her some magically-refilling food and a self-cleaning litter box and walk away for a couple of months.”

  Armand had the grace to wince slightly. “I did have friends drop in to sit with her from time to time. I really didn’t abandon her completely.”

  “I know that, but does she?”

  Granted, she’d never been lucky enough to have a pet, but she’d known people who had.

  “From what I can tell, a dog or cat is convinced you’ve left for good if you even go away for a few hours. A few months must feel like you don’t love them and never did.”

  Pushing his suitcase out of his way, Armand sighed and sat down. “I never really thought of it like that.”

  Smiling at him gently, she didn’t go into this. In some ways, Armand had lived a rather selfish life, doing what he wanted when he wanted. Granted, the less selfish part of that had been that what he wanted was to save innocent people from demons, but it had been a lot to ask of a cat to put up with the long absences that had involved. More than this, even when he’d transmogrified her, he’d still kept the old mentality about their roles. But that wasn’t going to work with her in human form.

  “She loves you, Armand, but you’ve given her a human life of her own, and she needs to learn how to live it. Probably the only way to do that, at least at first, is to give her some kind of a role, like Hubert did with Brutus.”

  Although, admittedly, turning a mastiff into a law partner had been an odd choice.

  “And that is?” Armand wondered, although he wasn’t really fighting her.

  “Well, not a secretary,” she agreed. Anything subservient was just out for a cat. “I was thinking more a sister.”

  In some ways, wilful daughter might work better, and—as she had learned since their first days together—Armand was actually around 50. It was just that, in magical years, this was considered somewhat akin to being 25—old enough to be out on his own but still young enough that people wondered if he had really settled on what he was going to do with his life.

  Since Sheba had become a human at the whopping age of 18—quite elderly, in cat years—and had been vaguely not accepting the change for three years since, as Armand worked various jobs around the world, she could easily have pulled off being a 21-year-old daughter. Still, since Armand appeared to be maybe in his late twenties, this wasn’t really going to work.

  The other issue with this, of course, was the one his raised eyebrow rather pointed out. Sheba had been a black Persian cat. When she had become human, she had kept to some of those traits by becoming an extremely beautiful, Middle Eastern woman with long black hair. True, she had a vaguely French Canadian accent, somewhat like Armand’s—when he wasn’t bespelling it to sound more authentically French, not that American ears like hers could really spot the difference—but Armand’s background was French and European. Although Sheba, and probably 100 of her most recent relatives, had never seen Iran, even with the ex-cat issue aside, they looked nothing alike.

  She shrugged. “So a half-sister, then, or even a bratty stepsister would work.”

  She thought about it.

  “Actually that last one might be the best. Her rebelliousness can be written off as her objection to your parents sending her off with you. And . . .” She thought about it. “Are we going to the Queen Mary with you as the Duke of Winchester?”

  He nodded.

  For once, she hadn’t made the plans. It was odd not having quite such a purely secretarial role anymore.

  “Then it can be your mother who married her father. That way, she’s not actually part of your noble line, just married into it.”

  Teaching a cat to act human was one thing. Teaching her to behave like an aristocrat was something else entirely.

  She shrugged. “It’s probably also enough scandal that if you’re annoyed with her, people will just take it as your annoyance with your mother wandering off to marry some Middle Eastern billionaire.”

  Having this fictional noble mother remarry someone outside her race after her husband’s death was one thing. Having her marry outside her class was unthinkable.

  Unfortunately, it was a backstory which depended greatly on playing to stereotypes, but many things about the dukedom did. Besides, Annabella had been raised in America since she was three. Families of varying shades were not unheard of, but anyone who thought that meant that they’d just be accepted without question or comment was fooling themselves.

  Sighing, Armand nodded.

  “Fine. But you’ll need to help me get her to behave, as much as that’s possible.”

  Annabella really wanted to say that she knew the magic bullet to this. Sheba—they were probably going to have to change that name—just needed to know he truly loved her. After all, she’d given him her entire feline life, much of it being abandoned while he went off to save the world from demons. She really just wanted to know that she was more than an object to him.

  Still, she suspected that Hubert was going to be extremely efficient in buying Sheba’s necessities. He wasn’t a man with enough sexual interest in women to enjoy fantasizing his way through a lingerie department.

  Turning to the other subject she wanted to discuss without cat interruptions, then, and leaving the far thornier emotional issues for another time, she smiled at him tentatively. “That just leaves the issue of what kind of duke you’re going to be.”

  Clearly, he had no idea what she was talking about, so she tried again.

  “Errol was the silly, flirtatious, ostentatiously gay duke.”

  It was really rather an insulting stereotype now that she thought about it, but it had kept women from trying to get him to marry them, and he hadn’t needed a girlfriend for show, so he didn’t irritate Tillie, whose Indian heritage would have drawn unwanted comment and attention and who was in the traditional, “no, I’m not his girlfriend” role.

  Armand glowered. “There’s no way I’m swanning around like that. Hubert would kill me.”

  Annabella didn’t disagree. The only way Errol had gotten away with it was that his main magical power seemed to be an absolutely irresistible charm.

  She tried another option, then.

  “The one before Errol let everyone know that he was in mourning for his late wife, so no one questioned the constant presence of his secretary.”

  The sympathy had apparently worked to disarm people, as well.

  Rolling his eyes, Armand said simply, “No.”

  When she looked at him curiously, he went on.

  “I’m sick of pretense. I’ve been an akukar for thirty years now, and I’ve finally found you.”

  His hands took both of hers tenderly.

  “I’m not going to pretend I’m miserable all the time anymore.”

  Smiling, she was too flat
tered to disagree. Still . . .

  “Well, according to Tillie, that leaves about four other archetypes: the mean duke everyone’s too afraid of to question or flirt with, the spacey duke who can’t keep his mind on one thing long enough to be pinned down on anything, the loyal duke whose fiancée is in another country and who’s always running off to talk to her, and the crotchety old duke who barely hears what anyone says . . .” She looked him over. “. . . who you’re much too young to play without a spell or two.”

  She watched him think about it for a while before he looked back to her.

  “No. None of them will work.”

  Staring at him curiously, she wondered where he was going with this. If Tillie were right—and there was no reality she could imagine where Tillie wouldn’t be right—those were pretty much all the choices those whom the Magical Council had chosen to be the duke had.

  Looking into her deeply, his gaze begged her to understand.

  “I don’t want to hide you. I don’t want you as someone who just wanders along behind me. And I want everyone to know why I’m not available.”

  Annabella had been warned about this. According to Tillie, pretty much every duke decided that they were going to be the one to break tradition, that they would proudly declare this woman by their side to be their girlfriend or fiancée or wife. Tillie had also warned that, if Annabella let him take this path, she’d be forced to spend a month or more bespelling every single person he knew in the future when he finally settled down into one of the acceptable roles, once he realized his noble intentions just weren’t working as he’d hoped.

  She had to admit that she didn’t like this path, either, but also didn’t see much way out.

  She tried to explain. “If a duke is dating or engaged to someone, it’s not going to be him everyone focuses on. It’s her.” She shook her head. “And if you really think you won’t lose everyone’s respect the moment they look at me, you’re crazy.”

  Seeing that he was about to object, she went on.

  “I’m not elegant or aristocratic. I get annoyed at secret signs and in-jokes. I want to punch people in the throat when they exclude someone simply because they’re ‘not one of us.’”