Stupid habit. But that's what Gretchen and I had: just an ongoing habit.
Titania tapped on the door of Gretchen's suite, then went inside without waiting. I followed into the so-called Sitting Room: a place seldom used but often redecorated, with its appearance changing from season to season (sometimes month to month, or week to week). At the moment, it was designed to fight the dourness of winter with warm/hot colors-wallpaper of ferocious carmine red accented with a black and gold border around the top. The furniture (couch, rocking chair, ottoman) matched the color scheme with appropriate upholstery or afghan throw-covers draped neatly over bare wood. The neatness of the afghans proved Gretchen truly was in a bad way. When she was feeling good, she sprawled wherever she wanted with no regard for how the afghans might slip; when she was in a mood, she needed everything just so, and could spend hours fussing to get proper tucks and folds.
Titania crossed the room as quickly as her eight legs would go-I think she deliberately avoided seeing how fastidiously everything was arranged-and she knocked at the door to the bedroom. "Mistress Gretchen," she murmured, "Baron Dhubhai has come to visit." Titania looked my direction as if daring me to say otherwise; then she turned back to the closed door and asked, "May I let him in?"
If any answer came, it was too quiet for me to hear. Nevertheless, Titania turned the knob and pushed the door open. "The mistress will see you now."
I nodded. Titania bowed once more, then silently brushed past me as she headed downstairs.
I'd never seen the bedroom so brilliantly lit: every flat surface held two or three shine-stones, beaming dollops of quartz I assumed had been enchanted by sorcerers working for Papa Kinnderboom in Feliss City. Usually Gretchen only kept one or two stones out in the open, and she often draped those with squares of thin cotton to mute the gleam; but tonight there were dozens all over the place, standing uncovered on the vanity, the dressers, the night stands, even scattered on the floor. My eyes ached from the brightness-I had to shield my gaze with my hand as I searched for Gretchen herself.
Despite the incessant remodeling in other parts of the house, Gretchen's bedroom hadn't changed in years-except for the darkening curtains, the place was always white, white, white, the walls, the bedding, the carpet. For variation, the furniture was painted in a range of bleached grays. There were also accents of color where Gretchen had thrown a sapphire blue dress over a chair, and left a crimson bra pooled on the floor; but the overall impression was still that eye-glaring white, illuminated now by several dozen shine-stones.
Quite bright enough to show that Gretchen was missing.
She'd recently been in the bed: the covers were thrown back and the sheets rumpled. The sight made me think of dead Rosalind, her covers wide open too. But Gretchen was not lying sprawled across the mattress… nor was she sitting at the vanity or lounging in the giant bathtub against the far wall. I peeked into the walk-in closet, but saw no sign of her. I didn't get down to look under the bed, but I glanced in that direction while staying on my feet, and decided it was unlikely Gretchen had managed to crawl out of sight. Since there was nowhere else she could hide (short of scrunching into a cedar chest or one of the trunks in the closet), I was on the verge of leaving; then a puff of breeze swirled the curtains in front of the balcony doors.
The doors were open. Despite the chill of the not-yet-spring night.
The hairs on the back of my neck bristled as I walked across the room. If she'd finally taken that last step into the open air… I kept picturing her throwing herself off the balcony in some fit of despondence. Or bid for attention. We were only one story up, so she'd almost certainly survive; but I didn't want to look over the railing and see Gretchen lying below. I had to force myself to push through the curtains, into the cold night breeze…
…where Gretchen stood quite alive, naked and hugging herself, rapidly puckering into one gigantic goose-pimple.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi yourself." Her teeth chattered. "Could you, uhh…" She lifted one arm to gesture back into the room, then quickly went back to hugging herself. It took me a moment to realize what she wanted.
"The lights?" I said.
"Please."
I hurried back into the bedroom and collected shine-stones, dropping them into the thick velvet sack where Gretchen usually kept them. As I worked, I couldn't help chuckling-imagining Gretchen as she heard the knock at her door. She must have realized she was surrounded by more light than a summer afternoon… so she scuttled to the balcony to keep me from seeing her in the unforgiving glare. All those times I'd tried to get her outdoors, I'd been using the wrong tactics.
I laughed again.
Soon I was carrying a bag full of shine: all the stones except one. I'd left that one on the night stand and covered it with a scarf of turquoise gossamer that had been balled up on the vanity. The resulting light tinted the room either sickly green or sea-mist blue, depending on your tolerance for turquoise… but it seemed to satisfy Gretchen, for she immediately came back inside, and closed the doors behind her. For a count of three she tried to bluff out the moment, letting her arms fall to her sides and striking a pose of regal nudity, pretending to be unfazed by cold. Then the shivers hit her and she stumbled forward, ripping a comforter off the bed and wrapping herself as her body shook.
I took her into my arms. She was a tall woman, almost exactly my height, long-legged and lean… but at that moment she seemed much smaller, shrinking into me as she opened the comforter and wrapped it around the two of us. Her bare body pressed against my clothes. Milky skin, green eyes, russet hair-all of which seemed entirely natural, but when a woman's daddy has sorcerers on his payroll, one can never tell how much cosmetic help she had in her formative years. Kaylan's Chameleon isn't the only beauty spell cast on developing girls-sorcerers have plenty of "tuck 'n' tweak" enchantments, making eye color more vivid, hair more lush, and adolescent body development more in keeping with local fashion. There was a reason my cousin Hafsah had such memorable loveliness: my grandma the governor paid for it. For the same reason, Gretchen's creamy complexion showed no hint of the usual freckles, moles, and other punctuations that flesh is normally heir to.
Yet sorcery has its limitations-it can correct imperfections, but it can't stop time. Removing a mole just means banishing pigments from a specific area of tissue; removing a wrinkle from a forty-ish woman's face means fighting the whole course of physical development, all the ongoing changes that lead to dry skin, slowing hormones and declining glands. Aging isn't one thing, it's everything… and neither science nor sorcery has identified all the body's clocks, let alone figured out how to turn them back in unison. There are too many proteins and enzymes and secretions that have to be balanced: if you stop the formation of crow's feet by changing the quantity of a particular body chemical, other body chemicals shift too. Lots of chemicals. Next thing you know, there might be a rash, or sores, or an epileptic fit.
Aging isn't an aberration that can be set back on track… it's the track itself.
I looked at the woman in my arms, and despite the dimness of the light, I could see everything she didn't admit was there: the wrinkles, the crinkles, the lines. A puffiness around the jaw; lapses in the sleekness of her neck. All very subtle, what most of us would consider insignificant-anyone standing back a few steps would see a woman at the peak of her beauty. But that wasn't enough for Gretchen. When she invited a man to her boudoir, she had no intention of keeping him at arm's length.
"I'm glad you're here," she whispered. Her breath caressed my neck; a moment later, her lips did too.