“Good point,” Sophia encouraged.
“Ronald’s legs are too short to reach them, anyway. You should have seen the look on his face when the poker hit his backside.” This time, the house faerie chuckled loudly.
“Shh,” Sophia reminded her gently. “Or Grandmother will feel the need to come and interject herself into the conversation.”
“What if Ronald’s right, miss?” Margaret asked gently.
“A rest in the duke’s bed is not on my agenda for this mission.”
“I doubt he’d want you to do much resting.” Margaret held out Sophia’s nightrail, but she waved it away.
“I need to go out. Can you get my blue dress?” The webbed dress was her favorite, made from the softest strands of a spider’s web, laced together to form cloth. Then it was conditioned by the same spiders to be formfitting, which allowed Sophia to slide through keyholes with ease, and the trailing bits of fabric that covered her legs were made in such a way that they would simply fall off the overskirt of the dress, should she snag it during one of her escapades.
“If you damage this dress, I’ll not be the one to go back to the spiders and barter for a new one,” Margaret said. She hadn’t even gone the last time. Sophia had gone herself. And barely come out of it with a new dress.
Sophia fluffed the tendrils of fabric that fell, making it tickle around her knees where it stopped. “Do I look all right?” she asked as she regarded herself in the looking glass.
Margaret reached up and began to pull the pins from Sophia’s hair, letting it fall down around her shoulders. “Good idea,” Sophia said as she massaged her scalp. She certainly didn’t want to leave hairpins behind if she had to make a mad dash for safety.
“Be careful,” Margaret warned as Sophia willed her wings into existence. Then she shrank to the size of a child’s toy.
“Can you get the window?” Sophia asked, as she fluttered in the air. She could get the window herself, but it would take time that she didn’t want to waste.
Margaret opened the window and Sophia glanced at the chimes. No breeze broke the stillness of the night, and the chimes were uncommonly silent. It was almost as if they were a great sleeping beast just waiting to wake and steal her concentration. She shook herself from her reverie. “I can let myself back in, if you want to go to bed. Just leave the window cracked.”
“Your grandmother would never forgive me if I left while you’re on a mission. I’ll wait.”
“Well, take a nap. Your disposition could certainly use it.” Margaret was often cross, but never cross and obnoxious, not unless she was tired.
Margaret harrumphed. “I can plan my own night’s activities, thank you very much.”
Sophia flittered out the window and into the damp night air. Sophia loved the night air and everything that came with it. She circled the house quickly, fairly certain she’d be able to find Lady Anne’s chambers from the exterior of the house. Then she’d just have to find a way inside, once she had her bearings, so she could go through a keyhole or slide beneath a door.
But as she went from window to window looking inside, she finally came upon a window that was partially open. She landed gently on the windowsill and bent to slide beneath the crack. She very nearly got stuck. If her bottom wasn’t so big, she wouldn’t have any trouble at all. But such was her cross to bear.
Sophia stood on the inner sill and dusted herself off. Someone really should tell Wilkins that the sills were dirty. He’d probably get the housekeeper right on it. A voice broke the stillness of the night.
“I knew I smelled a mission faerie,” the voice said. “I’d know that stench anywhere.” Mission faeries and gift faeries had been enemies for centuries. Their very natures warred with one another.
“What are you doing here?”
“There’s a tooth to be had,” the faerie said. He tapped his foot impatiently where he stood on the bedside table. “Do not think to stand in my way.”
“Shh, or you’ll wake her,” Sophia warned as she glanced at Lady Anne, who slept soundly, her little hand curled beneath her cheek. Her nurse probably slept in the adjoining room and would be as likely as Anne to hear them if they made any sort of disturbance.
“When did you begin servicing England?”
“We service anyone who believes,” he said with very little emotion.
“I hope you brought a gift for her.” If a gift faerie could get away with stealing the tooth and leaving nothing in its place, he could sell the tooth, which had a modest amount of value, depending on its size, and not have anything invested in the exchange at all. Pure profit. Purely ridiculous. Wholly forbidden.
“Why should I? Gift faeries are a myth, even in the minds of the believers. They speak of us, and then they do our work for us,” he groused, growing more and more impatient.
He was right. The few people who did tell their children stories of gift faeries had grown disillusioned by the many faeries who were thieves. He glanced toward the window. “The night grows shorter. I have many, many gifts to give before the sun rises.”
He yawned loudly and tapped his open mouth as he did so. He shook his magic bag at her, which clanked loudly in the stillness of the room. Anne’s hand stretched open beneath her cheek as if she was startled from the noise, and then she settled deeper into her pillow, her mouth open as she breathed softly.
Sophia could just imagine the gift faerie’s next move. He’d take the tooth, leave nothing in its place, and be holed up with a fallen faerie as soon as his pocket jingled with coins from the sale of the teeth.