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Robbie fell into the room, Peter on his heels, Robbie’s eyes like saucers. “Kat! You won’t believe it. We found a secret hiding place. A hidden room. With something—or someone—locked inside that makes terrible shrieky noises.”
    Kat looked at Peter, who nodded, then back at Rob.
    He was white as the cliffs of Dover. “Sure as sure,” Rob said in a low voice, “sure as sure, it’s a ghost.”

8
    The First Charm: The Fish
    I T IS 1746.
    Leonore leans against the door frame, listening. Her maids gossip about someone who lives at the edge of the village and who can use magic.
    A conjurer, a magician, newly arrived . . . or maybe not. Who appeared from the mists of the moors, or the hollows of the hills . . . no one knows.
    When questioned, her maids tell Leonore that he can help her, yes, surely, for he is the magister. She finds her own way to the ramshackle hut.
    The magister listens while he stirs his fire. When Leonore falls silent, this is what he tells her. He can make her wishes come true. The chatelaine that hangs from her belt holds, hesays, an ancient magic, and he can release it. Then she can use this magic for a child, not her own, exactly, but a child nonetheless.
    â€œThere is a price,” he says, and stirs his fire. There is always a price.
    â€œI’ll pay,” she says, and pay she does.
    The magister takes in trade a part from her. No: he takes a part
of
her.
    By flesh and
bone, by rock and stone; I’ll charm a child
to call my own.
    â€œThe child must see the charm he will wear,” the magister says. “He cannot be asleep or with senses dulled.” When he whispers the incantation she’s to recite, the fire dims.
    Leonore shivers. She hears the cruel words. But she wants a child so badly . . .

    The magister watches as Leonore retreats into the mist. He has begun to work his own magic, and she does not know how he will use her, how he will twist her dream into a nightmare. She does not know that the chatelaine was his gift to her. She does not know the terrible things the magister will do.
    Leonore of Rookskill Castle will make magic to please her lord. But when she returns to tell him, her changed left hand hidden by a glove, she finds that he has been thrown by hisstallion and lies in a deathlike stupor. She must find a willing child quickly now, quickly.
    â€œI bring you good news,” she says to her unconscious lord as she stands by his bed surrounded by weeping servants. “Of a child to come.”
    For which she has sacrificed to the magister a finger. Payment made of flesh and bone.
    Leonore makes a gift of the fish charm to the child Rose in the very presence of the child’s mother.
    The fishmonger’s wife, making deliveries, has been complaining, say Leonore’s maids. “All these children! All girls, worse luck. I can’t bear it! To keep them fed and clothed . . .” Leonore sees the opportunity she needs, and pays a visit to the hut by the shore.
    Rose, the youngest girl, is beautiful and sweet and—Leonore hopes—an easy mark. She prays that a child so much desired, even if only a girl, will spur her lord’s recovery and secure her future, as he wakes to see she is able to give him an heir. With the magister’s enchantment Leonore can confound her lord, make him believe the child is theirs by blood and bone.
    â€œAye, then, go and live in the castle, Rose,” Rose’s mother says. “You’ll have a fit life, you will. You have my blessing.” And she mumbles, “And I’ve one less mouth to feed, thank the heavens.”
    Leonore holds a silk handkerchief to her nose with her gloved hand.
    The fishmonger’s wife is glad to see such emotion in her Rose’s new protector. She herself wipes away a tear or two before chasing down Rose’s older sisters.
    Leonore feels emotion, for certain: she can scarce stand