rigid body very slightly to watch them go. Then she nodded at the page boy, who scuttled out of the room too. After that, Mrs Pentstemmon turned herself back towards Sophie, and Sophie felt more nervous than ever.
“I prefer him with black hair,” Mrs Pentstemmon announced. “That boy is going to the bad.”
“Who? Michael?” Sophie said, bewildered.
“Not the servitor,” said Mrs Pentstemmon. “I do not think he is clever enough to cause me concern. I am talking about Howell, Mrs Pendragon.”
“Oh,” said Sophie, wondering why Mrs Pentstemmon only said “going”. Howl had surely arrived at the bad long ago.
“Take his whole appearance,” Mrs Pentstemmon said sweepingly. “Look at his clothes.”
“He is always very careful about his appearance,” Sophie agreed, and wondered why she was putting it so mildly.
“And always was. I am careful about my appearance too, and I see no harm in that,” said Mrs Pentstemmon. “But what call has he to be walking around in a charmed suit? It is a dazzling attraction charm, directed at ladies – very well done, I admit, and barely detectable even to my trained eye, since it appears to have been darned into the seams – and one which will render him almost irresistible to ladies. This represents a downwards trend into black arts which must surely cause you some motherly concern, Mrs Pendragon.”
Sophie thought uneasily about the grey and scarlet suit. She had darned the seams without noticing it had anything particular about it. But Mrs Pentstemmon was an expert on magic, and Sophie was only an expert on clothes.
Mrs Pentstemmon put both gold mittens on top of her stick and canted her stiff body so that both her trained and piercing eyes stared into Sophie’s. Sophie felt more and more nervous and uneasy. “My life is nearly over,” Mrs Pentstemmon announced. “I have felt death tiptoeing close for some time now.”
“Oh, I’m sure that isn’t so,” Sophie said, trying to sound soothing. It was hard to sound like anything with Mrs Pentstemmon staring at her like that.
“I assure you it is so,” said Mrs Pentstemmon. “This is why I was anxious to see you, Mrs Pendragon. Howell, you see, was my last pupil and by far my best. I was about to retire when he came to me out of a foreign land. I thought my work was done when I trained Benjamin Sullivan – whom you probably know better as Wizard Suliman, rest his soul! – and procured him the post of Royal Magician. Oddly enough, he came from the same country as Howell. Then Howell came, and I saw at a glance that he had twice the imagination and twice the abilities, and, though I admit he had some faults of character, I knew he was a force for good. Good, Mrs Pendragon. But what is he now?”
“What indeed?” Sophie said.
“Something has happened to him,” Mrs Pentstemmon said, still staring piercingly at Sophie. “And I am determined to put that right before I die.”
“What do you think has happened?” Sophie asked uncomfortably.
“I must rely on you to tell me that,” said Mrs Pentstemmon. “My feeling is that he has gone the same way as the Witch of the Waste. They tell me she was not wicked once – though I have this only on hearsay, since she is older than either of us and keeps herself young by her arts. Howell has gifts in the same order as hers. It seems as if those of high ability cannot resist some extra, dangerous stroke of cleverness, which results in a fatal flaw and begins a slow decline to evil. Do you, by any chance, have a clue what it might be?”
Calcifer’s voice came into Sophie’s mind, saying, “The contract isn’t doing either of us any good in the long run.” She felt a little chilly, in spite of the heat of the day blowing through the open windows of the shaded, elegant room. “Yes,” she said. “He’s made some sort of contract with his fire demon.”
Mrs Pentstemmon’s hands shook a little on her stick. “That will be it. You must break that contract, Mrs Pendragon.”
“I would if I knew how,” Sophie said.
“Surely your maternal feelings and your own strong magic gift will tell you how,” Mrs Pentstemmon said. “I have been looking at you, Mrs Pendragon, though you may not have noticed—”
“Oh, I noticed, Mrs Pentstemmon,” Sophie said.
“—and I like your gift,” said Mrs Pentstemmon. “It brings life to things, such as that stick in your hand, which you have evidently talked to, to the extent that it has become what the layman would call a magic wand. I think you would not find it too hard to break that contract.”
“Yes, but I need to know what the terms of it are,” Sophie said. “Did Howl tell you I was a witch, because if he did—”
“He did not. There is no need to be coy. You can rely on my experience to know these things,” said Mrs Pentstemmon. Then, to Sophie’s relief, she shut her eyes. It was like a strong light being turned off. “I do not know, nor do I wish to know, about such contracts,” she said. Her cane wobbled again, as if she might be shuddering. Her mouth quirked into a line, suggesting she had unexpectedly bitten on a peppercorn. “But I now see,” she said, “what has happened to the Witch. She made a contract with a fire demon and, over the years, that demon has taken control of her. Demons do not understand good and evil. But they can be bribed into a contract, provided the human offers them something valuable, something only humans have. This prolongs the life of both human and demon, and the human gets the demon’s magic power to add to his or her own.” Mrs Pentstemmon opened her eyes again. “That is all I can bear to say on the subject,” she said, “except to advise you to find out what that demon got. Now I must bid you farewell. I have to rest a while.”
And like magic, which it probably was, the door opened and the page boy came in to usher Sophie out of the room. Sophie was extremely glad to go. She was all but squirming with embarrassment by then. She looked back at Mrs Pentstemmon’s rigid, upright form as the door closed and wondered if Mrs Pentstemmon would have made her feel this bad if she had really and truly been Howl’s old mother. Sophie rather thought she would. “I take my hat off to Howl for standing her as a teacher for more than a day!” she murmured to herself.
“Madam?” asked the page boy, thinking Sophie was talking to him.
“I said, go slowly down the stairs or I can’t keep up,” Sophie told him. Her knees were wobbling. “You young boys dash about so,” she said.
The page boy took her slowly and considerately down the shiny stairs. Halfway down, Sophie recovered enough from Mrs Pentstemmon’s personality to think of some of the things Mrs Pentstemmon had actually said. She had said Sophie was a witch. Oddly enough, Sophie accepted this without any trouble at all. That explained the popularity of certain hats, she thought. It explained Jane Farrier’s Count Whatsit. It possibly explained the jealousy of the Witch of the Waste. It was as if Sophie had always known this. But she had thought it was not proper to have a magic gift because she was the eldest of three. Lettie had been far more sensible about such things.
Then she thought of the grey and scarlet suit and nearly fell downstairs with dismay. She was the one who had put the charm on that. She could hear herself now, murmuring to it. “Built to pull in the girls!” she had told it. And of course it did. It had charmed Lettie that day in the orchard. Yesterday, somewhat disguised, it must have had its secret effect on Miss Angorian too.
Oh, dear! Sophie thought. I’ve gone and doubled the number of hearts he’ll have broken! I must get that suit off him somehow!
Howl, in that same suit, was waiting in the cool black and white hall with Michael. Michael nudged Howl in a worried way as Sophie came slowly down the stairs behind the page boy.
Howl looked saddened. “You seem a bit ragged,” he said. “I think we’d better skip seeing the King. I’ll go and blacken my own name when I make your excuses. I can say my wicked ways have made you ill. That could be true, from the look of you.”
Sophie