Then I catch myself. Gisele, of course, would see it differently.
I force a laugh. “What a funny joke, Pref—JuniorPrefect Conrad, excuse me. My servants have never said so much as a cross word to me!” I tear the last bit of pretzel in two and wink at him. “No, I don’t recall anything out of the ordinary that evening. Ezbeta von Eisendorf was quite in her cups, but that’s hardly what I’d call unusual.”
Emeric scrapes a spoon into the applesauce. “And the von Hirsching party, do you recall anything from that?”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. You would think even a junior prefect would do at least a minimal amount of research. “The von Hirsching . . . Oh, their little garden party in midsummer? I’m afraid I was feeling poorly, and unable to attend.”
It would have been terribly suspicious if Gisele was at the scene ofeveryburglary, of course. Hirsching Manor is close enough to Minkja that I was able to borrow a horse to “run an errand for my poor ailing mistress” and be back before sundown with the contents of Irmgard von Hirsching’s vanity.
“Unfortunate,” Emeric mumbles under his breath, sounding resigned. “Can you think of anyone at all who might hold a grudge against you, or any of the other families?”
If he had asked Vanja the maid, I could have told him these families practically foster grudges in their servants, and in their subjects, and in anyone they consider beneath them, which is most of Bóern. I could have told him it’s their own damn fault for treating us like we’re invisible, except when they treat us like toys.
I could have told him where the scars on my back came from. How Irmgard von Hirsching put them there simply because she wasbored.
But sweet, vain Gisele lives in a world where only wicked creatures would resent someone like her. And Vanja . . . For him, Vanja is gone.
So I say, “No.”
And then I jam my fork into therohtwurst, lift the whole thing, and take a hearty, vicious bite off the end, staring Junior Prefect Emeric Conrad dead in the eye as grease rolls down my chin.
“Oh,” he says, very faintly.
Then he reaches for his mug of coffee with a little too much zeal. It topples over.
I’m surprised to hear him swear as we both leap to our feet. I call for Trudl, then rest a hand on my cheek, wide-eyed and shocked. “Suchlanguagefrom a representative of the Godly Courts.”
“Forgive me,” he says again, flicking coffee off his notebook as Trudl bustles in to clear up the mess. “That was unseemly. I have only one more question,Prinzessin, and then I will trouble you no more.”
“It’s no trouble at all.” I let my dressing gown slip a little more to see if I can get him to drop the notebook.
He only fumbles it a little, tragically. “Do you still have the penny, by any chance?”
I tilt my head. “The penny?”
It could be my imagination, but I’d swear there’s a flicker of bad-luck coal dust in the air.
“The red penny the thief left.” Emeric tucks the charcoal stick behind an ear and dabs at the notebook pages with a napkin. “Prefect Klemens has a special-issue spyglass that’s enchanted to utilize the principles of secular possession to reconstruct the sequence of—er.
That is, it will be able to lead us directly to the Penny Phantom.”
“What?” I can’t have heard that right.
“In simple terms, it’s spelled to reveal an object’s chain of owners. We can use it to find the previous owner of the penny, which would be thePfennigeist.”
“Oh,” it’s my turn to say, very faintly. Then I do what I do best: lie. “I’m sorry, I gave it to the castlekoboldon the solstice. Good luck, you know.”
Misfortune isdefinitelyclouding between us now.
“Unfortunate,” Emeric sighs again. “All we have is the Eisendorf penny.”
“Do you need more than one?” I ask, trying to disguise my hope as curiosity. “I could inquire with the other victims.”
He glances at me, then closes the notebook with a definitivesnap. “No. I was hoping to cross-reference it with another to be certain, but just the one is enough. I must take my leave. Thank you very much for the breakfast.”
“Godspeed.” I wave vaguely at the door, and he follows Trudl out.
They’re gone not a moment too soon; there’s a sharp, quick stab of pain in my belly. I can’t hold back a gasp. When I touch where it hurt, I feel something small, smooth, and hard.
