I took a deep breath. “All right. I’ll find out what I can, while I’m in the House. But ... None of you were harvested by my sorcerer?Thesorcerer, I mean,” I added, remembering there was only one.
Shaking heads all around the room.
“I’ll try, all right? I can’t promise anything more than that.”
“That is all we ask,” said Basil. “Can you come here again? We are here most nights.”
“Yes,” I said. “I will return as soon as I know anything. Or have anything.”
There was a collective sigh and a feeling of relief.
“But right now, I have to go,” I said.
“You will come back?” said Jol.
“I promise.” I felt the weight of that promise settle on me like an iron collar on a cart horse.
11
The journey back to the House was excruciating, and I hoped Sylvester hadn’t managed to blow it up in my absence. The nagging ache had worsened as my hours away from the sorcerer wore on.
When I finally reached the door, I was so eager to get inside—and so fearful that I might be shut out—that I tripped and fell. I lay prone on the threshold, knowing that I must have looked like a sack of potatoes but unable to move.
The heartsickness passed from me like a fever, soothed by the sorcerer’s proximity, and left me weak and shaking and empty.
I don’t know how long I lay there, but eventually I gathered enough strength to open the blank, black door and stagger inside. I was surprised, and a little unnerved, by how much it felt like coming home.
In the kitchen, the kettle was already boiling for a cup of tea. The House knew me well.
“Did he notice I was gone?” I asked Cornelius.
“I don’t think so.”
Of course not. I had been there to bring him his dinner, and I would be there to bring him his breakfast, and that was all he cared about. I set about making my tea while Cornelius watched me.
“Well?” he said.
“Well, what?”
“What happened? Outside, I mean.”
“Nothing very helpful.” I didn’t usually take sugar in my tea, but I felt the need for it after my ordeal. I scooped in several spoonfuls, almost as much as Sylvester. “They want me to bring them a heart. More than one, ideally. I can’t even find my own, so I’m not sure where they expect me to find someone else’s.”
“Why?”
“Some harebrained scheme to replace the missing ones. Apparently, they know some other magic-worker who can fix us all up.” I stirred the tea with unnecessary force. “So now I have to find a heart. Either here, or on the black market, I suppose, if they indeed sell some real human hearts and not just the pork bits they fobbed that fellow off with yesterday. If the House lets me leave again, that is.”
That was a thought. Would the House release me again? I had proven that I would come back, hadn’t I? But then, I didn’t know how the mind of a sorcerous building worked, or if it had a mind at all.
Just as I thought this, the floor seemed to turn liquid beneath my feet, sending me lurching and my sugary tea spilling all over. I swore and clutched at the kitchen counter. Was the House punishing me for my midnight excursion?
Cornelius leaped up onto a shelf, his fur bristling and his eyes big as saucers.
“What’s going on?” I cried. “Is this more of what happened earlier?”
“No, no,” said Cornelius. “It’s not that again. I can smell the difference. This happens sometimes.” He shrank back as far as he could into the relative safety of the corner. “It’ll pass. Just hang on to something.”
“Itjust happens?” Another queasy lurch almost sent me sprawling. It felt like being on the deck of a ship during a storm. I righted myself and, clinging to a wall, started feeling my way out of the room, thinking to lie on my bed until it passed, but the House gave a shudder that sent me staggering down another path, as it had when it had shown me the way to the sorcerer’s workshop.
