Page 58 of His Greatest Treasure

Lord Somerville stood and I nearly took a step back at the power that radiated out from him. I don’t know how the hag stood there without quailing. I began to see that she was powerful too, in her own way.

That didn’t give me any comfort.

She twisted her head, taking in the line of us one by one until she reached me.

“Is this the one?”

“My son, Alphonse Somerville.”

I opened my mouth, managed to say, “How do you do?” and then went silent. She was walking over to me. She scuttled like a crab, her black cloak dragging along the floor, dusty and dirty at the hemand thick with slime at her shoulders where her hair draped over it.

She leaned close to me and I struggled to stand still, refusing to lean away from her. I wanted to step back but thought it might be rude.

Her breath rolled over me, though, in fetid clouds of toxic fumes. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to wrinkle my nose and grimace at the rotting smell.

“So you are the next one?”

Behind her, Lord Somerville asked sharply, “You know what he is?”

She peered into my eyes, and I held her gaze, worried for some reason that she’d leech my soul from me as I did it.

I’d never had such a visceral feeling of foreboding before. I wanted to shiver with it but held myself still, clenching my muscles and hoping nobody noticed the tiny shakes of my hands.

“No,” she said, and her breath swamped me once again. “I will need time with this one.”

“How long?”

She leered at me, and I wasn’t sure if it was a smile or not.

When she answered, she kept her eyes on me, answering my father but not showing him the respect of looking at him. That made my skin prickle with unease, and by that point I was as uncomfortable as I had ever been.

She spoke slowly. “How long I need depends on how strong your spells were.”

I knew I should keep quiet but my mouth was the first thing to get un-afraid enough to work, more’s the pity. It was a big disappointment to me that, even when I was overwhelmed, I could still manage to dig myself into a hole by talking too much.

“What spells?” I asked.

She cackled. “Old spells, as old as you are.”

“What sort of spells?”

“Ones that conceal something valuable.”

“From who? Do you mean spells inside the castle?”

“Spells that serve—”

“Enough!” Lord Somerville’s voice cut through the room like an ice pick, sharp and ringing with its strike.

Madame Trevellian turned to face him at last, and I breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn’t looking at me any more, although I tried to do it subtly so as not to offend her.

She smiled up at my father, all horrid teeth and malice. I didn’t like her being inside out territory, and I certainly didn’t like her being inside the castle. Something about it seemed a bad idea.

“The boy asks questions,” she said.

I huffed. I wasn’t a boy. I was a young man.

“You are not here to talk to him.”

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