Free Worlds of Ink and Shadow by Lena Coakley Page B

shouldn’t have mentioned it,” Emily hissed. “What can Charlotte do about it now?”
    â€œNot at all. The point is well taken,” Charlotte said, but her little sister’s words rankled. She herself had chosen Africa as a location long ago, mostly because it was far away and warm. She’d been a child then and had given little thought to it, but it occurred to her now that perhaps she had no business writing about a place she’d never seen and knew little about.
    She stood up and inserted herself between her two sisters on the bed, cutting off any further discussion. “Very well, then. Are we ready? Each of you hold onto an arm.” She forced a brightness into her voice that she didn’t quite feel. Her sisters took her arms.
    â€œAt last,” Emily said.
    â€œYou won’t be able to get home by yourself, of course. You’ll need Branwell or me to cross you over again—and we must be touching you.”
    â€œWe know. We know everything. Hurry!” said Emily, bouncing a little with barely contained glee.
    Charlotte closed her eyes, trying to push aside a feeling of unease. She had said she wanted the end of Verdopolis to be perfect, but now, after Anne’s criticisms, she had a strange presentiment that it would not be. She reminded herself that she was the world’s creator; its ending would be what she willed it to be.
    â€œ
All the party guests had arrived
,” she murmured. “
Young Lord Charles moved from group to group unnoticed, listening to men talk about Verdopolitan politics, admiring the ladies’ clothes, their long necks, the nets of jewels in their hair.
”
    Without opening her eyes, she knew that the room had grown brighter. The door was here—at least, she and Branwell had always called it a door. It wasn’t something they went through, though; it was something that went through them. She held out her hand, palm upward. Immediately she knew that it was coming, and she braced herself. It always felt as if some great maw was rushing toward her, to swallow her up.
This is the worst part
, she thought.
    â€œThis is the best part,” she heard Emily whisper.
    Charlotte felt a moment of sheer terror, knowing it was upon her, and then—
whump
—it was over.
    â€œ
He slipped into a small salon decorated in green and gold
,” she said, “
where a fire danced in a carved malachite fireplace. Two guests came in with him to take refuge from the noise and bustle of the party.
”
    Charlotte opened her eyes. A thrill ran up her sides andall the way down her arms. She was here. She was home. She examined her boy’s body, smoothing down the blue suit and touching the lace frill at her throat. Charles Albert Florian Wellesley, her other self. Everything seemed to be right. Next to her was the Countess Zenobia, Alexander Rogue’s wife, which was rather odd. She wouldn’t have been invited to the party.
    â€œWhy, it’s young Charles,” the countess said, setting a gloved hand on the fireplace and looking down at Charlotte with a bored smile.
    She wore a velvet gown in her signature color—blood red. A black feather drooped from her pert French chapeau. Charlotte’s eyes widened as the realization dawned: This was Emily.
    â€œAbsolutely not,” Charlotte said.
    Everything about the Red Countess—from her bare white arms to her tiny corseted waist to her seductive, heavy-lidded gaze—seemed to radiate a knowledge of things a sixteen-year-old parson’s daughter should have no knowledge of.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Emily asked. She looked in the mirror above the fireplace, shaking her head to make her dangling earrings dance.
    Charlotte turned away, wishing she had a fichu with which to cover her sister’s voluptuous bosom, and noticed Anne, who was sitting demurely on a sofa. Anne was not playing a character with her own face, like Branwell’s Lord