Free The Master of Misrule by Laura Powell

her fault. On one level, she recognized that the stakes they were now playing for were so high that all other concerns were meaningless. Yet as long as Flora could still play the Game, she reasoned, Grace still had a chance.
    She smoothed down her hair. “I think you should come home with me,” she announced.
    “What?”
    “I think you should stay with me until you’re better. My parents went abroad this morning and I’ve got the house to myself. There’s heaps of room.”
    Blaine half laughed. “I’m sure there is. Very kind of you and all that, but I’m fine where I am. I know how to look after myself.”
    “I’m not offering out of
charity
,” Flora said stiffly. “I don’t know exactly what we’ve got ourselves into, but however this crisis develops, we’re going to have to go back into the Arcanum to deal with it. In which case, each of us needs to be as strong and resilient as we possibly can. And, frankly, if you’re camping out in some squalid underground hole, you’re going to get worse, not better, and won’t be good for anything.”
    “She’s right,” Cat said, though she sounded reluctant about it.
    Blaine didn’t say anything at first. A chill wind sent cigarette butts and newspapers scuffling down the pavement, and he stooped over in another coughing fit. Finally, he straightened up and looked at Flora. “OK, fine. Whatever. I’ll crash at yours.”
    In the brief time it took for Blaine to get his belongings from the squat, Flora had plenty of opportunity for second thoughts. They had said goodbye to the other two soon after leaving Mercury Square, and Flora agreed to wait for him at the top of Langdon Street. She disliked Soho at the best of times, and tonight its boozy garishness scraped at every frayed nerve. At the end of the road, a bus was pulling up to its stop. The advertising banner between the upper and lower decks was a swirl of silver, black and glitzy blue, and proclaimed:

    Flora bit her lip. How had everything got so hideously out of control? Her invitation to Blaine already seemed nonsensical. She and Blaine had never had anything to say to each other. In ordinary circumstances they would never have anything to do with each other. This was also true of her and Cat and, to a lesser extent, Toby, too, but the hostility between her and Blaine had been mutual and instinctive from the start. Of course, after everything they’d been through in the Arcanum—where, arguably, she owed him her life—their antagonism had been left behind. In some ways Blaine knew her better than Georgia or Tilly or Charlie ever could. They were partners of a sort, she supposed, but that didn’t make them friends.
    It’s going to be a disaster, she thought. And what on earth will I tell Mina?
    Mina, the Seatons’ housekeeper, was meant to be keeping an eye on Flora over the rest of the holiday. Her parents had left to catch their flight early that morning but she hadn’t got up to see them go. She hadn’t seen them the evening before, either. After she had dragged her battered and frozen body back from the Eight of Swords, she had managed to shut herself in her bedroom before they returned from the Avoncourts’. Flora got migraines occasionally, so her parents knew from experience to leave her alone in a darkened room. They had exchanged commiserations through the door, and left her to it.
    But Mina had caught her on the way out that morning. She had responded to Flora’s appearance with dismay, looking only partially placated by her story of getting on the wrong side of a cat. Tonight Mina was staying with her daughter in Willesden, so that was all right. But what about tomorrow? The arrival of Blaine would be a lot more difficult to explain than a few scratch marks.
    And of course, while all these worries were running through her mind, Flora knew that none of it really mattered, that it was all just padding against other, real, unbearable things. At the edge of every thought was Grace and