The Necromancer Trilogy - Eachanstone

Chapter Twenty-Five - Shadow-Stone

Miss Eileen Thomas lived quietly at home in a small but elegant house with an assortment of miscellaneous cats. She was, in nearly every way, exactly what you’d expect in the kind-but-aged elderly. She even had sweets in a jar on the mantelpiece.

 In her youth, Eileen had been an adventurer by the standards of her community. But the time for that had passed and the sight of the breathless, urgent young man in the door startled her rather more than she would have liked.

“Yes?” she asked, suspiciously.

She was rather hoping that he would be a door-to-door salesman. Eileen had a personal record of two hours and eighteen minutes that she could keep one engaged in meaningless conversation, watching their face slowly turn grey as she told them all about her pills and complained about her feet in German.

 “Hello,” he touched his forehead in what was almost a salute. “So sorry to trouble you, but we need to read the gas meter.”

It wasn’t quite what Eileen had hoped, but it would do.

“Of course!” she twittered, in her best old-lady voice. “Do come in!”

The young man stepped politely through, followed by a teenage girl with dark clothes and a calculating expression. Eileen watched the girl thoughtfully, first wondering what she was doing there and second wondering if she would still wear the same expression when she was old.

“Do you know where it is kept?” the polite young man asked.

“Oh,” Eileen wrung her hands. “I must have forgotten. How silly of me. I’m afraid I shall have to remember.”

“Don’t worry,” the young man hadn’t even started to look brittle yet, much to Eileen’s annoyance. “My apprentice and I can look for it. Why don’t you sit down? We shan’t take long.”

Eileen felt a surge of irritation at this blatant attempt to keep her out the way.

“I’m afraid I shall have to stay with you,” she snapped. “For all I know, you could be thieves. I’m not an idiot, you know.”

The girl’s head snapped up and she grinned.

“Ma’am, can we cut to the quick?”

Eileen, gratified to see some manners in a young person, nodded automatically.

“Miss Thomas, would you be so kind as to show me your jewellery box?”

“You don’t know that it’s in her jewellery box,” the young man protested.

“It’s the most likely bet, don’t you think?” the girl raised an eyebrow. “It’s a camouflage stone, isn’t it? Where better for it to hide?”

“Excuse me,” Eileen rallied enormously, “if you think that I will show strangers my jewels, you have another think coming!”

“Please,” the girl begged. “This is a matter of life and death!”

“My jewels are a matter of life and death?”

Despite herself, Eileen was baffled. She wished her mind was a little sharper. She wanted to keep up with this conversation.

“Quite probably,” the girl looked anxious. “Look, Miss Thomas, ma’am, this is going to sound complicated. But do you believe in magic?”

“Sophie!” the man cried.

“Shut up, Merry. Do you, ma’am?”

Eileen hesitated. “I…I believe in the magic that makes the grass grow and the sun rise. If that’s what you mean.”