“Much better,” she said. “Mickelwaithe said something about the boiler room.”
“Yes. I would like to test my theory about this magic, and the source of heat is the best place to start.”
“That makes sense theoretically, but the boiler has not worked as long as I’ve lived here. To stay warm, we could choose either a fire or five sweaters and a coat.”
“We have nothing to lose by testing my theory. Where is this room?”
“Downstairs.”
Thornwood started down the hallway in the other direction before Mouse could finish. “Where are you going?”
He paused midstride. The archness of Mouse’s words hit their mark, and he turned slowly back to her.
“Downstairs?”
“I suppose you could go that way, but since we’ve agreed to work together, I have a shortcut.”
The laundry chute was tucked behind a wood panel, pressed between the dilapidated billiard room and a disused lounge. Mouse ran her fingers along the line in the wood until her fingertip dipped. She pushed on the space, and the trapdoor swung open. A slide just large enough for a whole load of table linen disappeared down and out of sight.
“You cannot be serious.”
“Where is your sense of adventure?”
“With my common sense, both of which are telling me to take the stairs.”
She swung her feet over the edge. The cold steel bit through her robe and nightgown. She grinned. “Suit yourself,” she said, then dropped down into the dark.
Mouse was so caught up with adrenaline and, honestly, brave vanitythat she had not accounted for the fact that she’d grown since she last used the slide. Her elbows banged against the edges of the shoot, and her added weight increased her speed. She fell, her stomach in her throat, before landing in a heap of discarded linen. The laundry she expected. The maids had always been slow to clear out the area, even when everyone was pretending Thistlemarsh was not crumbling around them.
The cloth was soft enough to break her fall but did not keep her from banging her knee and twisting her shoulder painfully against the stone when she struck the bottom. Dust, white as flour, drifted in the air and caught in her lungs as she rolled off the pile.
“That was not my wisest moment,” she said between coughs. “At least Thornwood didn’t follow, the coward.”
A violent bang sounded from the tunnel above, followed by a shriek of rage, and then by Thornwood crashing into the place Mouse had landed moments earlier. Dust transformed his pure-black clothes to muddled gray. For what felt like an eternity, he lay bewildered in the laundry, his eyes wide with horror before he found her face through the dust.
“Did you have fun?” she asked.
“You are insane.”
Mouse took him by the elbow, and he did not protest when she helped him to his feet.
“The boiler is this way,” she said, gesturing down the servant hall and past the kitchen. Thornwood followed behind her, silently brushing his sleeves as he walked. She wondered why he did not clean his clothes with magic.
“You mentioned before that there is a difference between ‘little’ and ‘big’ magic. What is that difference?” she asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“Mostly because I’m curious. You can summon magic to fightagainst a Faerie-ruse, but not to clean your clothes? One of those seems like a ‘bigger’ magic than the other.”
In the empty night, the covered furniture took on a malicious shape in the hallway. Mouse’s heart lurched in fear. Thornwood snapped his fingers, and again light flooded the room.
Don’t be ridiculous, Mouse told herself.There are no monsters hiding here. The room is the same as it’s always been.
“Magic related to the house is different,” he said.
Mouse waited, but he offered no other explanation. “That is not a helpful answer.”
“It is difficult for me to explain, not because you are human, but because you are not Faerie. I suppose the best analogy would be that all magic costs something.”