Marigold ran after them into the green-flickering hallway. “You can’t see him!” she called to the Miseries. “You’ll get skin-crawling sickness, too!”

“Your concern for our health is touching, child.” Elgin glared at Vivien as she shoved past him on the stairs. “But you don’t know Torville like we do. He wriggles out of things; he always has. Do you remember, Vivien, what he did with those kittens we captured when we were children?”

“He let them go,” Vivien said in disgust. “We were going to practice turning them into scorpions, but they just happened to slip away while Torville was watching them.”

“I cast a boiling spell on his bathwater after that,” Elgin said, chuckling. “He cried and shouted that he was going to be the wickedest one of us all someday, but now he’s fully grown and still making excuses for himself.”

Vivien snorted. “When we told him to kidnap Princess Rosalind, he claimed to be allergic to children.”

“Really?” said Marigold. As awful as the Miseries were, she couldn’t help being interested.

“I told him if he couldn’t even manage to lock a screeching child in a tower, he had no business calling himself a villain.” Elgin shook his head. “He didn’t like that, did he, Viv?”

“And then he lost her!” Vivien shrieked from the top of the stairs. “He had a dozen excuses for that, too. First he said rescuers from Imbervale must have tied that rope to the fortress wall; then he accused us of stringing it up to make him look bad.” With Marigold and Elgin at her heels, she strode down the hallway and banged on Torville’s bedroom door. “Wake up, you ninny!”

“If you’re even there at all,” Elgin added.

“Or have you run away from us again?” Vivien called. “You can’t hide behind Gentleman Northwinds’ robes anymore, you know.”

The hall was utterly silent. Elgin rattled the doorknob so hard that Marigold thought it might come off in his hand, but he couldn’t budge the lock. “You see?” he said. “Once a wriggler, always a wriggler.”

Vivien grabbed hold of Marigold again, this time by the wrist, and shook her. “Tell us where he’s gone!”

“I already told you!” Marigold shouted. Vivien’s talons really hurt. “He’s in there, I swear!”

On the other side of the bedroom door, someone coughed.

“Can’t you all be quiet?” That was Torville’s voice — weak and faint, but undeniably his. “I’m practically dead in here. If I must depart this mortal sphere, I’d rather not listen to a screaming fight while I do it.”

Vivien dropped Marigold’s wrist. “Torville? Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me, Viv. Who else would it be? Didn’t Pettifog tell you I was ill?”

“Yes,” said Vivien, frowning, “but —”

“He sounds awful,” said Elgin. Marigold suspected he was pleased about this. “Your skin’s crawling right off your body, Torville?”

“I’ve got earlobe skin on my toes and toe skin on my ears,” Torville replied. “As for the skin on my legs, I think it’s about to skulk out of this room without me. You’d better stand aside.”

Elgin took half a step backward.

“Why don’t we go back to the party?” Marigold asked the Miseries. “You’ve got to try the goat milk cheese! Of course, there’s sheep milk cheese if you don’t like goat, and dragon cheese if you don’t like sheep —”

“He could be fibbing!” said Vivien. “How do we know you’re not fibbing, Torville?”

There was another miserable cough from the other side of the door. “You could come and kiss my fevered brow,” Torville moaned, “but if you set foot in this room, I don’t think you’ll last the week. I certainly don’t plan to. Take care of the Thing, will you, when I’m gone?”

Vivien frowned at the doorknob. “I could open it by magic, you know,” she said to Elgin. “Or you could, if you weren’t such a coward.”

Elgin’s jaw went tense. “What did you call me?”

“Too cowardly to unlock that door,” said Vivien. She gave him a smug little smile. “And much too useless at magic.”

“It’s an elementary spell!”

“Then it’s a shame you can’t do it.”

“I opened that lock on your garden shed, didn’t I?”

“So it was you who let the ghoul out!” Vivien cried. “I knew it! I’ll turn your elbows green!”

Watching the Miseries bicker in person was even more upsetting than watching it through the gazing ball. Marigold was afraid they’d start hurling spells at each other and she’d end up caught in the middle with green elbows, or extra noses, or whatever it was that Elgin was swearing he’d do to Vivien at the moment. “Won’t you come downstairs?” she asked again. But it didn’t do any good: the Miseries kept squabbling so ferociously that not even Marigold heard the footsteps on the stairs behind them.

“Vivien!” said Gentleman Northwinds. “Elgin!”

His voice was trimmed with amusement, but it seemed that the temperature in the hallway had plummeted with Gentleman Northwinds’ arrival. “I wondered where you’d gone,” he said to the Miseries. “We were missing you at the party.”

“Good evening, Gentleman Northwinds.” Vivien tugged her cape over her shoulders, looking chilly and annoyed. “We came to check on Torville’s health.”

“We’re very concerned about him,” Elgin agreed.

“I’m concerned as well,” said Gentleman Northwinds, “because on my way up the stairs, Elgin, I swore I heard you threaten to turn your sister’s hair to snakes. Perhaps you’ve forgotten the Villains’ Bond?”

Elgin shivered, though Marigold didn’t think it was from the cold. “No, sir.”

“And you, Vivien?”

She scowled at him. “Of course not. Sir.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Gentleman Northwinds touched Vivien’s shoulder with one hand and Elgin’s with the other. At once, both of them began walking back down the hallway, not as if they wanted to but as if a small, firm breeze were pushing them. “You must try the dragon cheese!” he called after them as they went down the stairs. “It’s wonderfully pungent.”

When both Miseries were out of sight, Gentleman Northwinds turned to Marigold. “You’re the child I helped down the mountain the other day,” he said thoughtfully. “You must be staying here with Torville. Is that right?”

Marigold nodded, wishing he’d follow the Miseries back downstairs. “That’s right.”

“In that case,” said Gentleman Northwinds, “you can help me in return.”

Marigold didn’t like the way Gentleman Northwinds was trying to peer around her down the hall. “You’re looking for something here,” she said. “What is it?”

“You’re curious!” Gentleman Northwinds exclaimed. “Good. So am I. Can you tell me which bedroom is Princess Rosalind’s?”

Whatever Marigold had expected him to ask, it wasn’t that. “It’s the room at the far end of the hall,” she said, pointing, “but it’s not Rosalind’s anymore. It’s my room now.”

“Then you’d better come with me,” said Gentleman Northwinds. “I’d hate to intrude on your privacy.”

He held out his arm, and Marigold reluctantly took it. She’d read enough tales about the wizard to know that it wasn’t a good idea to cross him — and besides, she wanted to know what he was getting up to. “You won’t find many of Rosalind’s things,” she told him, “if that’s what you’re looking for. I got rid of them when I moved in.” Gentleman Northwinds’ long fur coat made a swishing sound against the floorboards as they walked. “I’m a wicked child, you see.”