The scroll, Marigold saw as she passed coffee around, seemed to be a map of Imbervale Palace and its grounds, though it was marked all over with squiggly lines that didn’t look like any roads or rivers she knew. When Gentleman Northwinds wasn’t exercising his curiosity in the fortress hallways, he sat by the tall dining room windows, sipping coffee and listening to the conversation around the table. “That map is at least two decades old,” Marigold overheard him saying at one point. “You shouldn’t rely on it. There must be dozens of fortifications along the north wall by now, if the magician is any good at her job.”

The remaining wizards, led by Vivien, were secreted away in Torville’s workroom. Since they wouldn’t allow her inside, Marigold didn’t know exactly what they were doing, but they were always hollering down the staircase, ordering her to collect the spell-casting ingredients they needed: a sack of pink toadstools from the garden, a bottle of slug juice from the workroom, and five ripe biletree nuts, which Marigold had to hike a quarter mile into the wildwood to collect. As she came upstairs with the biletree nuts, she was surprised to see Pettifog coming down from the workroom. He had taken off his jacket, and his shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows.

“They let you inside?” Marigold asked him.

“They needed me to stir their cauldron. I don’t know what spell they’re cooking up, but if it requires a demon’s help, it’s not anything mild or mellow.” Pettifog stalked toward his bedroom, then stopped in the center of the hall. “Marigold? Why is the closet of regrets unlocked?”

Marigold set down the biletree nuts. It was true: the door to the closet of regrets, which had been shut tight for as long as she’d been in the fortress, was now ajar. Pettifog rushed to close it again, but Marigold got there first. She pulled the door open even farther.

“What are you doing?” Pettifog cried. “You can’t go in there! That’s Torville’s private space! He doesn’t let anyone else inside.”

“But someone else has been inside,” Marigold said. The closet of regrets was deep, almost cavernous; instead of ending sensibly with a wall as most closets did, this one stretched so far into the darkness that she couldn’t see the end of it. The walls on either side were lined from floor to ceiling with shelves, and each shelf was packed full of jumbled objects that Marigold could barely make out in the light from the hall. Near the door were the sorts of things anyone might stash away: a matted toy elephant, a stack of old books, dented sports racquets, and blurry photographic prints of people and places Marigold didn’t recognize. As she stepped farther into the closet, though, the light grew dimmer, and the items on the shelves grew stranger. She thought she saw a glass sphere with a torrential storm raging inside it; a tidy bundle of bones; a fishbowl full of murky, writhing creatures; a half-empty jar of molasses. “What is all this?” Marigold asked.

“It’s none of your business!” Pettifog trotted after her, trying to pull her back toward the hall. “You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here!”

“Hello?” Collin stuck his head inside the doorway. He was holding an enchanted candle, which filled the closet with an eerie green light. “I thought I heard your voices!” he said, ducking inside the closet as Pettifog groaned. “What are you doing in here?”

“Not listening to imps, apparently,” Pettifog complained as Marigold crept forward. She could see everything a little more clearly in the candlelight. On one shelf, pushed far to the back, was a wadded-up baby’s blanket embroidered with faded letters — was the first one R? Marigold reached out for it.

Pettifog swatted her hand away. “Don’t touch!” he said. “And close your mouth. You shouldn’t gawk at someone else’s regrets.”

The shelves farther from the doorway weren’t quite so jumbled. On one sat a half-empty jar of something called Doctor Mountebank’s Whisker Pomade. On another, coiled up like a snake, was a very long and sturdy rope. Its ends had been neatly cut, and someone had tied knots along its length to make it more useful for climbing. For a moment, Marigold couldn’t understand why it was there.

Then she saw the blob of glop. It was still on its dinner plate, which had been shoved to the back of the lowest shelf. When the light from Collin’s candle flickered over the blob, it trembled and moved into the shadows.

“Torville!” Marigold snatched up the plate. “Did Elgin leave you in here? He forgot to close the door behind him.”

The blob edged away from her fingers.

Pettifog pushed forward to peer at Torville. “He looks all right,” he said, “considering the circumstances. I don’t suppose there’s a mirror anywhere in here that Torville’s regretted owning?”

“Will this work?” Collin set down his candle and pulled a large silver bowl down from a high shelf. The bowl was tarnished, but some of the black splotches came away when he rubbed them with his sleeve. Then he passed the bowl to Pettifog, who placed Torville gently inside it. The wizard’s face, murky and petulant, appeared in the spot that Collin had polished.

“I stole this bowl from Blumontaine Palace last year,” said Torville’s reflection. His voice sounded thin, though Marigold supposed it might have been on account of the tarnish. “It was a gift to Queen Hetty from her dear departed mother. Completely useless to me, of course, but that iguana bit my ankle and I wanted revenge.” He glared out of the bowl. “What are you all doing in my closet of regrets?”

“I told them not to come inside!” Pettifog said quickly. “I tried to warn them off!”

“And it’s a good thing we didn’t listen,” Marigold told him, “or we’d never have found Torville.”

“I wish you hadn’t,” Torville said. “I don’t want you here. My fortress has been seized; my colleagues have discarded me like so much refuse, all because I allowed a child to turn me to glop! Has any evil wizard endured more humiliation?”

“You’re wallowing again,” Marigold told him.

“Of course I’m wallowing!” Torville roared. “What else should I be doing?”

“You should pick yourself up,” said Marigold, “and help us stop the Miseries. Vivien and Elgin have persuaded all the others to work with them. They’re arguing and stirring up big magic and drinking too much coffee. They say they want to ruin Imbervale!”

The blob of glop fizzed with irritation. “I told you there’s no point in trying to stop them,” Torville said. “It can’t be done. And why should I care what happens to Imbervale? Why do you care? I thought we were both too wicked for that.”

“Well, I’m not,” Marigold snapped. “Haven’t you noticed by now? I’m no good at being wicked. My heart’s not shriveled! My spells go sideways! I don’t want to keep helping the Miseries! And do you know what else?” She picked up the bowl and looked straight down at Torville. “I don’t think you’re much good at being wicked, either.”

Pettifog gasped. “You take that back!”

“No,” said Marigold. “I won’t.”

In the bowl, Torville’s reflection looked cross. “I’m tremendously wicked,” he said. “I’m revoltingly wicked. I can make a cyclone of ravens! I boil frogs in bubbling vats! I own a Thing!”

“I know,” said Marigold. “You’ve cast terrible spells and done terrible deeds. You’re rude and vengeful, and you’re not very nice. But I don’t think your heart is any more shriveled than mine is.”

“It is!” cried Torville. “It’s very small! It never thumps! It never even murmurs!”

“Then why,” Marigold asked, “did you help Rosalind escape?”

Collin gasped. Pettifog sighed. The blob of glop went pale.

“Gentleman Northwinds is looking for the rope that she used to climb out of the fortress,” Marigold told Torville. “He hasn’t found it yet — because it’s here in your closet of regrets. You were the one who hung it out Rosalind’s window in the first place, weren’t you? And when Rosalind left, she didn’t set off your protections or alarms because you’d taken them down. You wanted her to be free. Torville, you did something good.”

“I told you,” muttered Pettifog, “the girl was a snoop.”

Torville’s reflection wavered, as if he wasn’t sure how to reply. “When Rosalind was a little girl,” he said at last, hoarsely, “she kept asking to go home. I thought that would stop someday. I thought she’d grow comfortable with wickedness, maybe even become interested in my work, but she never did. If you could have seen the look on her face every time I worked a curse — well, anyway, I’d done what the Miseries had asked for fifteen years, and I didn’t want to do it anymore.”

Marigold had some idea now of how that must have felt.

“So yes,” Torville said, “I hung the rope. I had a brief moment of weakness, a small lapse of judgment — a mere hiccup!” He looked warily at Marigold. “Are you going to tell Gentleman Northwinds?”

Marigold grinned at him. “Not if you help us.”

This really made Torville howl. He flung himself around the bowl with great passion, calling Marigold names and threatening to turn her into a gnat or a pill bug as soon as he was himself again, but she ignored him and scraped him into her palm. “Once you stop thrashing,” she said, “I’ll make you some porridge. All right?”

The blob of glop glooped. Marigold tucked Torville safely into her pocket. Then Collin picked up his candle and led the way out into the hall, while Pettifog clopped behind them, shaking his head. “This,” he said, “is exactly why no one is allowed in the closet of regrets.”

It’s not fair,” Torville complained. “I don’t like being helpful. It’s not in my nature!” He squirmed as Marigold knelt down outside the dining room door. “Can’t you go in there instead?”

“I’ve told you,” Marigold whispered, “the wizards won’t talk about anything interesting while I’m around, and I’m not supposed to linger. But if you stay in the shadows or ooze up toward the ceiling, you can watch and listen for ages! They’ll never know you’re there, and you can find out what sort of big magic they’re planning.”

Torville pulled a terrible face. Because it was reflected in the curve of the silver coffee spoon Marigold was holding, his terrible face was upside down, which dampened the effect a little. He slipped off the edge of the spoon and inched toward the crack under the doorframe. “I’m not sure you understand,” his upside-down reflection said, “how much effort is required to drag one’s entire body across the floor.”

Marigold looked over her shoulder, hoping no wizards were about to wander out of the kitchen or poof into the hallway. “You should go now,” she whispered, “before someone comes along.”

“Fine.” The front half of Torville (or was it the back half?) seeped under the door. “But if one of those wizards squashes me flat, I’m blaming you.”

Just as Torville disappeared into the dining room, the wizard Juno raced down the hall. She was part of the group in Torville’s workroom, Marigold remembered; her robes were freshly stained with green sludge, and her hair was coming out of its braid. “Salt-cured turtles’ ears!” she cried. “I need twelve of them. Does Torville have any?” She pushed the loose hair away from her eyes and peered at Marigold, who was picking herself up from the floor. “What were you doing down there?”

“Oh! I dropped something.” Marigold held up the coffee spoon, then tucked it away so Juno wouldn’t notice the sheen of slime that Torville had left behind. “And I don’t know about the turtles’ ears. You can check the storeroom.”

“I will.” Juno lowered her voice. “Vivien’s in even more of a snit than usual. She said if I don’t get back there with turtles’ ears in the next five minutes, she’ll use my ears instead.”