“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.”
Marigold followed Juno into the storeroom and watched her rummage around. She didn’t think Vivien had been joking. “Doesn’t she bother you at all?”
“Who? Vivien?” Juno stuck her head into an enormous jar, pulled it out again, and shrugged. “We’re working big magic,” she said. “Stirring up discord and desolation. It’s not supposed to be pleasant. Oh, here they are!” She snatched a dusty green tin off a shelf and raced back up the stairs.
That was the curious thing about these evil wizards, Marigold thought. They didn’t seem to like one another much, and they all clearly hated the Miseries, but none of them said so. Even the Twice-Times Witch, who Marigold suspected could work more magic than all the others put together, seemed content to sit back and watch the frantic preparations. And Gentleman Northwinds was obviously enjoying himself. Each time Marigold stepped into the dining room to pour coffee, the voices around the table had grown louder and Gentleman Northwinds’ smile had grown broader, as if he’d conjured up all the wizards’ quarrels and quibbles himself.
Marigold was sweeping purple dust from the entryway as slowly as she could when Torville oozed onto her foot. In a hurry, she set down her broom, plucked him off her bootlace, and dropped him into her pocket along with the coffee spoon. “Any luck?” she asked under her breath.
“I wouldn’t call it that.” Torville’s voice sounded tinny and muffled inside the pocket. “Old Skellytoes almost sat on me. Take me to see their scrying spell next.”
Marigold made her way to the room of creaks and whispers. The door was shut, but she could hear Horace and the sharp-toothed wizard bickering inside. “This shouldn’t take long,” said Torville, leaning over the lip of the spoon. “Stay here. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
Marigold tried to look busy as she waited for Torville. In her head, she planned out new contraptions to build for the fortress: a bucket that could be cranked up and down to bring supplies from the storeroom to the workroom, hinged shutters to protect the windows from invading night terrors, and a system of bells and pulleys that would let visitors announce their arrival from the far side of the moat. But when fifteen minutes had passed and there was still no sign of Torville, she couldn’t focus on contraptions anymore. After seventeen minutes, she gave up looking busy and lay down flat, trying to see under the door. Had Torville tumbled into the scrying spell? Was he floating in the stone birdbath? Could a blob of glop float at all? Should she rush into the room of creaks and whispers and come to his rescue?
“Did you fall, Princess?” This was Torville’s voice, heavy with sarcasm, coming from somewhere above her head. Marigold sat up and eyed the blob of glop perched on the brass doorknob.
“You wiggled out through the keyhole,” she accused him. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“And I didn’t expect to see you sprawled on your stomach like one of King Theobald’s hounds after a day at the hunt.” Torville’s reflection was smudged and bulbous in the doorknob. “Yet there you are. Did you catch any rabbits?”
