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The Invitation

A Night of Magic

By Raina Kirby-JonesPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 22 min read
Runner-Up in Return of the Night Owl Challenge
6

Gold calligraphed writing blazed across the thick, pitch-black card on the vanity. In the half light of the moonlit night, the ink glittered like something precious. Indeed, Lettie had always said she’d sell her soul to hold this very invitation in her hand. But now that it was here, she barely dared to look at it, let alone touch it.

She swung her legs over the edge of her bed and pushed her feet into her slippers, wincing slightly at how cold they were against her skin. She hadn’t seen or heard the messenger who had delivered the party summons, though if what she had heard through the years about Marozzotti’s Masquerade was true in the least, it wasn’t worth it to wonder how they had gotten in and out undetected. After all, many impossible things weren’t so impossible when you had talents like Marozzotti and his associates.

Crossing the room and sitting on the velvet stool in front of her vanity mirror, Lettie blew a gentle breath in the direction of the lamp on the wall. It flickered to life, lighting the area in which she sat and sending shadows dancing into the farthest corners of the room. Even as striking as the gold lettering against the black card had been in the moonlight, it was even more beautiful in the dim lamplight, and it, too, seemed to dance like the shadows.

As she stared at it, Lettie let her eyes relax, allowing them to drift just out of focus, and a vision took shape in her mind. A stone mansion, poised on a hill overlooking a sprawling, lush estate. Guests arriving in the dead of night, not sooner than the midnight hour. A combination of gold and silver filigree, diamonds and finely shaped crystal, and rich-colored satins through the entire interior. Towers of pastries and confections, fountains of champagne, bejeweled serving trays of exquisite meats and cheeses and fruits.

Come, indulge at the Masquerade, a voice whispered in her ear, Lettitia Coleman.

Lettie’s eyes fluttered and she focused once again on the lettering of the invitation she now held in her hand. The actual written words were simple: Come Play. The elegance of the enchantment compared to the simplicity of the card’s physical design made Lettie smile just a little. She had always appreciated flair.

As she looked up into the mirror in front of her, she imagined herself in something appropriate for a bit of high-end midnight mischief. Her smile grew. Yes, she thought to herself, she would play.

+ + +

“A little birdie told me that someone has in her possession an invitation to a certain party at a certain mansion on a certain hill outside the city two days from now.” Lettie had agreed to lunch with her friend Hilde at their favorite café in the second ward and immediately Hilde had begun her interrogation.

“Honestly, Hilde, I have no idea where you find these little birds of yours, but you should be careful about which trees to tell them to perch in. One of these days someone’s liable to get a hold of them and pluck the poor things.” There was a glint in Lettie’s eyes as she watched her friend over the rim of her wine glass.

“Ooh, you horrible hag!” Hilde laughed, faking a shiver, “You wouldn’t dare. Besides, be honest, you love it when I pry. Otherwise, who would you share all your scandal with?”

Lettie said nothing but she couldn’t help the wry smile that crept out from behind her glass. She finished the pinot grigio and lifted her hand slightly, tapping her long manicured fingernail against the rim of the glass gently. From across the patio a bottle of wine rose from a waiter’s hands, midway through a pour, and drifted to where Lettie held her own empty glass. Independent of anyone the wine began to pour itself, stopping only after having given a generous refill, and then set itself gingerly on the table between Lettie and Hilde. A few seconds later, the bottle’s cork whizzed past Hilde’s ear and plunked itself tightly in its opening.

“Well, at any rate, those birdies of yours might come in handy. Have they heard anything about Marozzotti lately?” Lettie picked up her fork and slid her food around her plate absently, paying less attention to her filet mignon and more attention to what her friend had to say.

Rather than a straightforward answer, a guffaw that Lettie was all too familiar with followed her question and she stopped pushing her steak.

“Lettitia Justine Coleman, do I look like an idiot to you? No one spies on Marozzotti. Not even me.” Hilde looked a bit paler than she had been when they’d sat down to eat and now her eyes darted from Lettie to her own lap. It wasn’t like Hilde to fold that easily.

“So, you have reason to believe all the things we’ve heard about him over the years? All the rumors?”

No answer. No indignant guffawing. Just silence.

“Hilde.”

“Lettie, you’ve heard the same things I have. And you know,” Hilde looked around nervously as if she expected all eyes in the café to suddenly be fixed on the pair of them, “You know what happened to Tiana.”

Tiana Maddison. A few years ago, she had allegedly caught the eye of one of Marozzotti’s friends. Tiana had turned him down very publicly, though not cruelly in the least, and not too long after that year’s Masquerade she had lost her mind and enchanted an entire school full of children into Shih Tzus. The chaos that had followed had taken days to sort out and the public outcry against witchcraft, sorcery, and enchantment had been so strong every practitioner in the area had been worried about retaliation. After all, using magic to serve yourself at a restaurant was one thing, transfiguring the children of an entire community into lapdogs was something else entirely.

“There isn’t actually any proof that Marozzotti was involved. I think it’s just what he wants us to think. He lets the rumors and the stories go on because they keep people scared of him and he gets to keep his mystery and his power without any real consequence.” Lettie huffed and pushed her plate away, her mood and her appetite both ruined as she thought about the man whose party she’d be attending in a couple days.

“You’re right, there’s no proof and everything we know about him is just rumor. If you ask me, that’s pretty smart. I certainly don’t know anyone foolish enough to cross him now.” Hilde sounded slightly muted, and Lettie could tell that the current topic of conversation was dampening her friend’s mood, too.

“If you ask me, Matteo Marozzotti sounds like a coward,” Lettie growled under her breath, “Now let’s talk about something else.”

+ + +

The carriage bumped along as it moved up the winding driveway towards the top of the hill. With a gentle wave of her hand and a short, improvised incantation, Lettie smoothed out the ride for herself. Hilde had pointed out before Lettie had left for the party that taking a car would have been both faster and more comfortable, but Lettie had insisted on taking the carriage. Just as she had always been a fan of flair, she had always had a penchant for drama. What was more dramatic than a royal purple carriage with black diamonds beaded into the spokes?

All along the way there were floating lanterns that lit the path, casting dim, whimsical light against the pavement. In the distance a building rose from the top of the hill, alive with music that drifted down to Lettie, leaving her with the faintest impression of the instruments that she might find in the ballroom. She could hear excited chatter, too, and knew that many of Marozzotti’s guests had probably already arrived. The time, she guessed, was somewhere around half past one in the morning. A perfect time for an arrival.

The carriage pulled up to the walkway that led to the front door, coming to a stop abruptly but not jarringly, and Lettie pulled on her shawl. Suddenly, her shoulders seemed transformed into wings, the feathers that comprised her covering were sleek, shining, and an almost iridescent blue-black.

As the carriage door swung itself open and Lettie stepped out onto the walkway, her dress shifted in the space it now had, unfurling in a glorious avian display. This, too, had a blue-black sheen to it, and in some spots a green-black tone, and the bodice was inlaid with amethysts so dark they might as well have been black.

But no attire meant for a night such as this would have been complete without the pièce de résistance. Before dismissing the carriage and watching the driverless coach pull away into the night, Lettie turned back and reached across the seat for something. She took a deep breath, stilling herself for what the rest of the night would hold. And then she lifted her mask. Lettie would be the most beautiful raven at the ball.

The atmosphere inside the house was electric. The air was somehow cool, despite the sheer number of guests in the front rooms of the house, and the heavy scents of amber and oakmoss drifted around and between all the guests. True to the vision that had been included with the invitation, Lettie noticed the opulence dripping from every fixture in every corner of the room. If this place wasn’t the pinnacle of haughty aristocracy, Lettie didn’t know what to call it.

In the room to the left of the entrance hall, the ballroom held a heavy crush of bodies, all of them moving in orbit around each other as instruments danced in the air above them, circling each other in orbit as well. The cello and the violin danced a waltz, the flute and the piccolo spun around each other in graceful courtship, and, above them all, the keys of a piano hovered by themselves in lonely company. The music was lively and haunting, and a creeping urge to find a partner and join the seductive ballet before her was pushing outward from the shadows of her mind. Dance, Lettie… dance, a voice encouraged her.

A smile turned the corner of her lips as she let out a soft tsk.

“Nice try. Is that all you’ve got?” Lettie turned from the doorway to the ballroom and set her eyes to the sitting room.

Splayed haphazardly on settees of crushed velvet and laying on top of satin pillows on the floor, some of the guests entertained themselves there with small parlor tricks. Bursts of fire seemed to produce themselves out of thin air and then smolder out to nothing but floating embers that fizzled as they rose through the room. Tiny animals, miniature horses and hippos and grizzly bears, galloped and blundered and loped their way across a small table in the center of the room, fabricated by a young woman who had come to the party dressed as a dragon. She was delighted by her own talent.

Still other guests in the sitting room were enjoying themselves passing around a clear orb, a game that Lettie had learned, and given up, as a child. The object was to add to its size with enchantment until it inevitably burst, leaving whoever broke the orb temporarily under the affects of whatever spell the orb had held. She had seen all kinds of ridiculous magic and horror fall on players. At a party like this, she hated to think what sort of foul affects might be in store for the loser. Won’t you play, Lettie, the same voice that had enticed her to dance spoke again, this time with a little more insistence.

“Games like that are for children. I came here for something more exciting.” Lettie’s voice was controlled, even, but just beneath the surface there was a hint of the taunt she’d meant it to be.

Ahead of her was a staircase, a grand flight that ascended to the second floor of the house, and it was in this direction that Lettie headed. It took her no time at all to find her way, deciding arbitrarily which way to turn once she’d reached the upper level. There were guests here, too, though not nearly as many as downstairs. They spoke in hushed tones, their eyes glazed behind their masks, and not one of them moved as Lettie made her way past them in their little groups.

Still, the feeling that all eyes were on her made her muscles tense slightly and she found that she had to remind herself to breathe evenly. Only focus would bring her through the night. Focus, and a will made out of sheer iron.

Down the hallway, past three or four small groups of entranced guests, Lettie noticed a mural painted along one of the walls. It seemed to tell a story from centuries past, the saga of who she could only guess were the ancestors of the present-day Marozzottis. The little painted characters moved as she traced her fingers over the imagery, wondering just how far back the lineage went.

Her own pedigree only dated as far back as Elizabethan England; her family had no evidence of personal access to magic before then. She knew that there were families with lines that were far older than that, but with what little most people could confirm about Matteo Marozzotti there was no way to tell when his magic had sprung from.

Closer, little bird…

This time the voice that spoke to her wasn’t enticing her to anything specific. But as Lettie’s fingers found the edge of the mural, leaving the last of the painted figures behind, a door at the end of the hall unlocked on its own and opened smoothly. Beyond the door there was only darkness. It was lucky for Lettie that she had never been afraid of the dark.

Passing over the threshold and into the room, a momentary weight pressed all the air out of Lettie’s lungs, forcing her to gasp. It took a few seconds before she realized that, instead of the darkness she had seen from the hallway, the room was brightly lit with lanterns and candles. There was a circular fireplace at the center of the room, too, and the flames there leapt from their logs and circled the edge of the hearth as if they were watching to see what would happen.

A few more seconds and Lettie had managed to get her breath back, refocusing herself and then taking in her surroundings. There were party guests here, too, but they were different from the preoccupied, self-amused, or mesmerized guests she had found along the way here. Everyone was aware of her presence and, though this seemed to be a private event, the many smiles she saw told her she was welcome.

Join me here, little bird.

The voice was so much clearer now, and louder, and commanding, even if there was something soft in it. Across the room a set of double doors, made almost completely of glass, slid open. A gust of cool night air blew through the room and Lettie made out a figure standing on the balcony. And so, here he is, she thought to herself.

+ + +

Standing near the railing of the balcony, staring out across the estate, Lettie wondered silently to herself what she had expected. Marozzotti stood next to her, staring out across the same landscape she was, and if they had been any closer, they would have been touching.

“I’ve lived here since I was a boy and still this view never gets old.” Marozzotti sighed wistfully and leaned his elbow on the railing, his chin against the palm of his hand.

“So that’s why you invited me, then? To show me your favorite view?” Lettie tilted her head just enough so she could get a look at him.

“Of course. Well, that and because I had to see your carriage for myself.” He was being glib.

“Well, in that case, both things have been seen. The view, the carriage. I guess that’s my night, then.” Lettie turned and faced back the way she’d come, looking through the double doors that led onto the balcony. But she didn’t move.

There was a moment of silence between the two of them and the only sound was the quiet conversation that drifted out from the room beyond. Not even the sound of the ballroom instruments reached them here. That was the beauty of pocket dimensions, they played by whatever rules you wanted them to.

“Why did you come? Hm,” Marozzotti’s voice was low but his tone was clear and the question held enough sincere curiosity that it made Lettie turn her head to look at him, “You could have said no.”

“And ended up like poor Tiana Maddison? You’ve got the entire magic elite scared to death to say no to you,” She laughed breathlessly, “Clever trick.”

“I didn’t imagine you as someone who was scared of anything.” Now Marozzotti shifted his own position, turning to face the same way Lettie was, resting his back against the railing. He looked aloof, like a cat.

“I’m scared of plenty. Just not of you.” Lettie rolled her eyes.

“Mmhm, then, like I said, you could have said no.” He was watching her intently and she could feel him staring holes through her. She wondered what he saw.

“I could have. But then I would have missed my chance.” Lettie closed her eyes and thought of the reason she was there. Dark eyes the color of coffee. A persistently lopsided dimple. An infectious sense of hope.

“Your chance? Chance to what?” Now Marozzotti’s voice was an even mix of amusement and intrigue, a combination that told Lettie he had no idea what was about to happen.

“To talk to you. About Esme.”

Despite the low light on the balcony, Lettie could see the expression on Marozzotti’s face. The mention of Esme had knocked all amusement and curiosity out of him and now there were hints of denial, panic, and something else that may have been anger. But his anger couldn’t have matched her own in a hundred years.

“Whatever you think you know, you’re wrong.” Marozzotti’s voice wavered, but Lettie didn’t quite hear fear in it. It was something closer to shock.

“And whatever you think you’re about to say to convince me, you won’t. I saw her.” Lettie whispered the last three words and watched understanding and then disgust flicker across Marozzotti’s face.

“You what?”

“The summer after. I saw her. I needed to know, and I do. I’ve known for years.” She could hardly keep the venom out of her voice.

Inside, just beyond the double doors, the fire at the center of the room raged out of its hearth, suddenly turning from its natural red-orange glow to an eerie black. All eyes darted towards the pair where they stood on the balcony and every guest sprang from where they lingered, sprinting for the door. Some of them took only a few seconds before they were casting spells and spitting incantations, but Lettie had expected this.

She threw her arm out in the direction of the doors, making a clockwise rotation as she muttered something under her breath. The bricks of the walls on either side of the doors multiplied at a furious pace and swallowed the space where the doors had been, leaving no evidence that there had ever been a way in or out of the building. But Lettie knew she couldn’t afford to lose sight of the greater danger here.

While she had been distracted by the crowd of guests, Marozzotti had been speaking an incantation of his own. Without warning a sound like shifting sand drifted up to Lettie’s ears. It grew louder and louder, until along with the sound there was also the feeling of shifting beneath her feet. She was falling before she realized that Marozzotti had disintegrated the portion of stone balcony under her.

Instinctually, Lettie reached her arm down just before she hit the ground and, with a quick flick of her wrist, she produced a semi-solid bubble. It bounced her just high enough back through the air so she could speak the incantation for transportation. In another few seconds she was standing behind Marozzotti on the balcony once again.

“I was out of my mind with grief,” Lettie whispered in his ear, clenching a fist in the air before he had the chance to respond, “I needed to know who took my sister from me. I needed to know who to hate.”

She heard Marozzotti suck in a short breath as her enchantment caught him off guard, binding him so he couldn’t move. She was determined he would hear her.

“I went to the lake where everyone thinks Esme drowned. I lit the candles, I drew the sigils, I said the words, Matteo. And she answered me,” Lettie was breathing uneasily now, half from the pain of reliving that night and half from the effort of keeping him bound as he used his magic to struggle against her, “I brought her back for six minutes. I almost died doing it, but, that’s what grief does to people, Matteo. It pushes them to extremes.”

As hard as he pushed against her, as much as he struggled, lashing out with strands of his energy, Lettie managed to keep him restrained. With a twist of her hand, she spun him slowly so that she could look him in the face as she finished her story.

“Do you know what she told me, Matteo? Well,” She laughed humorlessly, “Of course you do. You know because you lived it. Esme told me about the spell, the one she begged you not to do and then decided to help you with because you wouldn’t back down. It was supposed to make you more powerful, wasn’t it?”

“It did!” Marozzotti’s words were strained, all his energy funneling into his efforts to break Lettie’s hold on him.

“Except, that’s the thing, isn’t it, Matteo? It didn’t,” Lettie went silent for a moment, surging her power over Marozzotti’s own, searching, “See, Esme showed me the truth. The spell gave you the illusion of power. No one else knows that you got my sister killed, but it was right after her death that the rumors about you started. All kinds of rumors. The kind that got you through all the right doors, into all the right circles. They made you out to be ruthless to those who wanted you to be ruthless, a visionary to those who needed to see you that way, and terrifying to anyone who would have otherwise been your enemy.”

Almost as if the night itself was in awe of Lettie’s revelations, there was no sound around the two of them. No crickets. No frogs. Not even the wind dared to disturb the moment.

“You think you have power, Matteo? I can feel your power,” Lettie’s eyes were black and cold as she closed the distance between her and Marozzotti, leaning in to whisper in his ear, “And you’re nothing.”

She unclenched her fist, releasing him from her hold, and simultaneously began a feverish incantation. The wind whipped into a frenzy, swirling violently around them, and Lettie watched as Marozzotti sank to the ground. His lips moved as if he were attempting his own counter incantation, but the wind drowned out any sound he made.

As Lettie’s words spun furious magic, she never took his eyes off of the man in front of her. She watched him shrink. And shrivel. And shrink further, his costume for the masquerade soon a pitiful pile of fabric all around him. A small, still lump remained in the center of the clothes, beneath them all, and it wasn’t until Lettie stopped her chanting and the wind died down that the tiny thing moved.

A soft squeaking came from under the jacket that Marozzotti had once worn, and Lettie bent down to sift through the pile to find what was underneath. A little, brown mouse cowered where Marozzotti had stood only minutes before, and Lettie smiled down at the creature.

“There. Now the outside matches the in.” Lettie sighed. Turning from the spot where the mouse sat, scratching at the stone balcony, she took a step as if to head back through the double doors. It took a moment before it dawned on her that she had bricked up the way to the pocket dimension Marozzotti had created, and she sighed. She’d have to leave another way.

+ + +

Her carriage had been easy enough to summon. The driverless coach bumped along down the driveway towards the bottom of the hill and, though she had almost completely exhausted herself against Marozzotti, Lettie found just enough energy left to smooth out the ride for herself as she traveled along.

She thought about her sister. Esme’s laugh. Her favorite breakfast foods. The way she had liked to dance. Letting her eyes relax as she stared at the upholstery of the carriage, Lettie’s mind conjured up a memory of the winter before Esme had died. It was snowing, they had grabbed their mother’s best cookie sheets and rushed out into the snow to go sledding. It hadn’t mattered that the land all around them was flat, Esme had enchanted the snow into a perfect hill and Lettie had used her magic to make the cookie sheets into sleds. A smile slipped across her face as she thought of it.

As Lettie reached the bottom of the hill, she glanced out the window. High in the sky, partially illuminated by moonlight, a great barn owl circled the sky. The glorious creature was hunting.

“I hope you eat well, my friend.” Lettie murmured as she closed her eyes and let herself drift off.

Short Story
6

About the Creator

Raina Kirby-Jones

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