Whisper The Dead

Chapter 1

Gretchen was on her way to the Worthing musicale when her head exploded.
She finally knew exactly what a ripe melon felt like when it burst open. Frankly, it was knowledge she could have done without.
She'd told her chaperone that she was leaving for Lady Worthing's annual musicale from the Rowanstone Academy, she'd told the school she was leaving from home, and she's avoided her mother altogether. All to snatch a few minutes alone without a hovering chaperone or a lady's maid who would tattle her every deed to her parents. Gretchen fancied herself rather clever at subterfuge. But now,clearly as a punishment for lying, her head was exploding.
And it still wouldn't excuse her from another tedious evening, more's the pity.
Magic burned inside her like embers, just waiting to catch. But instead of doing something exciting with it, she was on her way to an event where young ladies were expected to sing and perform for eligible young men of the aristocracy, dragged there by their own mothers. In the last two weeks alone, she'd attended three balls, thr opera, the theater, and two supper parties. She'd danced the quadrille with a perfectly polite peer's son, curtsied at duchesses, and only hidden in the library twice. A girl could only take so much.
    Not that her current magical state was much of an improvement.
   She pressed her brow against the cool glass of the carriage window and tried to figure out what was happening. she caught glimpses of gargoyles crouched over the rain gutters and roof corners, but they remained still unanimated. No dark magic had awakened them; there were no warlocks roaming the sidewalks and no Greymalkin Sisters, who had so recently terrorized London. There was only a group of gentlemen with ivory-handled walking sticks gathered outside a chophouse, and a woman hurrying home with an armful of paper-wrapped packages.
Gretchen pounded her fist on the roof until the coachman stopped. She stumbled out onto the pavement. " Just need some air," she croaked. "i'm not well." She must have looked as green as she felt, because he didn't protest.
There was an odd grinding in her head, like the rusty cogs of some invisible clockwork. Her magical gift, calling Whispering, was most unhelpful. It warned her when a spell was going badly, but unfortunately that warning cane in needles of sound and pain. She still hadn't learn to decipher it or control it. She'd barely learned not to be ill when it pressed down on her like this.
She stepped onto the pavement and wrapped her hand around a lamppost to steady herself. Another surreptitious scanning of the area didn't make her present predicament any easier to understand. The cold iron was weathered under her hand, scraping slightly at her palm. Her witch knot flared once. All witches had the symbol om their palm, visible only to other witches. Gretchen already noticed it tended to itch when magic was being worked. A closer look revealed a sigil scratched into the lamppost. It was mostly lines intersecting with small circles. She didn't know what it meant. The black paint flaked off qs she traced the pattern, altering one of the lines.
The lattern above her shattered.
Glass rained down as one of the gentlemen gave a shout of alarm and rushed forward. " Are you well,miss?"
Gretchen nodded mutely. She might have been pelted with shard of broken glass, but the repsite from the awful buzzing sound in her head was well worth the risk. Whatever
prompted the lantern to break had also silenced her inner magical storm.
He frowned at the broken light. "I know they say gaslights are safe, but that's te third one this week I've seem shatter."
Gretchen knew perfectly well the gas lamps weren't faulty. Something magical was at work. The sudden and blessed quiet in her head attested to it.
"May I escort you home?" the gentleman offered, bowing politely.
"My carriage is waiting just there," Gretchen said "but thank you."
She waited until he'd rejoined his friends before circling round the lamppost. There were no ither symbols, nothing to suggest spell ingredients anywhere else in the vicinity.
Her familiar pushed its wolfhound head out of her chest and leaped down on the pavement. The giant dog was the form her magic took, glowing like moonlight thtough an icy lake. All witches had a familiar they could send outside of their bodies to various magical ends. As he closed his misty teeth around her hem and tugged, Gretchen assumed most familiars were better behaved than hers.
"What now?"
Another glowing wolfhound raced towards her, barking. His dark eyes was sad. It was her twin brother Godric's familiar, but he rarely sent it out. He said it made him feel nauseous.The dog gave another low woof and then both familiars raced away. If Gretchen concentrated very carefully, she could see what her wolfhound saw, though the lights glowed brighter andbthe colors were exaggerated, and all of it was smeared like a chalk drawing in the rain. Still, she recognized enough of the buildings and their soaring columns to know he was running down Bond Street faster than any regular animal could run. He turned onto Piccadilly and down to Strand, following it all the way to the area around London Bridge.
Either Godric had sent his wolfhound to fetch her, or else it had come looking for her of its own accord.
Either way,her brother was in big trouble.