Hobgoblin Night: Mask and Dagger 2 by Teresa Edgerton

Author:Teresa Edgerton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Fantasy.Historical, Steampunk, Fantasy.Sword & Sorcery
Publisher: Tickety Boo Press
Published: 2015-08-18T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Wherein Mothgreen Academy suffers an Invasion.

At Mothgreen Hall, Miss Barebones and her cohorts were as pleased as they were baffled by the success of their Dumb Supper, for none of their previous attempts to communicate with the spirit world had ever yielded such spectacular results—or indeed, any noticeable results at all.

"I am convinced that you have a natural gift," the headmistress told Sera. "You must play a part in all our spirit-raisings, after this."

"I beg your pardon, but I certainly shall not!" said Sera, and departed the room.

Yet one favorable result had occurred. Elsie confided to Sera that her phantom lover had ceased to woo her. She slept better at night and her health improved noticeably, though her color remained poor and she had little appetite.

With the end of the term on the last day of the season, the little girls went home for an eight-week holiday. The house was strangely peaceful for two days, until a sudden invasion: not by ghosts or school girls, but apparently by hobgoblins.

Far more disturbing than Uncle Izrael's knockings and rappings were sounds of movement within the walls, a pattering of tiny feet across the roof all night, and Nathaniel, the boy who worked in the garden, discovered a hob-hole under a rosebush. At least, it had once been a rosebush, covered with salmon-pink flowers, but the branches were all chewed off short, nearly down to the ground.

And things began to disappear, things for which Uncle Izrael could have no possible use: a tablecloth, a velvet drape, a lace-trimmed pillowcase. Miss Barebones concluded that the hobs had tunneled all the way from the town, a distance of nearly a mile.

"Perhaps, after all, most of the 'ghostly manifestations' that plagued us from the beginning were nothing more than the tricks of hobgoblins," Elsie suggested doubtfully. The ladies had gathered in the garden to view the hole and the violated rosebush. Rose petals and green leaves lay scattered all over the ground, as though the hobs had no interest in anything but the wood.

"If that is so, and they were here from the very start, why should they suddenly become more active now?" asked Sera, with a puzzled frown.

"Why should we suddenly become infested in any case?" asked Miss Fitch, drawing in her drab skirts, as though she suspected they were in imminent danger of being snatched away. "And I never heard before that hobgoblins were house-dwellers, or lived inside the walls."

"It must come of all the digging and poisoning and explosions in the town; the creatures have run mad with fright," Miss Barebones suggested, shaking her head. "Perhaps they come here because they feel safer. We did rescue that little one, you know: Miss Thorn, Miss Winter, and I. Or perhaps some of them remember Uncle Izrael's kindness and have come here for sanctuary."

"Mr. Barebones has been dead for fifty years," Sera felt obliged to point out. She bent down and scooped up a handful of rose petals, allowed them to sift through her fingers and drift slowly to the ground.

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