Double Enchantment

One

London, 1848
Where magic has never died...

Lady Jasmina Karlyle snuck into her mother's bedroom like a thief. To her dismay, she realized that she was getting quite skilled at breaking and entering. Jasmina ignored the illusion of slobbering, snarling wolves that her mother had set to protect the chamber from intruders, and began to search the contents of several bandboxes.

She carefully set aside a lovely bonnet decorated with iridescent feathers, a lacquered fan painted with swans, several lace-trimmed handkerchiefs, and a beaded reticule. A glitter of red caught her eye, and she scrabbled for it, scowling with disappointment when she held it up and realized it was only a jeweled button.

She put everything back into the bandbox and opened the lid of another. It was astonishing, really, how clever her mother could be when she set her mind to it. Illusory boxes were interspersed with the real ones, so that her collection looked double. Fortunately, Jasmina had searched her mother's belongings often enough that she knew where the real items were stored.

The door rattled and Jasmina spun guiltily, waving her fingers with the absent-minded habit she'd developed whenever she cast a spell. She couldn't quite make herself invisible, but her spell would cause whoever entered the room to overlook her presence.

Despite being her mother's maid for forty years, dear Nanette took one glance at the snarling wolves and slammed the door shut again.

Jasmina smiled and continued her search. Nothing in the larger boxes! She moved her search to the smaller, decorative boxes that littered Mother's chiffonier. She shook her head with frustration. There was still the wardrobe to search, and the washing stand cupboard, then beneath the canopied bed-and she hadn't even checked Mother's dressing room yet.

And all for an ugly brooch that looked exactly like-

Jasmina blinked. Nestled among other jewelry, in a pretty box decorated with tiny abalone shells, lay the Duchess of Hagersham's brooch. Her instincts had been correct. Last evening at the Hagersham dinner, her mother had been admiring the duke's new gift to his wife with a little too much avarice.

Jasmina held the brooch up to the candlelight, and the large garnet in the center of the piece danced with reflected light. The jewel itself was quite stunning, but the silver figures carved around the sides of it leered grotesquely at her. Ugly little creatures with the most shocking anatomically correct details.

Whatever had possessed her mother to "borrow" it?