Whatever you think you’re doing, you will cease, desist and proceed directly to my office for a cup of coffee. Your sister is in no small degree of concern.
P. G.
Dear Mr Graves,
Can’t. Your owl is fast, but the 20th Century Limited won’t stop for love or money.
Please don’t blame this on Tina. I was just helping sort out the spell records, and it’s not like they was classified stuff or something. Besides, your folks got it wrong.
Q. G.
Miss Goldstein,
You have no brief, no training, no partner, and – I pray to Oz – no idea of the hazards a young unattached witch will face at Cagliostro’s. My ‘people’, as you say, have spent five weeks month tracing back Mr De Soto’s Transfiguration spells. What could they have got wrong?
You will use the return ticket herewith, Queenie, or there’ll be hell to pay.
Percival Gregory Saturnus Graves
Mr Graves,
Oh no! The full-name signature! Gee, what’s a girI to do?
Sure they got it wrong. Turning gigglewater into sloe gin, to pump into the No Maj black market? Nah. Only works if you chase it with a shot of Felix Felicis. Not worth the production cost. Now, the way I dig it, your Mr D. is into distribution, and he’s using an Extension charm to make portable speakeasies. Like, a matchbox. You know. So when the No Maj please pops up, it can be slipped into that cute basket thing that’s held by a vapid blonde. You know. Like me.
Q. G.
Queenie,
You’re not vapid. You’re anything but – not the woman who kept her wits about, smuggled three Most Wanted out of MACUSA and heard my all-but-last breath across three walls. Or I wouldn’t have offered you a job.
The offer stands. But I can’t let you turn it into an off-and-on escapade, when the stakes involved go way beyond your needs or my pride. This I was taught last year. I am trusting you to dig it today.
P. G.
Mr Graves,
You know why I turned it down. I had other prospects at the time, and I made no secret of them – to you and Teen. (Also, the dragonhide coats. They itch. My family has, like, a case history with dragons.) But I appreciated it.
Look, I get it. Me not telling you to mind your own yard when I have both feet it. But I ain’t coming back. Not yet. Not when I gotta do something I can bank against all the empty in me – you know? But I’ll tell you what.
I’m at the Hotel Blake, same block as Cagliostro’s. and the groom there has a chum who knows a bookie whose sister is necking with Mr D.’s right hand. I’m only two eyebats away from a job. So I’ll stick it here today, and you can find me a booze Auror to work with. Deal? I gotta buy an undercover camiknicker, anyhow.
Queenie
-----------------------------
Percy, you slacker. Yes, permission to skip the Imbolc Security Detail meeting. But you’d better be back next week, so I don’t have to suffer alone through the actual gala.
Seraphina
---------------------------
Wanderbell Chateau January 21rst
Bathilda dearest,
So good to hear from you! I’m all agog about the new book – Omen, Oracles & the Goat sounds like an absolute eyecatcher – goat’s milk baths are back in trend, did I tell you? So it’s bound to be every bit as successful as A History of Hogwarts. Are you sure you don’t want to winter here? We’d be all fluttery to have you! I’ve just had Jeanne Beauvais re-do the guest suite in a natty peacock blue pattern. Peacocks are the dernier cri in England, I hear!
Speaking of goats and suites, we had young Newton over yesterday. Don’t thank me, dear! It is my pride and pleasure to oblige you. And your godson is a fine young buck. A teeny bit shy, maybe? He seemed to have trouble remembering names. Called my poor Lou ‘Miss Lobelia’ all evening – the girl was ever so mortified. But he’s very bright, I’m sure.
I was hoping for a juicy debate between him and Mr Carlos Williams, who gave us a devastatingly clever analysis of his book. Newton, I regret to say, looked unimpressed. He answered my query about collage with ‘Well, it’s a glossary, so it tends to follow alphabetical order’, which I thought the teeniest wee bit rude. And while we all cheered Mr C. W.’s exquisite tribute poem
I have stolen the coins that were in the cuss box
he objected that Nifflers, as a species, are not given to apologizing. But then, he might have been distracted by the buffet. I noticed that he couldn’t keep his eyes off it.
It was a nice buffet, mind you– quite plain, as befits a literary soirée - all French cheese and those funny, animal-shaped breads from Kowalski. I’m not sure who or what Kowalski is, but they make these dandy little breads that Lou and her friends keep raving about, so I had her order two dozens for the cheese. They were actually quite good. Newton certainly seemed to think so – he Disapparated half-way through the evening, just when poor Lou was spelling up the phonograph, and where do you think I found him? In the kitchen. Clasping hands with the caterer, no less. I guess he was congratulating the man, which was very nice and democratic of him, except I wish he’d congratulated poor Mr C. W. first.
Anyway, he told me ‘I’ll come tomorrow, first thing’, which I found a teeny bit odd, since we’d only just had him. But he was looking past my shoulder, so it was a lit-tle hard to offer him the suite, especially as he then shook my hand, still beaming, and said ‘Goodbye and thanks awfully, and, and, goodbye’. Ah, the Art of the British Paradox.
Anyway, it was quite a successful evening. Even the caterer seemed to think so: he refused my tip.
All the very best to you, darlingr, and do tell me about the new book. I can’t wait to patronize it here!
Fill - When the Clouds Roll By (6/?)
Whatever you think you’re doing, you will cease, desist and proceed directly to my office for a cup of coffee. Your sister is in no small degree of concern.
P. G.
Dear Mr Graves,
Can’t. Your owl is fast, but the 20th Century Limited won’t stop for love or money.
Please don’t blame this on Tina. I was just helping sort out the spell records, and it’s not like they was classified stuff or something. Besides, your folks got it wrong.
Q. G.
Miss Goldstein,
You have no brief, no training, no partner, and – I pray to Oz – no idea of the hazards a young unattached witch will face at Cagliostro’s. My ‘people’, as you say, have spent five weeks month tracing back Mr De Soto’s Transfiguration spells. What could they have got wrong?
You will use the return ticket herewith, Queenie, or there’ll be hell to pay.
Percival Gregory Saturnus Graves
Mr Graves,
Oh no! The full-name signature! Gee, what’s a girI to do?
Sure they got it wrong. Turning gigglewater into sloe gin, to pump into the No Maj black market? Nah. Only works if you chase it with a shot of Felix Felicis. Not worth the production cost. Now, the way I dig it, your Mr D. is into distribution, and he’s using an Extension charm to make portable speakeasies. Like, a matchbox. You know. So when the No Maj please pops up, it can be slipped into that cute basket thing that’s held by a vapid blonde. You know. Like me.
Q. G.
Queenie,
You’re not vapid. You’re anything but – not the woman who kept her wits about, smuggled three Most Wanted out of MACUSA and heard my all-but-last breath across three walls. Or I wouldn’t have offered you a job.
The offer stands. But I can’t let you turn it into an off-and-on escapade, when the stakes involved go way beyond your needs or my pride. This I was taught last year. I am trusting you to dig it today.
P. G.
Mr Graves,
You know why I turned it down. I had other prospects at the time, and I made no secret of them – to you and Teen. (Also, the dragonhide coats. They itch. My family has, like, a case history with dragons.) But I appreciated it.
Look, I get it. Me not telling you to mind your own yard when I have both feet it. But I ain’t coming back. Not yet. Not when I gotta do something I can bank against all the empty in me – you know? But I’ll tell you what.
I’m at the Hotel Blake, same block as Cagliostro’s. and the groom there has a chum who knows a bookie whose sister is necking with Mr D.’s right hand. I’m only two eyebats away from a job. So I’ll stick it here today, and you can find me a booze Auror to work with. Deal? I gotta buy an undercover camiknicker, anyhow.
Queenie
-----------------------------
Percy, you slacker. Yes, permission to skip the Imbolc Security Detail meeting. But you’d better be back next week, so I don’t have to suffer alone through the actual gala.
Seraphina
---------------------------
Wanderbell Chateau
January 21rst
Bathilda dearest,
So good to hear from you! I’m all agog about the new book – Omen, Oracles & the Goat sounds like an absolute eyecatcher – goat’s milk baths are back in trend, did I tell you? So it’s bound to be every bit as successful as A History of Hogwarts. Are you sure you don’t want to winter here? We’d be all fluttery to have you! I’ve just had Jeanne Beauvais re-do the guest suite in a natty peacock blue pattern. Peacocks are the dernier cri in England, I hear!
Speaking of goats and suites, we had young Newton over yesterday. Don’t thank me, dear! It is my pride and pleasure to oblige you. And your godson is a fine young buck. A teeny bit shy, maybe? He seemed to have trouble remembering names. Called my poor Lou ‘Miss Lobelia’ all evening – the girl was ever so mortified. But he’s very bright, I’m sure.
I was hoping for a juicy debate between him and Mr Carlos Williams, who gave us a devastatingly clever analysis of his book. Newton, I regret to say, looked unimpressed. He answered my query about collage with ‘Well, it’s a glossary, so it tends to follow alphabetical order’,
which I thought the teeniest wee bit rude. And while we all cheered Mr C. W.’s exquisite tribute poemI have stolen
the coins
that were
in the cuss box
he objected that Nifflers, as a species, are not given to apologizing. But then, he might have been distracted by the buffet. I noticed that he couldn’t keep his eyes off it.
It was a nice buffet, mind you– quite plain, as befits a literary soirée - all French cheese and those funny, animal-shaped breads from Kowalski. I’m not sure who or what Kowalski is, but they make these dandy little breads that Lou and her friends keep raving about, so I had her order two dozens for the cheese. They were actually quite good. Newton certainly seemed to think so – he Disapparated half-way through the evening, just when poor Lou was spelling up the phonograph, and where do you think I found him? In the kitchen. Clasping hands with the caterer, no less. I guess he was congratulating the man, which was very nice and democratic of him, except I wish he’d congratulated poor Mr C. W. first.
Anyway, he told me ‘I’ll come tomorrow, first thing’, which I found a teeny bit odd, since we’d only just had him. But he was looking past my shoulder, so it was a lit-tle hard to offer him the suite, especially as he then shook my hand, still beaming, and said ‘Goodbye and thanks awfully, and, and, goodbye’. Ah, the Art of the British Paradox.
Anyway, it was quite a successful evening. Even the caterer seemed to think so: he refused my tip.
All the very best to you, darlingr, and do tell me about the new book. I can’t wait to patronize it here!
Yours,
Eleanor Wanderbell III