Iolana had been watching the post eagerly for five days.  She wasn’t sure how long it would take for a response to her letter.  She wasn’t even sure how long it would take for her letter to reach its intended recipient. But no answer arrived.  So she was waiting eagerly when Kayden brought the morning post in on a silver tray and set it on the occasional table in the foyer. Among the twenty-three pieces of mail was a large rose-colored envelope addressed to Mr. and Governor Staff and Miss Iolana Staff.  There was a similar one addressed to Mrs. Yuah Dechantagne, Master Augustus Dechantagne, and Miss Terra Dechantagne.

Picking up the silver letter opener from beside the tray, she sliced open the envelope with her name on it.  She pulled out a beautifully engrave invitation.  “You are invited for tea at the home of Miss Senta Bly, 2:00 PM, Octuary 7, 1907.”  This was interesting.  She hadn’t even realized that the Drache Girl had returned to Port Dechantagne.  Only yesterday she had been reading in the Birmisia Gazette that Senta had been shot in Mallontah.  She slipped the invitation back into the enveloped and placed it with the rest of the mail.

Making her way back to the library, she took Curse of the Cloud Women, the Rikkard Banks Tatum book that she had both started and finished that morning, and returned it to its crate. She had just picked up the morning Gazette, when Kayden stepped silently into the room, carrying a silver tray with another piece of mail upon it.

“Was this in the morning post?” asked Iolana.  “I’ve already gone through it.”

“Special delivery.”  Kayden still had problems with his Ps and his Vs, but by deemphasizing them, he almost was able to match human speech.

Taking the gold envelope and the opener from the tray, she had sliced it open before remembering to see to whom it was addressed.  Miss Iolana L.D. Staff.”

“Hmm,” she said, opening what turned out to be another invitation.  “I apologize profusely for the lateness of this request, but I would greatly appreciate if you could join our luncheon today at 11:30.  Due to time restrictions, no R.S.V.P. is required.  Your dearest friend, Sherree Glieberman.”

“My dearest friend?” thought Iolana aloud.  “If I were in hell.”

“What’s that, dear?”  Auntie Yuah walked into the room as the eleven-year-old waved the lizzie major-domo out.

“I have to get ready for a luncheon date,” said Iolana.  “I’ve been invited to the Glieberman’s.”

“Didn’t you say the girl was a twat?”

“I’m sure I didn’t use that term.”

Her aunt shrugged.

“There’s an invitation for you with the mail,” said Iolana.  “Tea with the Drache Girl it seems.”

“Really?” exclaimed Yuah, turning and heading for the foyer.

Iolana took the back hallway and the narrow back stairs up to the second floor and stepped into her room to change.  She expected to find Esther lying on the floor, but the lizzie was not present.  Stepping back out, she walked up past the balcony to the nursery where she found her playing the Birmisia block game with Terra.

“I need Esther for a minute,” she told her cousin.  “You can have her back after I get dressed.”

“Don’t bother,” said Terra.  “I don’t want to play anymore.  She keeps beating me.”

Back in her room, Iolana chose a pink skirt and a white blouse, which she paired with a pink bowtie.  She wasn’t sure who else would be there—she couldn’t imagine Sherree inviting only her—but it would be a sure thing that there would no Zaeri.  She wouldn’t need to worry about outshining anyone.  This reminded her that she should have Willa over to visit some time.  Placing her red boater on her head, she started off.

“You can stay in here if you’re done playing with Terra,” she told Esther as she went out the door.

She found Walworth downstairs in the kitchen, not unexpectedly eating a sandwich.

“What is it my father pays you for, Wally?”

“Huh?  He, um… for driving.”

“Well then, fancy driving me to the Glieberman House?”

“That’s what they pay me… oh, yeah.”

It took Wally almost fifteen minutes to get the steam carriage warmed up enough to set out, and took less than ten minutes to reach Iolana’s destination. The Gliebermans had recently moved into the same affluent neighborhood that the Staffs had always lived in. Their new house was several blocks south on Imperial Avenue.  Iolana could have probably walked there in five minutes, but that would have meant crossing several vacant lots in between.  Though the mud had dried up in the summer, the untamed areas within the city were filled with sticker bushes, and sometimes velociraptors.

The Gliebermans’ home was very much in the Freedonian style with square columns and square porches on both levels of the two-story home.  The upper porch was enclosed with wire screening and porch swings, along with some iron chairs were featured in both locations.  To Iolana’s mind it looked pretentious and grandiose.  She sent Wally on home and walked up the steps.

The lizzie butler showed her in to the parlor which the Gliebermans insisted on calling the drawing room.  Five girls waited sitting in chairs that had been arranged into a half circle. Sherree was in the center, with her perpetual shadow Talli Archer to her right.  The others were all girls from their group: Najwa Melroy, Mona Stephenson, and Tildy Wolfsohn.  Talli and Najwa were both patting Sherree on the shoulder while she cried into a handkerchief.

“What’s going on?” asked Iolana, taking an empty chair.

“Walter has thrown Sherree over,” said Talli.

“Oh, well maybe he’s just upset about his brother and all.”

“No, he’s already taken up with that horrible Wenda Lanier.”

“I would have thought she was out of his league,” said Iolana.

“What do you mean?” demanded Sherree, her giant eyes glaring.  “She’s not nearly good enough for him.”

“Oh, well, um… what I mean…” Iolana’s voice just sort of trailed off.  She really had no idea what to say.

“Are you going to kick me out again at teatime?” asked Baxter, folding his arms and looking down at Senta.

She was reclining across a Mirsannan divan.  She wore a long, flowing silk gown that completely covered her charms, though on the wall directly above her was a photograph of her and her mother reclining on the same piece of furniture—both nude.  She reached up to rub her long, exposed neck. Then she ran her hand over her head, her blond tresses about the same length as his own red hair.

“Of course not,” she smiled.  “I want you to be here.  These girls today are my oldest and dearest friends and they’ll want to see you. Afterwards you can run along so that they can all tell me how jealous they are.”

“What about yesterday?”

“That was different.  It was more of an obligation.  I know that Graham’s sister will see me with you sooner or later, but I didn’t want to throw it in her face the moment I got back.”

“It’s been a long time,” he said.  “He’s been gone a long time.”

“Almost four years, but when I see Gaylene, it’s like it was yesterday.  Not like now—now it feels like it was eons ago. It’s a kind of magic, you know.”

“So I’m invited?”

“You’re more than invited.  How did they say it when you were in the navy?  You’re requested and required.  You can skip out tomorrow if you like.  The same girls will be back again, along with some others.  But you have to be here the day after.  The governor and her family are coming.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes.  You’re living in sin with a very important mucky-muck.”

“Should I dress?” he asked.

“We always dress for tea in this house—unless we don’t.”

He stared at her for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders and left the room. Senta knew he was going upstairs to dress.  He had been given over for his own use one of the thirty rooms in the three-story mansion, but he had spent both nights in Senta’s bed.  Looking up at the clock, she decided that she should dress too.

Climbing the stairs still causes a pain in her chest where she had been shot, but it was the only time now that she thought about it.  At the top of the sweeping staircase, she waved her hand, magically summoning her lizzie dressing maid.  The deep olive reptilian appeared from a room at the end of the hall and met her as she stepped into her boudoir.

One of only three servants in the house as of yet, Aggie was new.  Cheery the butler, and Thonass the maid had worked for Senta for years and had taken care of the house while she was away. Thonass had given Aggie the recommendation.  They were from the same family—or what passed for family among the lizzies.

“Something pretty today,” she told the reptilian.  “Bring me my yellow and white striped day dress.”

“Yess.”

The dress was a traditional one.  Cut for a medium-sized bustle, the skirt was vertically lined with broad yellow and white stripes while the bodice was a solid yellow with puffy frills of lace around the high neck and at the end of each long sleeve.  She topped off the ensemble with yellow emeralds dangling from her pierced ears.  She slipped a ring on her right hand that featured a yellow garnet.  It was practically worthless, but she had purchased it in Bangdorf because she thought it was pretty.

“Nice,” said the dressing maid.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” said Baxter, stepping into the room. He was sharp in his grey suit.  He was always sharp.

“Thank you, kind sir,” she said with a curtsey.  “Shall we go down?”

Suddenly the baby began fussing from her crib in the next room.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” said Baxter, following her cries.

“Hmm,” she murmured, observing him.  Then she turned to the dressing maid.  “I’m going down to set up.  Tell Thonass to find me.”

In the dining room, Senta found the table set with the everyday china, but the food for the afternoon tea filled several wooden crates stacked nearby.  Having no one to cook and no one really to serve, she had ordered the tea catered from Café Etta.

“Uuthanum,” she said and the food began flying out of the crates, soaring around the room, and landing on the appropriate plates and serving platters. A spice cake was coming into a landing in the center of the table with Thonass stepped into the room.

“Take this envelope,” said Senta, retrieving the stated item from the lamp table along the wall.  “Deliver it to the employment agency at the Department of Lizzie Affairs.  It is a list of the other servants I shall need.”

“Yess,” said the lizzie.

As Thonass was going out, Cheery was coming in.

“Guests,” he said.

“Bring them on into the dining room please.”

The reptilian stepped out and came back a few seconds later leading three young women.

“Senta!” squealed Hero Markham, rushing forward and wrapping her arms around the sorceress’s waist.  “I’ve missed you so much!  Look at your hair.  You look like a boy.”

“Well it’s good to be appreciated.  You look wonderful.  How’s the baby?”

“Brilliant.”

“She’s beautiful too,” said Gabrielle Bassett from behind Hero.  She looks just like her mother.

Taller than Hero, though still shorter than Senta, Gabrielle was radiantly beautiful with sparkling blue eyes and ash brown hair.  Behind her stood the third young woman.  Dutty Morris was attractive but not pretty.  Though her widely spaced eyes gave her a kind of blank expression, she was witty and kind.

“Hello, Gabby,” said Senta, disentangling herself from Hero and giving the other two girls quick kisses on the cheek.  “Hi Dutty.  Thanks for coming yesterday.”

“It was my pleasure,” said Dutty.  “And I didn’t give away any of your secrets either.”

“What secrets?” asked Gabby and Hero at the same time.