The witch assured him it might take some time for the magic to fully integrate, but he should be “right as rain” in no time at all. She invited him to stay, but he could not abide the confines of the witch’s company another moment. He craved the sunlight and air. And so he said a weak “thank you” and prepared to leave her shop with his pocket watch, his bloodied knife, and a head full of crosshatched images that one minute made sense and the next were like looking at a stranger’s photos on the mantel.
With the witch’s assurances encouraging him, he buttoned his jacket and readied himself to face the street. His hand rested on the doorknob when it turned of its own accord beneath his grip. The door rattled open, despite being locked, and a young woman with dark hair and eyes that smoldered like smoky quartz entered the shop.
“Edwina, why is the door locked in the middle of the day?” the young woman asked before awkwardly acknowledging the man standing in her way. “Oh, it’s you.”
The woman—the sister, he believed—went white with worry before the witch reassured her all was right again.
But was it? His thoughts were a jumble and his emotions worn down to a nub after the ordeal. What he wanted, nae what he needed, was a draft of ale and smoke of his pipe in a noisy pub where he could disintegrate into the crowd and forget everything again. The sisters began to bicker about privacy and personal property. So, when the newly arrived sister ratcheted up her argument with Miss Blackwood, he recalled a corner pub, as natural as could be, not three lanes over that he’d often found camaraderie in before and left them behind without a second look back.
Chapter Eight
Hours later, with the shop closed and their supper eaten, Edwina and Mary retreated to the roof to sit under the stars, as they often did on clear evenings. With their hair loose and their shawls wrapped snugly around their nightdresses, they watched the sky and tried not to inhale too deeply the city smells of coal smoke and fried fish that drifted out of every other chimney. Though the sisters sat shoulder to shoulder as they always did, the matter between them still gnawed like mice nibbling at the woodwork.
“I wasn’t sure you’d join me tonight,” Edwina said at last.
“Whyever not?” Mary withdrew two cordial glasses and a half-empty bottle of sherry she’d been hiding beneath her shawl.
“I violated your privacy,” Edwina said as her sister pulled the cork from the bottle. “I know how you feel about your baubles. Each one unique and special. And yours.”
“You shouldn’t have taken it.” Mary poured the sweet wine into one of the petite glasses and offered it to Edwina. “But I understand why you did, even though I don’t know how you could have known the right spell to return the man’s memories.” She poured herself a glass and stuffed the cork back in the bottle.
They’d been through this sort of episode before, she reminded her sister, though how she could have forgotten was beyond belief. Despite their attempts at conformity, Mary’s unusual magic always seeped out into the open. Like static in the air, it raised the hairs on those who got too close. Boys were the worst. Always spying on them when their curiosity had been roused. First the boys in their home village. Then every village they’d lived in since. And now that awful nipper that kept hovering outside their shop door with his nose pressed to the glass. All she and Mary wanted was to be left alone, but to wear an air of strangeness in a crowd of sameness always found them out.
Edwina cradled her glass of sherry with two hands. “I was with Father that time you stole Billy Thisbury’s memory after he’d fallen off the roof and had the breath knocked out of him. You’d run down to the river to hide when you found out he wasn’t dead. I found you and convinced you to give me the orb, and then I held it for Father while he composed his spell to return the memories to the boy.”
“We were only thirteen. How could you have remembered the words of his spell ten years later? We didn’t even have proper grimoires yet.”
Edwina grinned mischievously. “Father sang the words.”
Mary nodded as if finally understanding something that had long been a mystery. “Ah, because he knew you’d have need of the spell one day. To protect some half-witted mortal from my fiendish habit. Because I’m too simple to control my impulses.”
Edwina denied her sister’s conclusions, though she’d often privately wondered the same, since their father knew she could remember any spell if it was sung in a tune. “You know he’s in awe of your gift, Mary. We all are. It’s a rare and beautiful talent.”