“Then why did we have to flee our home in the middle of the night with nothing but our luggage after that boy cried about it? He should have just died like the rest of them.”
“You know why,” Edwina said, letting her sister’s callous comment go. “And, anyway, it was a long time ago.” She took Mary’s hand in hers. “Am I forgiven?”
Mary made a show of thinking about it, but she’d already poured the glasses for the toast. “Forgiven,” she said.
It was not their habit to drink from their father’s cabinet. They rarely touched the stuff. There were times, however, when pacts were made or fences mended, that only the elixir of alcohol could provide the proper tribute required. And so they clinked their glasses and drank the sherry, feeling the alcohol settle softly in their stomachs.
With their quarrel drowned by sweet wine, they conferred with the constellations. Fixed but not rigid, the stars hung in the sky as true as any map consulted by the lost. All one needed was to know where they wanted to go, and the stars would tell them when and where to put their foot on the path. The art, though, was in the interpretation.
Mary drew her knees up and tucked her feet under the hem of her nightgown. “Do you think he’ll come back?”
“Ian? I patched his head and returned his memories. I don’t think he’ll bother us again. He won’t say anything, once the memories of his life get reabsorbed. We won’t have to run this time.” Edwina paused, letting a smile show in the corner of her mouth. “Though it is kind of a shame he won’t be back. He was rather easy to look at, wasn’t he?”
“No,” Mary corrected. “I meant Father. It’s been three months now.”
“Oh.” Edwina covered up the embarrassment of talking about Ian so plainly by sipping the last drop of her sherry and then cradling the rim of the glass against her lips as she thought. “There’s still been no word about where he’s gone. It’s impossible to say when or if he’ll return.”
“But he’s left.” Mary rested her head on her knees. “Just like Mum.”
“We don’t know that yet.”
But however much she wanted to disagree with her sister’s assumptions, it was the most likely outcome. Their mother had disappeared in much the same manner. A kiss, a wave, a promise to return, and then they never saw her again. A year later and they still didn’t know whether she was alive or dead. They hadn’t given up on her, but she no longer preoccupied their hearts with the hope of return.
They tilted their faces to the constellations again. With the century coming to an end, the sisters had been studying their star charts with more vigor and knew a disturbing Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Cancer was corkscrewing nearer each day. A sign of struggle to come. Long suffering. The kind one sees in prolonged war. The perfect conditions were ticking away in the cosmos, waiting for the constellations to revolve toward each other and ignite events into motion. It would come in their lifetimes, but not today.
“Do you think Mother and Father left because of me?” Mary asked. “Because of how I am?”
It always pinched Edwina’s heart to hear her sister talk about herself as somehow being damaged goods. She was rare. Different. They both were. And that sort of thing always drew unwanted scrutiny. People always wanting an explanation for why they were so odd and then running away in fear the moment they got even a slight glimpse of the truth. Moving to the city had been their father’s final attempt at settling the family safely. A way to fall so deep into an anonymous stream of mortals and witches there was little chance they’d be noticed. Just another pair of stones at the bottom of the rushing river. And they’d been happy setting up the new shop. Perfectly ordinary and upstanding. But then that horrid boy showed up to stir old vulnerabilities to the surface, at least for Edwina.
She slipped her arm around her sister’s. “No, of course not, my darling. Whatever drew Father away was of his own making. He’ll get in touch when he has reason.”
The tears had already started, but then Mary sniffled and shut them off. She shook her head to clear away any more attempts at self-pity. “Do you think he’ll be okay?”
“Father? Of course. He can certainly take care of himself.”
Mary grinned. “No, I meant your Ian.”
“Goodness, he’s not my Ian.” Edwina blushed in what must have been a brilliant shade of pink. “But I do hope—believe—he’ll recover without incident.”