Mary wondered aloud if Ian had remembered anything of consequence yet or if this sort of rehabilitation spell took time to settle and show the effects. She had a point. With that awful Billy Thisbury, the family had left before either of them saw their schoolmate back to his normal bullying self. Perhaps she should have made Ian stay longer to ensure the spell had worked. But then he’d said he could feel the memories returning, filling in the blank spots in his mind. Hadn’t he?
Mary pointed to a shooting star as it zipped across the sky, then fizzled. “I suppose everyone leaves in the end, don’t they? But not you, sister. Promise we’ll always have each other.”
Edwina squeezed her sister’s hand, assuring her she’d spoken a holy vow out loud. Forever and for always, they would have each other to rely on in this life, even if no one else would have them.
They each had one more nip of sherry before Edwina announced she was going to bed. Mary remained behind on the rooftop, saying she was going to stay out a little longer to stretch her limbs. The confines of the city had been hard on them both after living in the fresh air all their lives. More so for Mary, who seemed to bask in her nighttime freedom.
The instinct to reach an arm around her sister and encourage her to go back inside welled up within Edwina until she nearly sang a subtle sleeping charm to make her stay home. Instead she said good night, knowing she would lie awake on her side until her sister slipped back in through the window hours later smelling of all the wicked things the night air had to offer.
Chapter Nine
Ian, or whatever the hell his name was, stumbled out the door of the doss-house a few minutes before ten the next morning. A sharp pain stabbed his temple. He half wished his head would snap off his neck and roll down the pavement without him. He’d drunk too much ale down at the pub the night before. As punishment, his sleep had been filled with strange dreams. Nae, they’d been nightmares. The frightening details eluded him in the daylight, though a vague notion of his face being pressed nose down against wet bricks and musty straw lingered, leaving him jittery. The unsettled feeling clung to his mood like spiderwebs as he stepped into the street, his stomach full of watery gruel that threatened to erupt.
For the fifth time that morning, he checked his pockets, then buttoned his jacket against the chill. The coins, watch, knife, and pipe were still there. The key and business card, too, though what good they were to him he couldn’t say. He also had no clue what had driven him to stay in such a seedy place overnight. He had a little money. Must have a home somewhere. Yet his feet had carried him to the flophouse the night before without a second thought after his head wobbled from the drink. He’d obviously trod the path before and so he’d obeyed the impulse, though a part of him rested uneasy that he was so familiar with such a disreputable house, where men and women slept in the same bed out in the open.
He was still standing on the stoop beneath the doss-house sign when a man exited behind him. The reek of ale and urine floated off the man in a cloud. He couldn’t have known anyone in such an establishment, but there in the daylight he recognized the man’s face. He remembered the gap in his teeth, the bloodshot streak in his eyes, the flatcap with the grease stain on the brim.
Overcome with relief at recognizing someone, anyone, he called out, “Charlie! That you?”
The man gave him the once-over. “Do I know you?”
“’Course you do. You’re Charlie Dunham. We had a laugh down at the Hare and Hound ’bout a week ago.” He let the memory rise without forcing it. “You had money in your pocket after pawning a pair of gentleman’s boots that happened to walk their way into your lap, and I’d got me a lucky day’s wage at the docks. Don’t you remember?”
Charlie pulled the stub of a cigarette out from behind his ear, so Ian patted his pockets for his match safe with the mermaid decoration on the outside to give him a light but instead found a pocketful of a stranger’s belongings. He feared he’d grabbed the wrong jacket from inside the doss-house.
Charlie looked both ways over his shoulders, impatient-like. “I been to the Hare and Hound regular, sure, but I don’t reckon we’ve ever met,” he said and lit his own match.
“’Course we have,” Ian insisted. “It’s your ol’ Jake here. Jake Donovan.” He could remember the night as plain as could be. They’d pooled their coins for several pints each and stayed until close before going their separate ways and sleeping rough in the public square. But his recollection was flimsy. More akin to having studied a photograph of the event until he recognized every detail yet was nowhere in the picture himself. As if he were an impostor. Same as the name that had spilled out of his mouth so quickly—false and foreign to him, while at the same time familiar enough to say without thinking.