The sisters slipped their work aprons over their skirts and entered the shop. Mary blew life into a pair of oil lamps to chase away the natural gloom, while Edwina took out her polishing cloth from under the front counter to work on her new ring. Though now it was filled with finds similar to the one she polished, she often imagined the oak-and-glass case had once held jars of elixir and foot cream, or perhaps salt cures and bundles of rosemary with instructions for how to be rid of a stomach ailment. Or, more likely, the apothecary had been owned by a mortal and the case had held only brown bottles filled with small, round painkillers and stuffed with wads of cotton. Curing headaches seemed to be the only magic mortals were capable of.
Outside, the city streets thronged with the noise of ordinary people hurrying to and fro. Their dull energy thudded against the buildings until even the highest-flying spirit was drained sober by the end of the day, if one wasn’t careful. Mary watched out the window as a wagon rolled by, drawn by heavy-footed horses. Though she denied it, Edwina’s sister showed more of a fascination with mortals than etiquette permitted. There was a firm boundary that must be maintained, at least metaphorically, between the clans of the old bloodlines and those descended from nonmagical lineages. Especially when one had already been forced to move too many times before because of a sister’s impropriety.
“Will we be going to the hospital this evening?” Mary asked once the wagon passed.
Edwina looked up from the ring, which was quickly showing off that enviable yellow shine only real gold has. “I don’t think that would be wise, do you?”
Mary turned from the window. “Whyever not?”
Edwina stilled herself as the callousness of her sister’s question struck. Mary had only that morning taken a memory. There was little need to volunteer to sit and read to the dying again so soon. “What if he didn’t die? What if he’s there? What if he recognizes us? Says something?”
“I would think that’s why we should go and check on him.” Mary propped the OPEN sign against a bottom windowpane and unlocked the front door. “So we can be sure.”
Edwina thought again of the policeman she’d directed to the shore. Would he come calling? Had they been seen? A tiny fluttering wing of panic took flight in her chest. Then she thought of the man. What if he lived? What would losing a memory bright enough to float to the surface at the moment of death do to a person? Memories were made up of intricate interwoven strands. Each attached to another in delicate spiderweb threads that created emotional patterns, each one affecting and tugging on the next. What kind of withered existence would that be to carry no past, no connection to anyone or anything? Was that the condition the numbed souls who wandered the streets mumbling to themselves lived in, eyes half-vacant, clothes tattered beyond repair, and their tether to reality stretched to the point of madness? The memories holding one’s place in the fabric of society scattered to the four winds? The fluttering panic inside her chest alit on a branch of conscience and transformed itself to guilt.
Mary needn’t go, but perhaps she should visit the hospital. Just to be certain. Dead or alive, she needed to know so she could put this fretting to rest. The police would have taken him to Saint Basil’s Hospital. She knew the doctors there, knew their skill to be above average for mortals, but even an accomplished physician could never appreciate the gap in his understanding of the patient’s condition should the man recover.
Edwina polished the gold ring until it gleamed as bright as the vein in the stolen memory. Brilliant, valuable, and worth stealing. Yes, she understood her sister’s desire to own something so precious. But taking from the dead or dying was an altogether different matter than taking from the living. She should never have allowed it. No, she saw that now. There’d been the chill of death under the man’s skin, but perhaps she hadn’t accounted for however much time he’d lain unconscious in the cold river mud. Could that have stilled his blood so it pooled away from the skin? As much as she wished to indulge her sister, they should have stuck with the sick and elderly who they knew took their last breaths at Saint Basil’s.
She threw the cloth down on the counter. How could she have been so stupid? Perhaps she’d better pop in at the hospital after all. Better to be sure the man had died properly and wasn’t wandering the halls missing half his mind.
Stars above, helping mortals is rarely a risk worth taking.
Chapter Three
“Seeing stars” was no mere idiom. When the blow had come, the inside of his head had exploded with shattering white light that temporarily blinded his vision to all but the spangled stars that floated on the insides of his eyelids. The savagery of the hit slashed across every crevice of his brain, laying waste to his neck and spine before he’d blacked out. The pain had stolen his breath, his consciousness, and any recollection of what had happened afterward, except for the one odd vision that seemed to be imprinted on his irises. But that part wasn’t real, was it? He’d been clouted before plenty, but not to the point he couldn’t shake loose the rattling inside his head and get on with it. He rubbed his hand over his face as though he could wipe the slate clean, but all it brought was a reminder of his bruised condition.