“Elvanfoot,” Ian said, thinking out loud.
“Was he here? Was George involved with this after all?” Singh grew agitated, ready to send her constables into the streets to look for him.
“Nae, nae, but he may be another victim. I’m fair convinced of it,” he said, following his intuition as it burrowed into the truth. “He must be.” He glanced in the direction of the city’s heart. Was that why George had run? Because he didn’t know who or what he was? Ian thought of his own confusion and fear when he’d awoken to a world that offered nothing of the familiar.
“What makes you think that? We haven’t had any other bodies turn up.”
“It’s Mary. Aye, she’s a witch, but more like in the old stories.”
“What do you mean ‘like in the old stories’？” She waited a beat for him to answer. “Ian, are you all right? Are you hurt? Did you take another hit to the head?”
He’d been put in mind of the old ones, those who had walked the hills and moors before the world had been taken up with steam and coal and steel. The ones who’d breathed in unity with the earth once upon a time. “Mary takes people’s memories,” he said. “She’s attracted to their corpse lights. Only the victims don’t always have to be dead for her to remove them. But that’s what made the mark above the dead men’s ears. It wasn’t ritualistic; it was compulsion. A witches’ coroner should be able to confirm it, now that we know what we’re looking at.”
“You’re telling me we have a murderous witch out there stealing people’s memories?” One of Singh’s constables gave her the sign that the City Police were snooping around. “Bloody hell, Cameron.”
“Aye,” he answered, though he remained silent about Edwina. They may yet discover she’d been present in the courtyard, but they’d not learn it from him.
Singh shook her head and walked away to brief her crew about a witch who’d invented a spell for stealing memories, leaving him alone to ponder the night sky and all the secrets it oversaw. He knew Edwina had gone after Mary. To a place he could never follow. He also knew Singh wouldn’t believe the sisters needed no spells to do what they did. They simply were. Kith and kin, with something far older and more magical than what a few rhyming incantations could do. Magic like his father had told him about on firelit nights when the wind howled outside and the veil between worlds thinned enough to fear for your soul should you sit too near the window.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Moonlight rippled on the river’s surface, drawing Edwina back to the water. But even in the still of the evening, the chugging of machines at the river’s edge, whether from train or barge or the ungainly work of dredges and hoppers, kept up a constant droning of man-made noise in her ears. The din interfered with her natural senses, so she soared higher until there was enough room between her and the ground that she need only abide the soft sighs of nightfall. At such a height she’d have to rely solely on her night vision to find her sister. That and an educated guess about where to search for Mary when she was upset.
The glint of moonlight on the water would have attracted Mary too. Since they were girls, they’d had a fascination for all things shiny. So curious, their mother had oft remarked of them. So bright and quick and clever the way they could find lost buttons and dropped needles. Their mother had hoped they’d both grow up to be dedicated witches practiced in the art of weaving and stitching like herself. But then their maturity came, arriving on their twelfth birthday. With it came the shape-shifting.
Clumsy and awkward at first, their bodies struggled to know what to do with their newfound gift. Sometimes a wing flapped in place of an arm through a will of its own; other times they stood at the river’s edge in frocks and aprons as their raven heads poked out of their lace collars. It was only after their mother took out her magic loom and crafted their shawls that they learned to control the odd compulsions that sometimes overtook them. The shawls settled them, easing the anxiety that came with being so different from every other witch they’d ever met until they learned to control their magic. The unkind sort called them freaks, while a mystic or two called their magic a gift, and that was what their parents clung to during times of turmoil.
Until they each left in their own time.
Dipping a wing, Edwina thought about checking the clock tower in the heart of the palace borough, but it was too near the top of the hour, and the noise the bell made when it struck could rattle body, soul, and spirit all at once. Instead she banked toward the thousand-year-old abbey. Occasionally, Mary slunk off to sit atop the spires when the moon was full, but a quick glide over the top revealed an abandoned rooftop. Thinking again of the moon and the water, she turned around and followed the bend of the river back toward the city center. Her sister was lost both mentally and morally, but Edwina didn’t think she’d stray too far for fear of being caught out alone. That was always the problem with Mary. She craved everything being different brought her—the power to surprise, to be abhorrent, to render tender mercy when it was not expected—yet she detested being an outcast and couldn’t bear to be shunned and left alone.