The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(10)
Edwina stepped out from behind the counter to straighten the skeleton keys on display near the window. She liked to see them all lying straight as spines from their curled handles to their crooked teeth in a neat row, but it was merely busywork to pass the time until either a customer or her sister walked through the door. It was long past the time Mary should have returned, come to think of it. She’d been gone far longer than it took to buy a pint of milk at the nearest cowshed and walk to Saint Basil’s afterward. Then again, the sun had broken through the gloom, shining blearily through the smoke and haze. Though they lived within the square mile of the city proper, the sunbeams were never anything more than a facsimile of true sunshine. Not like the country sky they’d known growing up. Still, even if Mary had taken the long way home to cut through the cathedral gardens, she should have been back by now.
With no customers and the shop to herself, Edwina returned her attention to the jewelry case where the new ring sat prominently among the other trinkets. She’d found all manner of gold and silver in her life—rings, bracelets, charms hooked on long chains. Some had been lost a week before and others three hundred or a thousand years before. How old an object was didn’t matter, though she often appreciated the long journey the item had taken to find her. All she sought was the glint in the starlight and to snatch the thing and bring it home. In the same vein, she didn’t mind parting with them later, selling them to strangers who would only lose them again in a few years or a decade to complete the journey back to the river. The moment of discovery was the joy that sparked the magic inside her. The same for Mary when she spotted one of her corpse lights. To snatch it out of the air at first sight, that was the thrill.
Edwina’s back was to the door when the shop bell finally chimed. She spun around eager to greet a new customer, but instead of encountering a woman out shopping for a knitting needle to match the one she’d bent or a young man hoping to find a ring for his intended, she saw him.
The man who should be dead.
He looked for all the world as if he still stood on Death’s threshold, unsure of which direction to go. His squared jaw was rough with three days’ worth of beard, and his eyes, bloodshot and full of anger, stared as he held firm to the doorframe to steady himself. A white cloth had been bandaged around his head. A faint brown stain bled through near the neck.
Edwina managed an innocent enough “May I help you?” before the deception fell away and the man closed the door behind him with a slam. The panic she’d kept tethered in place at the first sight of him broke free on the path between her heart and her mind. Not knowing what to do, she backed up until she bumped into the shelving behind her.
“I saw you,” he said, his eyes taking a quick inventory of her attire, the merchandise in the shop, and the shawl hanging on the peg in the back room visible beyond the curtain.
She saw no weapon on him other than the simmering anger and fear that threatened to boil over. That and the confidence he was in the right, which he wielded as deftly as a blade as he locked the door and turned the sign in the window so it read CLOSED.
Edwina retreated another three steps to the side toward the back room. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He caught her in his gaze again, recognition so sharp in his eyes it stopped her in her tracks. He knew her. Knew she’d hovered over him that morning. Oh, she’d been a fool to give in to her sister’s whim. How could her instinct have been so wrong? What had she thought? That he’d be laid out under a white sheet by now, his death absolving her and Mary of any wrongdoing? Her guilt over what they’d done to the man’s mind somehow interred in the grave alongside his cold-as-winter flesh?
“I think you know well enough,” he said, glancing again at her hair and clothing.
“What do you want? Money? I haven’t got much.” Edwina eyed the jewelry case beside her with the new gold ring as she moved to stand behind the till. She’d sacrifice it, if she must.
But her question seemed to confuse him. He leaned against the door as if thinking to himself, trying to find the answer. She waited a precious moment for the welcome sound of her sister’s return or a customer attempting to enter the shop, but no one jiggled the handle.
“You and another lass,” he said as he staggered slightly. “You stood over me on the riverbank.” He turned his chin to indicate the back of his head, but the movement pained him and he had to close his eyes for the briefest second before training them back on her. “You did this to me.”
“I most certainly did not. You were already wounded.” The response had raced out of her mouth nearly involuntarily. But with the denial she’d admitted she’d been there, and so she relented. “My sister found you unconscious on the foreshore.”
“Mary.” He was fishing, the way he dangled the name in front of her, waiting for her to bite and confirm it. He was less certain about the situation than when he’d entered the shop, though he found his confidence again soon enough. “You both stole something from me, something . . .” His face tightened in frustration when he couldn’t form his thoughts into the right words. “Something important. Something I must have back.” He stared at his empty hands before squeezing them into fists, as if he could grip the thing that eluded his mind.
“What is it you think I took?” Edwina knew the shame in her eyes betrayed her as soon as she looked away to avoid his scrutiny. She never could brave her way through a lying face. But only two others—she declined to call them victims—had ever been left alive when Mary took her baubles, and so she hoped to tease out exactly how much he’d observed. How much he remembered. And how much damage Mary had done to his mind and memory.