The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(4)
The sisters each cut a slice of brown bread and smeared it with boysenberry jam while their tea water came to a boil on the gas stove.
“Ten minutes,” Mary said, scooting her chair closer to the table.
Edwina agreed with a nod. When they finished their breakfast, they descended the main staircase to the small storeroom behind the shop. A curtain divided the back room from where the merchandise was sold, keeping Edwina’s personal books and a small cupboard stocked with jars of dried bits of this and a wing or whisker of that out of view. Up front in the shop, most of the semivaluable and easily stolen objects were displayed in glass cabinets, while most everything else was stacked on bookshelves or arranged atop the pair of end tables their mother had left behind. But because Edwina and Mary had been avid collectors of lost items for most of their lives, there were a number of finds that simply had to be hung on the walls. After three months of the sisters hammering nails into the plaster to display yet another object, the walls of the shop had taken on a mosaic quality from the mishmash of small frames, round-faced clocks, skeleton keys, trivets, belt buckles, spoons, and assorted gardening tools. Mary had even managed to secure a brass elephant with glass jewels embedded in its caparison on a hook above the back curtain.
The shop front had curved paned glass windows trimmed in black, which their father had insisted made them appear a respectable business to mortals. Gold lettering that had been painted on the woodwork above the door a decade or more earlier read MERCIER & SONS. The lettering had also proclaimed the shop to be an apothecary at the time, but their father had that part painted over, though he never bothered to remove the rest—either out of a sense of transience or perhaps because he thought people would trust the original name more than “Blackwood and Daughters.” Inside, the shop had become a sanctuary for the sisters, but from the outside, as the eye traveled up, Edwina often remarked that the top floor, which overhung the other levels below, was reminiscent of a cage balanced there by a child tempting the laws of gravity. One little nudge, she thought, and the whole thing would topple over. But it was a comfortable home and shop and not one she had any plans to vacate anytime soon, stars willing.
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.