The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(15)

The more she talked, the more it felt like his mind was reaching for a rope of understanding that was just out of grasp. Was it possible he lived in a world inhabited with magic, but the mind had lost all memory of such things? But that was absurd. Wasn’t it?

“Your watch, Ian. Remove it. Study the face. That’s no mortal tool. You’d know that simple truth without the benefit of remembering how the thing works.”

He opened the watch and the gears spun to life. A faint whirring sound started up, and on the inside of the watch’s cover, a sort of map appeared. He felt a brief tingle, light as a feather across his skin, as he held the gold. Why hadn’t it worked before? He snapped it shut. Fear made him want to run again from the room, run from the city. Yet where would he go? He knew no one. Counting the doctor, the policeman, and the nurse, his longest conversation with anyone that he could remember was with the woman standing before him. The one telling him she held his memories—his life—in her palm.

“What do I do?” he asked.

She held the orb to his lips and told him to hold it in his mouth but not to swallow. Not yet. He was willing, and yet a nagging doubt persisted. “How do I know it’s mine?”

Miss Blackwood pointed out the vein of gold shimmering along the orb’s surface, the deep lapis lazuli blue, and flecks of black visible with the aid of the sunlight coming through the windows. “The newest ones have a certain gleam to them,” she said. “Do you see how bright it shines? They tend to wear to a duller finish after a few months.”

He made a brief inspection of the stone, not really knowing what to believe about its sheen. Relying on some faith he did not recognize, he took the stone in his mouth, even as he trembled from fear that he would choke. The weight of the gem made him want to spit it out as the hard stone pressed against his tongue. Miss Blackwood rested her finger against his lips, perhaps knowing how his mouth rebelled. But soon his ears filled with the sound of a soft melody that calmed the trembling. She hummed the tune first, and then the words followed.

“Feel the weight upon your tongue. Breathe air and light into your lungs. Muscle, blood, and marrow bone. Accept this memory as your own. Remember all you’ve ever known.”

The room seemed to fade until it was just the two of them standing in a tunnel of darkness. No sound but her voice. No scent but her breath softly singing. When she finished, she nodded for him to go ahead. He swallowed the orb, feeling the hard sphere slide down his throat and graze the walls of his esophagus. It hit his stomach and he feared he’d made a deadly mistake. The thing knocked hard against his insides, and he doubled over, clutching his middle with both arms.

“Concentrate on making the memory dissolve.”

Ian closed his eyes and willed the thing sitting in his gut to return his life to him. Deep in the pit of his stomach, the pain softened until he could stand straight again without feeling like he was going to be sick. Vivid dreamlike scenes sparked in his mind. Images of arched doorways, men sleeping upright behind a rope, and crooked grins on dirty faces emerged, before they slipped away again in the mist.

The witch assured him it might take some time for the magic to fully integrate, but he should be “right as rain” in no time at all. She invited him to stay, but he could not abide the confines of the witch’s company another moment. He craved the sunlight and air. And so he said a weak “thank you” and prepared to leave her shop with his pocket watch, his bloodied knife, and a head full of crosshatched images that one minute made sense and the next were like looking at a stranger’s photos on the mantel.

With the witch’s assurances encouraging him, he buttoned his jacket and readied himself to face the street. His hand rested on the doorknob when it turned of its own accord beneath his grip. The door rattled open, despite being locked, and a young woman with dark hair and eyes that smoldered like smoky quartz entered the shop.

“Edwina, why is the door locked in the middle of the day?” the young woman asked before awkwardly acknowledging the man standing in her way. “Oh, it’s you.”

The woman—the sister, he believed—went white with worry before the witch reassured her all was right again.

But was it? His thoughts were a jumble and his emotions worn down to a nub after the ordeal. What he wanted, nae what he needed, was a draft of ale and smoke of his pipe in a noisy pub where he could disintegrate into the crowd and forget everything again. The sisters began to bicker about privacy and personal property. So, when the newly arrived sister ratcheted up her argument with Miss Blackwood, he recalled a corner pub, as natural as could be, not three lanes over that he’d often found camaraderie in before and left them behind without a second look back.





Chapter Eight


Hours later, with the shop closed and their supper eaten, Edwina and Mary retreated to the roof to sit under the stars, as they often did on clear evenings. With their hair loose and their shawls wrapped snugly around their nightdresses, they watched the sky and tried not to inhale too deeply the city smells of coal smoke and fried fish that drifted out of every other chimney. Though the sisters sat shoulder to shoulder as they always did, the matter between them still gnawed like mice nibbling at the woodwork.

“I wasn’t sure you’d join me tonight,” Edwina said at last.

“Whyever not?” Mary withdrew two cordial glasses and a half-empty bottle of sherry she’d been hiding beneath her shawl.