The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(18)
Charlie looked both ways over his shoulders, impatient-like. “I been to the Hare and Hound regular, sure, but I don’t reckon we’ve ever met,” he said and lit his own match.
“’Course we have,” Ian insisted. “It’s your ol’ Jake here. Jake Donovan.” He could remember the night as plain as could be. They’d pooled their coins for several pints each and stayed until close before going their separate ways and sleeping rough in the public square. But his recollection was flimsy. More akin to having studied a photograph of the event until he recognized every detail yet was nowhere in the picture himself. As if he were an impostor. Same as the name that had spilled out of his mouth so quickly—false and foreign to him, while at the same time familiar enough to say without thinking.
“Nah, go on,” the man said. “I know a Jake. Old fella used to hang out around these parts, but I ain’t seen him in a couple of weeks now. Must be someone else you’re thinking of, mate. I can’t say as I ever laid eyes on you before in my life, ’cepting last night.” The man in the greasy flatcap pointed his thumb at the doss-house before trotting off down the lane and offering a final wave. “Get all kinds in there.”
“Maybe it was longer ago than I remember,” Ian said as the man turned down a second lane and walked out of sight.
He’d sincerely thought he’d remembered the man. Believed what Miss Blackwood had said was true, that his memory had been restored. Parts of his mind did seem to recognize places and names he hadn’t the day before, but it was all still a jumble. The whole thing had to be some grand joke. Or more likely a scam. He’d been hit on the head and robbed, and when he’d come demanding the thing the women had taken from him, he’d been played the chump. Conned and swept out the door with a story of witches and spells. He had half a mind to walk back to the shop and drag the police there with him and have the charlatans arrested.
Feeling himself the fool, Ian ambled in the general direction the man before him had, only turning right instead of left at the next street. He walked some ways with his hands in his pockets, avoiding eye contact with strangers he passed lest he mistakenly believe he knew them too. His mood turned foul when he remembered his odd watch and how the woman—the sister with the hazel eyes like polished agate—remarked that it was proof of his magical ability. What a load of shite. Humoring himself, he removed the watch from his waistcoat pocket and studied the outside. There was something peculiar about the way the timepiece behaved, and something even stranger about the way his body reacted to seeing it in someone else’s hands. His curiosity sparked, he stepped out of the flow of human traffic to make a closer inspection.
The latch clicked open easily with a flick of his thumbnail. The gears whizzed and spun to life. He leaned against the wall behind a man selling ginger cakes from a tray strapped around his neck. He hadn’t forgotten how a watch worked. This one simply defied logic. Letting the piece rest in his palm with the cover open at a ninety-degree angle, he inched his face closer to try to understand the strange mechanisms operating inside. His breath clouded against the gold, and he swore a shape began to form and hover over the maplike layout on the inside cover.
“What you got there, mister?”
A young scamp dressed in an oversize shirt and trousers watched him with greedy eyes from beside a binman’s cart in the lane.
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“Might be. I know a man what’ll give you a good price for a watch like that. Follow me. I’ll take you to him, I will.”
Right, and I get jumped in some back room by a band of street kids.
“Move on,” Ian said with more bravado than he knew he possessed. His nerve was paired with a threatening look, judging by the way the boy scurried off. He snapped the watch shut and kept his eye on the scamp until he was halfway down the road. After he’d gone, Ian made a sweep with his eyes left and right, checking doorways and windows for accomplices, though he didn’t know why. Only that it felt like the natural thing to do after the encounter with the sharp-eyed boy.
The throbbing in his temples returned twofold. This was more than a hangover from strong drink. He feared he was becoming seriously ill. Needing to move, he staggered in the opposite direction of the overly curious boy. There was a distinct familiarity about the lane he’d gone down—the buildings, the doorways, even the smell of fried kidneys sizzling in a pan somewhere. Was this the road where he lived? Worked? But then, where? Which door? Which of these people were his kin? Why wouldn’t the truth come to him so he could go home? He wished someone would stick a head out a window and wave hello and call him up, but all he heard above the din of the street was the slam of a door and the wail of an infant crying for its mother.
A stabbing pain hit his temple. He blinked until the ache subsided, then took a second glance at the dodgy lane. What had once felt familiar enough to call home now offended his senses. A dilapidated stairway on his right appeared as if the boards were barely clinging to the side of the building by two unlucky screws. A cluster of bairns squatted next to the gutter eating bread and butter as fresh rivulets of filth flowed by. Their wraithlike mothers, hovering inside narrow doorways that stood toe to toe with the road, watched over small tables of hand-knitted goods, asking mere pennies for each. The women, cradling fussy babes wrapped in brown flannel on their shoulders, eyed him suspiciously as he passed without buying.