The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(52)
Edwina half-heartedly dug a finger in the mud where a sharp point stuck out at an interesting angle, but it was only an old door hinge rusted through in the middle. Beside it were several bent nails and a watery strip of leather that may have once been a belt or apron. She could barely find anything worth the effort of picking up. Her vision was off. Blurred by the distraction of the growing yet inevitable rift between she and Mary and of falling out with Ian until nothing would shine for her.
She decided to pace the shore nearer to the bridge, exploring the sand and rocks that pushed up against the buttress. The low clouds and leftover chill in the air from the night’s mist made for a morning sky heavy with the portent of ill luck. Knowing she stood in the same place she had the day before with Ian, she scanned the wall for the nook where she’d wedged the skull between stones. It was gone, of course. Taken by the river. But if the water swallowed her offering, it had also swallowed her blessing. She hoped it might fend off the oppressive mood that lingered inside her from some vague yet persistent warning.
The fishing boat was back, lying on its side awaiting the rising water. Low tide had come an hour later than the morning two days ago when they’d found Ian unconscious on the shore. Two days ago, in the last twinkling hour before the dawn, the sky had still been a cloak of midnight blue. If the sky had been lighter, as it was now, she wondered if they’d have left him be. Without the darkness to keep their secret hidden, they might have simply alerted a policeman to the body and been done with the whole affair. No stolen memory, no pulsating guilt, no exposure to the frailty of human emotions burnished by hope. But even she was beginning to suspect life would not have gone on as normal no matter whether the sun or moon had ruled the sky that morning.
“You’re a Gloomy Gus when left on your own.” Mary had crept up beside her as silent as morning fog.
Edwina lifted her head and nearly laughed at her sister’s oblique observation. Hadn’t her whole life been spent in the gloom? What had changed now to cause Mary to notice such a thing? But, of course, she knew. The hairline cracks that had formed between them had also let a sliver of light in, if only for a brief afternoon. Falling out with Ian must have doused the brief spark of light from her aura once again.
“Not having much luck today,” Edwina said and nudged the rusted hinge deeper into the mud with the toe of her boot.
Mary, perhaps sensing she trod on tender ground, changed her tune. “Well, I’ve already found some things you overlooked,” she said, holding up a silver-plated hip flask and a small folding pocketknife, the sort men sometimes used to clean their fingernails and teeth. Both had a glaze of mud on them, but neither appeared particularly water or weather beaten. The brandy flask had scratches on it, but they were the sort easily accounted for by the effort of slipping the container in and out of one’s pocket. She doubted it had ever been pressed hard beneath the weight of water for even a day of its life.
“Might have been flung off the bridge,” Mary said, reading her doubt.
Edwina agreed the items would be nice additions for the shop. Ones that would sell quickly. She tipped her face up to the bridge, trying to imagine the rattle of a train crossing over while some passenger tossed a perfectly good flask out the window after the last drop of brandy was gone. While she dwelled on the improbability, a familiar shape crossed into the halo of lamplight on the bridge. The boy. He stood at the end near the embankment, watching her and Mary through the dawn mist and fading moonlight. This lurking of his had become something more than curiosity. More than mere petulance too. She turned her attention back to the mud at her feet as if she hadn’t noticed him, then stole a glimpse at Mary. Her sister merely smiled, proud of her finds, as she rinsed the flask and knife off in a pool of backwater.
“I’m ready to call it a morning,” Edwina said, lifting the hem of her skirt to trudge over the mud and algae.
“So soon? There are fifty-three minutes yet until we open.”
“Your marvelous finds have more than made up for my bad luck this morning,” she said. She narrowed her eyes at Mary. “Coming?”
But no. Mary stood and pulled her shawl around her, saying she’d best go and fetch the milk fresh from the udder for their tea. She handed off the flask and pocketknife so Edwina could take them back to the shop and clean them up for sale. Together they ascended the moss-slick stairs to the top of the embankment, where they parted ways. By then the boy was nowhere to be seen, though Edwina suspected he wouldn’t be far from wherever Mary went.
Back at their aerie top-floor bedroom, Edwina tossed off her muddy knockabouts. As she laced up her ankle boots for shop work, the rarity of her sister not sitting on the bed opposite to show off her finds plucked a melancholy chord inside her. Alone, she picked up the flask and turned it over in her hands under the light. Not a speck of mud inside, and the whiff of alcohol still wafted out with the cap removed. The knife, too, though still wet with river slime, showed no sign of rust. Edwina’s chest fluttered with doubt as her intuition pushed up against her ribs.
She walked to the dresser and opened the jewelry box on top. It was the same as before, with Mary’s baubles taking up the majority of the space, though a few now seemed to be missing. She moved them around with her finger, wondering how something as morbid as her sister’s talent came to be in the world. There were creatures like moth larvae and carrion beetles whose unpleasant work did the task of breaking down skin and hair and bone in a perpetual cycle, but what purpose in the natural order of life unto death was served by stripping memories from cold flesh? The person’s thoughts weren’t preserved in any measurable way. The memories, sitting as idle orbs in a secondhand jewelry box, died as surely as if they’d stayed with the body. And yet the compulsion ruled her sister’s life. And hers, too, in ways too painful to recount some days.