The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(62)

“I don’t know what’s got into her,” she said to Ian. “Mary, open this door at once!”

Ian put his ear to the door and shook his head, unable to hear even the sound of heavy breathing after running up the stairs. He made a silent motion with his hand to indicate a key.

Edwina stood back, the urgency gone from her. “It’s too late. She’s gone.”

“Gone? How?” Ian didn’t wait for an explanation. “Hob! Undo this lock.”

They heard the scatter of small feet inside the room and then the door opened. The imp swung from the doorknob, then jumped aside. “She isn’t here,” he said, shrugging his tiny shoulders. Behind him, the curtain flapped in the breeze of the open window. On the floor were a dozen scattered baubles and the overturned jewelry box. Ian went to the window and looked down, expecting to find a tragic scene of death or injury, but there was no body. And no sign of Mary high or low.

She’d simply disappeared.





Chapter Twenty-One


Edwina bent to pick up the scattered orbs and return them to the box, avoiding Ian’s gaze.

“How?” Ian was incredulous as he inspected the window frame, the eave above, and the ground below. “How does a woman, even if she is a witch, vanish into thin air?” He turned from the window, posturing in predictable male aggression when the answer evaded him.

Hob helped Edwina scoop up the baubles, collecting those that had rolled under the bed. The little fellow emerged covered in dust, blowing on the orbs to clean them. “I did not pass her,” he said to Ian, referring to his uniquely elvish means of transporting himself from one location to another unseen.

“Of course not,” Ian said. The man was completely confounded. He bent down to search under the bed, apparently unaware of the invasion of privacy of having entered a woman’s bedroom without leave. The thought made Edwina flush even in the midst of all the confusion. “But then how the devil did she get away?”

Ian searched the room, pulling back the curtain on a small closet and lifting the lid of the cedar hope chest at the foot of Edwina’s bed. The second smaller trunk in the corner, the one Mary used to store old clothes in need of mending, was no exception as he bent to unstrap the buckles holding it closed.

It was one thing to invade the room in search of Mary, but Edwina had to object to him riffling through her sister’s things. “Not even I search through her personal belongings without permission,” she said, though she could not deny her resolve had been weakened by curiosity. The flask, the pocketknife, the thistle pin—too many unanswered questions had begun to stack up on the scale against her sister.

Ian tested that resolve by prying the lid open anyway. Edwina did not object a second time; instead she bent down to see what might be contained within. “At least allow me to do it,” she said. Having already crossed the threshold of violating her sister’s privacy and trust, she convinced herself to lean in to the greater good of discovering the truth. Or at least that’s what she told herself as she peeled back the old nightdress with the torn hem folded neatly on top. Beneath, she found what she expected: a pair of stockings needing mending, a sewing kit that was their mother’s, and some embroidery work left undone. But then she spied a red-and-gold decorated tea tin she’d not seen in the trunk before, and beside it a cloth bag with a drawstring top.

Her hand shook as though a premonition of ill fate had sent a tremor through her body. She removed the tin’s lid and drew in a breath. Inside were six blue orbs nestled in a square of velvet. Each with the sheen of newness, each containing a person’s memory she had no recollection of.

“I can’t explain it.” She looked up at Ian, confused. “Where did these come from?”

He tore into the bag beside the tin, spilling the contents onto the nightdress. There were brass buttons, two gold rings, a set of keys, a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles splotched with what appeared to be dried blood, and a silver vesta match safe with a mermaid imprinted on its face. The items were of little monetary value, yet their weight sank Edwina to her knees.

Ian pressed his knuckles solemnly against his lips as he studied the contents. “There may yet be a good explanation for how she came by these things,” he said, though with little conviction, as he glowered at the match safe.

“I read the newspaper accounts as closely as you did,” Edwina said. He tried to interrupt, but she shook her head. “There’s more. A flask she said she found on the shore this morning. And a pocketknife. But neither had been in the water, I’d swear it.” She paused as Elvanfoot entered the room, pressing a hand over her stomach to quell the growing nausea.

“And there is this as well,” Elvanfoot said, holding up the thistle pin that belonged to his son.

Edwina bent toward Ian. “We discovered George’s pin hidden in the shop earlier.”

Ian slipped the items back in the bag gently, as if each were a sacred found object. Evidence. Proof of a crime. Though not the one they were both thinking of. It simply couldn’t be true. Robbing the dead, surely, but not murder.

“May I?” Ian asked to see the pin.

Elvanfoot handed off the silver thistle in exchange for the tea tin. “And she had these baubles hidden with the stolen items?” he asked.

Edwina’s stomach lurched at the implication. “She didn’t. She couldn’t have,” she pleaded.