The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(7)
Mary stuck her tongue out at the boy, mimicking his hand gestures before flapping her hands behind her ears to be silly. “His name is Benjamin Abernathy.” She glanced back at Edwina to see if she was listening. “Name’s bigger than he is.”
Edwina didn’t care what the boy called himself. He was too curious and too familiar. “Impudent boy.”
Mary snorted a laugh. “Like all the lads running up and down the lane. Need a little spirit in you to survive, I suspect.” She took the feather duster from the nail on the wall and began the daily ritual of rearranging the dust in the shop while Edwina tucked some soft velvet inside a blue box that had once held a pot of cream for some wealthy woman shopping on the high street.
“He already thinks we’re odd,” Edwina said. “No need to encourage him.”
“We are odd. By the boy’s standards and everyone else’s.”
Edwina looked up from her work. There was bite in her sister’s words. Too much truth in them, perhaps. Hard truth learned through the deprivation of community from most others of their kind. An even harder truth was that Mary, in particular, had always been the outcast because of her attraction to death. A fascination with whatever glittered under the moon and stars was natural enough for them both, but to see into the next realm and draw out the shiny memories of a person while they pass through the veil of death had left the mark of strangeness on the poor girl from the time they were children running in the country lanes themselves. The hedge witches occasionally showed a curiosity to know the source of the magic, but their doors were never propped open when Mary walked past alone.
Edwina glanced out the window again and saw that the boy had disappeared into the never-ending flow of people and animals traveling outside their door. Relieved, she set the ring in the box and positioned it inside the glass display so that anyone standing before the till would naturally glance down and see the value. Perhaps even inquire about its price and pedigree, and the cost of having the stone replaced. And then Edwina would suggest a beautiful garnet stone that could be had for a modest negotiable sum at the jeweler’s around the corner.
The bell over the door rang, and she shut the display case. Mrs. Dower, her face like an old apple sunken from the loss of all but a handful of teeth, entered the shop with the string of her pocketbook hooked over her arm. The sisters occasionally spotted her on the foreshore scavenging at low tide, but the mortal had no eye for treasure. No eye for husbands either, as rumor had it most of her missing front teeth were due to the fist as opposed to the rot.
“Morning, Mrs. Dower. How can we help you?”
The woman, dressed in faded plaid beneath a grimy gray apron, scanned the shop as though watchful for hidden threats in the corners. Satisfied, she said hello and made a show of browsing the more expensive items under glass. “Have you any hatpins, love? The sharper the better.”
“Certainly,” Mary said. She brought over a pincushion the sisters had made by stuffing horse hair and straw into an old sock and covering it over with a scrap of lilac-colored velvet. After stitching it all together, they’d secured the cushion inside the mouth of an empty blue flower vase. Edwina thought it charming the way the dozen pins they’d collected created a fanciful starburst effect when all stuck in at once.
Hatpins were easy enough to spot, whether lost and forgotten by a young woman in the grass after an impromptu picnic in the park or dropped on the street after a lady’s maid had secured her mistress’s hat too loosely, so that when she stepped out of her carriage, the pin slipped out and rolled into the cracks between the cobblestones. The glint of silver, matched with a shiny amethyst or teardrop of amber on the head of the pin, always caught the attention of those vigilant enough to keep their eyes pointed at the ground.
“See any you fancy?” Mary set the vase down on the counter and twisted a beautiful sterling silver pin with an elaborate enamel flower for the head between her thumb and finger.
Mrs. Dower eyed the expensive hatpin long enough to falsely suggest she could afford it if she wanted. She admired it with a nod until her hand reached for the plain brass pin with the small and practical mother-of-pearl affixed on the tip. Ten inches long from head to point, it was a serviceable and economical choice for any working woman, as were most wives who lived east and north of the shop door.
“You can see it’s still in fine shape,” Mary said. “Only the slight bend from light use.”
“This one will do,” the woman said and took a step back when Mary had approached too near for comfort. “Though I hope I’ll have no need of it soon.”
The sisters exchanged a look of confusion. “Whyever not?” Edwina asked.
“It’s for me own protection then, innit?” Mrs. Dower’s eyes dilated with the mischief of one who gets to tell something for the first time. “You’ll have heard, of course? Another bloke was attacked this morning. This time below the embankment.”
“Attacked?” Mary asked with eyebrows arched. She returned the display of hatpins back to the table.
“Well, he were hit on the back of the head, weren’t he?” The woman pointed to her own vulnerable skull as she spoke. “Robbery, most like. Leastwise his throat weren’t cut like the others.”
Edwina’s temples pulsed with the rush of blood and fear. “A common enough occurrence down by the docks, I should think.”