The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(71)

Nick grinned, knowing the tragic conclusion they’d come to. “Ah, now, that right there is why my girl had to pop your brains out and take her trinket,” he said to Ian. “See, me and Mary got a nice thing going. Suits us both.” He looked at Mary and gave her a squeeze. “What’d you call it again?”

“Symbiotic,” she said, pressing her finger against his lower lip before sitting down beside the boy again.

“Isn’t going to work having you lot coming around and mucking it all up for us then, is it?”

“You mean murdering people?” Ian very subtly changed his stance.

“Aye, well, that part’s for her, innit. We used to just crack ’em on the back of the head and clean out their pockets. Done all right for ourselves, too, with only the one bloke what croaked. Ain’t that right, lads?” He snorted when they nodded and banged their clubs against their hands. “Until our Mary showed me a better way. The kind that don’t leave no witnesses to go crying to the coppers.”

“What about all the people who live here?” Edwina asked. “They know what you are. They’re all witnesses now.”

“Them?” He laughed. “None of ’em’s got a word to say against us. There’d be nothing on the table but a stale loaf of bread if it weren’t for us. Feed ’em meat and gin once a week. Ain’t that right?” he yelled to the closed doors.

His fellow residents answered with silence and dark windows that should have long been aglow with a lamp burning bright behind the glass.

“By the way, I know what Mary is,” he said, closing and opening his knife as if he enjoyed the sound of the blade springing to life. “I even know she talks to me dead brother, Ben. Gives him messages for me, she does. And him to me.” The boy nodded in agreement as he listened beside Mary. “And I know what you are too.” Nick’s voice dropped as he pointed the tip of his knife at Edwina and Ian. “The both of you.”

“Mary, I think you should come home. Now.” Edwina lowered her voice to match Nick’s threat and sang, “I know the compulsion you feel, but there are better ways to bring it to heel.”

Mary crossed her legs and leaned back on the bench. “You should gag her now or she’ll sing you all to sleep before you know it.”

The dandy crooked his finger at the thug with the gray eyes. Before Edwina could utter her next word, a filthy rag came over her head, digging into the corners of her mouth as the cretin tied the ends in a knot at the back of her neck. Bony, vile hands gripped her forearms so she couldn’t flee.

Ian, too, had been grabbed from behind. His right arm was bent up at an excruciating angle until his fingertips reached the top of his shoulder. He yelled out in agony as he tried in vain to struggle free.

“Don’t gag him just yet,” Mary said before they could slip the rag over his head. “We still need something from him. And I don’t think his voice is as devious as my sister’s.”

She had the ruffians drag him over to the firepit, where they leaned him close enough to the flames to make him flinch. Edwina attempted to jerk free from her captor, but the grip on her arms only tightened. Tears flooded her eyes, not only for Ian but for her sister’s spiral into depravity.

“Now, I believe this is how it works.” Mary put her hand under Ian’s chin and made him look into the fire. “Call your imp to you.”

“What?” Ian unscrewed his face from the pain long enough to look into Mary’s eyes.

“Call that repulsive thing to your side.” She nudged her chin at the ring of stones. “This cauldron would be the nearest open portal, would it not? So call him. Into the fire.”

Nick’s mortal nonchalance reached its limit. “What’s this about an imp?”

“It’s his hairy servant. It knows everything he knows. That thing has to be dealt with too.”

Edwina shook her head, pleading with her eyes for her sister to see sense.

“He’s nae but a wee elf,” Ian said. “He’ll be gone up north by now. Dinna fash yourself over him.”

“I don’t believe you.” Mary released his chin and stood back, holding up the orb containing his memories. “And I rather suspect he knows you’re here already, so summon that creature of yours. Or I toss all these precious memories of your family and lovers into the fire.”

The thug with the crooked teeth tightened the grip on his arm when Ian took too long to answer. “I’ll do it. I just . . . I have a wee spell I use to call him to me.”

Mary nodded, and they pulled him back from the fire a fraction and waited without easing the tension on his arm. Edwina struggled and screamed through her gag, but Ian cleared his throat and stared into the flames.

“Ashes denote that fire was,” he began. “Revere the grayest pile, for the departed creature’s sake, that hovered there awhile.” The flames sputtered, dying out as though his words encouraged them to dampen. Edwina held her breath. “Fire exists the first in light, and then consolidates.” He lifted his eyes to Mary’s. “Only the chemist can disclose, into what carbonates.”

“He’s gone all nutter again,” the thief in the top hat said, laughing.

“Mad as a hatter, he is,” said another.

But Mary knew better. “What spell was that?” She looked from the dying flames to Ian in alarm. “What did you do?”