The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(78)
“We won’t lose hope for George,” Ian said. “Not yet.” He recalled then what the innkeeper had said about George’s appearance. Disheveled, as though he’d been sleeping rough in the gutter. So he was out there somewhere. Surviving on instinct. “Mary may have taken the memories from his head, aye, but there’s more to it than that. Before Hob gave me back my past, there was a sort of recognition in my body of things that were familiar. I dinna know why, of course, only that I could feel if something resonated or not. That intuition was all I had to hold on to, even when I dinna remember the magic in me. It was almost like the body held on to its own experience of the mind’s memory, ye ken.”
“You think George may be feeling something similar?” Sir Elvanfoot allowed himself a moment of hope, holding the orb up for a second inspection.
“He’s out there,” Ian said. “I know he is. We just have to find him.”
“But how?” Edwina asked. “He could be anywhere.”
Ian inhaled, thinking about how he’d felt when he had no memory. “Nae, not anywhere,” he said. “He’ll stick to what he knows, even if it’s only subconsciously.” He snapped his fingers, getting an idea. “The road between the theaters. Lizzie said he walked the same path every night after his play ended.” He pulled out his watch, only this time he really did check the hour. “In his normal state, he’d be walking to her right now from the Belfry Theater. But what if his body held on to that memory and he’s been out there the whole time, walking that same path, even if he didn’t know why?”
“The Belfry is just down the road,” Edwina said.
“That’s where we need to be looking,” Ian said. “On the road between there and the Wilshire Music Hall in the East End.”
“I have a coach in the lane,” Sir Elvanfoot said and hurried for the front door.
The wizard summoned his carriage with a signal from a shrill whistle while Ian told Hob to follow on his own and out of sight. By the time Edwina had her shawl around her shoulders and the front door locked, the carriage horses clopped down the road with the sleepy-eyed coachman perched on his box. Ian did a double take at the driver in his top hat and tails, briefly suspicious he was one of Singh’s men, then gave up on the notion and climbed into the velvet-covered seat beside Edwina, while Sir Elvanfoot sat opposite.
After urgent instruction was given, the coach took them straight to the Belfry Theater, where they asked him to slow-walk the horses so they could peer down every dark lane and question each face they passed. Twice Ian hopped out of the coach to get a better look at a man sleeping rough in a doorway. Each time he shook his head and jumped back in, taking Edwina’s hand in his on the seat beside him, locking fingers and holding on to her and hope in the same gesture. And each time, at the touch of her skin next to his, he wanted to ask about the remarkable magic he’d seen in the courtyard. His mind churned with curiosity about it, but first they had to find George.
“Perhaps it was a fool’s errand from the start,” Sir Elvanfoot said when they’d reached the end of the lane where the Wilshire Music Hall stood. A small crowd mingled outside, a mix of audience members and performers still relishing the buzz of the performance. Intoxicated on spirits and the aura of camaraderie, a few young men sang out bawdy tunes, then tossed their semi-empty brown bottles of ale into the alley, where they splashed and broke in a void of darkness.
The alley. Damn his stupidity!
Ian jumped out of the coach. Dodging the young men in their frock coats, he ran into the alley to where he remembered a stairwell had led to a belowground entrance. He squinted in the low light, walking softly so his tackety boots wouldn’t scrape on the pavement and startle anyone to rash action. He glanced over his shoulder at the streetlight where Hob had hidden himself before, but the glass was still broken, the light not working. There were too many people around to fix it with magic, so he took the risk of snapping a flame on his fingertips to illuminate the stairwell. There in the gloom, curled up on the landing at the bottom, was a man sleeping rough in a dirty gray coat, with three weeks’ worth of beard and a smell on him strong enough to raise the dead.
Ian shone the light closer to get a better look at his face. The man groaned and held his hand up defensively to shield his eyes from the light. “George!” Ian called out, but of course the man didn’t recognize his name.
“Ian?” Edwina and Sir Elvanfoot caught up to him in the alley. “Have you found him?” she asked. “Is it George?”
Elvanfoot, overtaken by eagerness, pressed in beside Ian on the stairs. “My boy,” he said and walked to the bottom for a better look.
Ian shook his head in regret as he looked up at Edwina. “He’s been here the whole time. I saw him yesterday and didn’t recognize him.”
But below it was no happy reunion between father and son. The man who’d been sleeping in his coat on the street in the rain for weeks rebelled at the invasion of his space.
“Get off!” he yelled. “Help! Murder!”
For all George knew, Ian and Elvanfoot were the ones who’d been killing men on the streets. He kicked and clawed at them, screaming bloody murder. Edwina warned the gents from outside the theater had grown suspicious enough to venture into the alley, so Ian ran up the steps to meet them halfway, leaving the father to calm his son. Were it not for the Constabulary, which he wished to keep away from Edwina and her magic for as long as he could, he’d have stunned the gents with a bright flash of white light so all they could see were spots. Instead he took a milder, disarming approach. Before their curiosity brought them too near, he picked up one of the partially broken bottles the young men had tossed and stumbled forward pretending to be as drunk as they were.