‘Heavens,’ said Dot, sitting up. ‘I cast a spell.’
Theodora took Dot’s afflicted arm and held it up to the lamplight. A fresh scale was growing in, and it burned.
‘And look at the cost,’ said Theodora. The witch shook her head and pulled herself up off the floor. ‘We need to halt your affliction. We need to fortify the wards. Acanthi got to Belchamber; it’ll be only a matter of time before they yank the rest of us out by our toes. Look at the cuts on his chest, Dorothy. Those jagged marks.’
The witched held up her scarred hand.
Dot looked between her and Belchamber, the scar on Theodora’s palm identical to the faint markings on Belchamber’s chest.
‘I had no idea Cate still had the bread knife,’ said Theodora. ‘But this has to be her.’
‘How did they get in? Have you checked all the wards – in the basement, the tea shop and the living room?’ asked Dot. Theodora nodded. ‘What about the keystone ward? The one that only you and Belchamber know.’
‘Safe,’ said the witch, looking at the injured spirit. ‘But the wards out in the city . . .’ Theodora took a deep breath. ‘Acanthi have been attacking customers, Dorothy. I think they’ve been using their bodies to reconfigure my magic.’
‘You said not to worry about Acanthi so long as we were in the protection of the wards,’ said Dot. ‘You said that all of this was quite alright.’
‘I am a liar, Dorothy.’
Theodora stepped deftly across the debris of the carpet, passing the wardrobe and picking up scattered sheafs of parchment.
‘You don’t have to be,’ said Dot, but the witch seemed not to hear.
‘If we are to rid the city of them for good, we may have to use an old kind of magic,’ said Theodora. ‘I’ll need your help and probably Rupert’s and Lio’s as well – perhaps I should allow him into the workshop at last. Oh, but can I even do this spell?’
She opened a trunk which sat beside the door to the small ensuite, and pulled out her opera glasses. Then, she began rifling through her books. There remained questions unanswered, worry and unease. Theodora was looking distantly at the huge wardrobe and, watching her do this, Dot said in a voice so quiet it was almost lost, ‘I trust you.’
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
Lio hated the autumn. It was a forlorn and contradictory season, duplicitous in that it belonged only to the chronically melancholy and the earnestly romantic. He was neither, now, and as he grew more comfortable in the tea shop, his depressive moods depleted.
The two women were up in Theodora’s bedroom still. The debris of noodle bowls and side dishes still sullied the sink – they had gone to the restaurant that Lio had spied from time to time at the end of the street, the one with the dumplings he had promised himself he would order the very moment Acanthi were warded from the city. Lio sat beside Rupert, the radio crackling away with some play or other that the boy was listening to.
He dwelled on his arrival at the tea shop.
Find the wards. Break them.
It had been a decade since he had heard Opal’s voice. Yet, Lio had read that letter in his apartment in Kölldin as if Opal had whispered its words right into his ear.
He knew now that Cate had been the one to write it, to trick him, to feign surprise when he arrived at Caelin Forest to check Opal’s grave. Theodora had convinced him of that, but over the years his fantasies had worn into him like monks’ feet on concrete and so, in spite of it all, he still dreamed of Opal.
You have to go. You have to hide.
After he had been thrown into the portal, Lio had returned to the coven anyway. It was Agytha who caught him outside the tent, her hands covered in blood.
Opal is gone, love. You know our laws. Our Catherine will not let you live if she finds you. Go, Lio. Change your name, if you must. I promise. I will convince Moira. The two of us will make sure Cate spares you. Opal is lost, pet. Do not mock her memory by joining her in death.
Lio rose from the living room. He bid Rupert goodnight. He cleaned his teeth and took a bath and as he eclipsed the landing beside the attic ladder, he heard the softest edge of a laugh above. That was Dot’s laugh.
It was a nice sound, Lio realised. And, in truth, he had come to recognise over the months that the girl was rather sweet. She was clever. She was neat and polite, and her face lit up whenever she discussed a topic she loved, and she loved many.
Lio gazed up at the attic room door. How could a single person be so interested in magic, or in runes, or in the city, itself? This was the quality that caused Dot’s obsession with him, he thought, rubbing his eyes. The girl did not like him, truly. Dot was a little desperate and a little lonely and did not like herself as much as she should, for why else would she blush so brightly at him?
He was, he realised, becoming endeared to even that.
The poor, doomed girl. Lio entered the small room he shared with Rupert, where he found the twin beds neatly made: one with blue striped sheets, one pale yellow. Soon, this saga of entrapment would end and he would build a new life for himself here in the city, safe, finally, from the ghost that had haunted him for so long.
He should have gone to sleep.
