Page 7 of Reap & Sow

A gargoyle leered down at her from the steeply gabled roof as she neared. Through the iron gate and up the gravel path, gravestones surrounded her on both sides. They were stacked so closely together it seemed preposterous that any more bodies might fit, even for those with the coin to afford it. She cut across the muddy grass and stepped around each stone with a wince. As if the dead cared.

It didn’t take long to find the right one. Eda could walk this same route blindfolded. “Sorry I’m late, Ma.”

She lay down the water lilies before a grave of pale stone. It was chipped and worn, but the engraving remained legible: Emmeline Shaw. Wife and mother.

Eda never knew Emmeline, who had founded Shaws’ Antiques and traveled beyond Wesland’s borders to seek out their rarest, most coveted stock. By all accounts, she’d been a learned and ambitious woman. It made Eda queasy that wife and mother alone should be Emmeline’s legacy. Mother to a daughter who killed her in childbirth, and wife to a man like Oswin…

She glanced at the darker, newer headstone beside her mother’s. Scowled.

Oswin Shaw left Blackbridge just once his entire life. He was not so well educated as Emmeline, nor as adventurous, but he had a head for figures and a good manner with customers. Together they’d built a small, well-regarded business. The way Ben told it, the shop once buzzed with commerce all throughout the day.

Then Emmeline died birthing Eda. Oswin could not recover from the loss. For months he barely ate or slept, and his three young children might have been ghosts for all the attention he paid them. The shop remained closed. Oswin spent all hours writing letters, studying Emmeline’s books until the candles burned down to nothing. One day, he just left, Ben told Eda. He paid Old Mary next door to check in on us and keep us fed. Was gone for weeks. Until he suddenly came back.

With the mirror.

“Thought I’d find you here.”

Lawrie stepped across the mud toward her, his cape pulled snug around his neck. It wasn’t raining this morning, but the gray skies over Blackbridge always threatened it.

Eda crossed her arms. “Aren’t you meant to be home by now? Ben already left for work.”

“The shop will survive. Needed to catch the courier.”

“Ah. So you’re bothering the National Library again.”

“They’ve an extensive collection available for private purchase, and Pagan Ritualism in Wesland is on the list—I checked twice.” He sniffed. “We just keep getting outbid by some collector arsehole.”

“Perhaps you should let them win.” At Lawrie’s appalled expression, she added, “We can only afford so much new stock each quarter. Is one book really worth it?”

“Yes, and it offends me that you’d even ask. Ben’s supposed to be the dreary philistine with the imagination of a teaspoon, not you. I’ve told you how rare that book is—”

“Ugh, don’t go on about it again. You’ll put me off literature forever.”

He shoved her; Eda pushed him back. Lawrie turned to face the graves, and his grin faded. He plucked one of the soggy water lilies from Emmeline’s grave and placed it over Oswin’s.

Irritation flared like bellows on a smelter. “I didn’t bring them for him.”

“He’s our father, Edie. He was a good man. He just got…lost.”

Eda scoffed. “Is that what you call abandoning his children to hunt down a cursed mirror? Was he lost when he made a deal that he couldn’t afford, condemning us to paying the price after he was gone? All to bring her back.”

“Don’t.” Lawrie’s hazel eyes flashed. They were a twin to her own, and in them she saw her reflection: apple-cheeked and freckled, golden hair an angry riot about her shoulders. “You were a babe. You don’t remember any of it.”

“But you told me,” she said. “How you and Ben found him in the foyer, middle of the night. He was covered in dirt, you said, with an even filthier woman dressed in burial clothes. Even a five-year-old could tell she’d come back all wrong—”

“Shut up,” Lawrie snapped. “I know what I said. I know what he did. He was grieving, Eda. He made a mistake. You can’t keep punishing him for it. He acted out of love.”

“That wasn’t love. It was madness.”

She tired of rehashing these same old arguments. Her brothers remembered their father before he’d been a mad fool, and their love for that memory clouded their judgment. Eda was not so afflicted. She saw only the facts: Oswin had sacrificed everything to bring his wife back. He’d bargained with Mr. Night for something so unnatural, so momentous, that the demon seized his chance to demand a suitably ludicrous sum.

One thousand years.

Oswin would not be able to pay it back in his lifetime, let alone with the seven years he unknowingly had left. He’d agreed that his children would be guarantors—an insurance policy. All to pay for something that even a demon as powerful as Mr. Night could not truly give. Oswin got his wish, and against all natural order, Emmeline returned to him. Except she was not Emmeline anymore.

Mr. Night’s words rushed forth like a dark tide. You want and you want so shamelessly.

Eda wrapped her arms around herself as she strode away, stone-faced. “People are selfish, Lawrie. Our father was the worst of them. Some don’t deserve forgiveness.”