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The strange new miracle inside of her glowed as she held onto his hand and whispered, "Deal."
Twelve
"Some secrets are like corpses,better left in the earth to rot." — Sayings of the Blessed Crow.
The following morning, Mara carefully lit the incense at the feet of Saint Anea and arranged fresh blossoms around the statue's base. The saint still wore the smile she had given Augustus, and for once, Mara didn't feel like Anea was judging her.
"If I can perform a miracle on a person, I'm sure that I can help a city. You probably did far more ambitious miracles than that," Mara said to her. The saint didn't weep blood or drop her smile, so Mara took that as consent.
Mara kept the store closed that morning, ignored the pile of books on the kitchen table that Augustus had loaned her, and went to the door of her mother's bedroom. She hadn't stepped foot in it since the day Sophia had died in a cloud of curses and crow feathers.
You can't be afraid of her ghost forever.
Mara took a deep breath and opened the door. The room still smelled like her mother—cigarettes, Turkish delight, rose perfume, hairspray, and patchouli.
The bed was neatly made with her favorite red and gold bedspread, the fringed bedside lamps, a bottle of brandy, and perfume bottles undisturbed except by dust.
When Sophia had died, Mara had stripped off the sweat-stained bedsheets, gathered all the crow feathers that were her mother's remains, and had burned the lot in a metal barrel in her back garden.
She had drunk a bottle of vodka as she watched the flames until there was nothing left before she spat three times in the ashes. Then she had cleaned the room, changed the sheets, locked the door, and had avoided the room since.
Bending down, Mara lifted back the bed cover and pulled out the long leather and brass steamer trunk.
There were some things Mara had been forbidden to touch when Sophia was alive—her favorite black shawl, her hand-painted tarot cards, her sweets, and the steamer trunk.
Once as a child, the curiosity had overwhelmed her, and Mara had tried to open the trunk without her mother's permission. As soon as her hands had touched the brass buckles, her hair had fallen out, and she had spent the rest of the summer hiding her shame under her aunt's colorful scarves.
Mara's hands hovered over the brass buckles, hesitating. She shut her eyes and focused, feeling out for curses and finding none. Still, she didn't touch them.
Maybe you should get Augustus to check, just in case.
Mara scowled at the intrusion of the thought. She had never needed a sorcerer before; she certainly didn't need him now. Besides, he was too clever by half and wouldn't hesitate to root around in her mother's secrets to satisfy the insatiable curiosity that always seemed to burn in his eyes.
Mara pushed aside all thoughts of his eyes and opened the buckles on the chest with a snap. The hinges creaked as the lid opened.
Inside smelled of cedar and lavender bundles, bouquets of dried flowers, incense, and paper. Mara carefully lifted out the wooden inserts and looked at the piles of letters and photos.
"You are looking for books," Athanasius said, making Mara jump. The cat leaped up onto the bed and looked down into the chest.
"How would you know?" Mara asked.
"I've seen them. Dig around the back. She would've hidden them under the fake bottom," he said. "She used to hide all the good stuff in case any of her cousins snooped."
Mara pulled out the rest of the chest contents and, after a few experimental knocks, found the hidden catch. A panel popped open, and she pulled it back to reveal a velvet pouch and two books.
"I wondered what she had done with these," Mara said, opening the bag and pulling out one of the ancient tarot cards. They hummed with age. The cards were hand-painted in medieval miniature illustrations and had soft foxing around the edges from centuries of use.
Mara had never had the talent for them, so she steered clear of Sophia's precious deck. She looked at the card in her hand, a picture of a woman walking through a forest, a full moon above her weeping black tears.
"The Moon, eh? Bit of an accurate draw for you with that," Athanasius said, his tail flicking impatiently.
"Doesn't mean anything," Mara said and slipped it back into the pouch.
She picked up the first book. Its black leather cover was cracked, and whatever title had been illuminated with gold lettering had chipped away. The front page was hand-pressed in Italian and identified it as being printed in Venice in 1572.
Mara turned the page to reveal an illustration of a woman in black and gold robes and covered in crows with the titleSayings of the Blessed Crow.
Languages, much like time, didn't bother Mara overly much, so reading a book in medieval Italian hindered her about as much as reading a glossy magazine would.
