Chapter Twelve
I found her not far from the shoppe, sitting on the edge of a crumbling fountain. It only emitted a mossy trickle now, and the stone girl who’d once spilled water from a pitcher was missing one arm and half her face.
“I’m so sorry, Bri,” I said, approaching slowly. “I didn’t mean to push you so much.”
“Well, you did,” she barked, face obscured by her hair. “If we’re going to continue to work together, you’re going to have to respect my boundaries.”
“You’re absolutely right,” I said, perching next to her. “But I’ve never met anyone like you.”
She raised her head to look at me. “Carterran?”
“No,” I said with a small laugh. “Although that, too. I meant I’ve never met anyone even more closed off than I am.” The walls I’d put up after my father died seemed rather flimsy compared to what Bri was describing. “I suppose I didn’t fully comprehend what your curse entailed before.”
She sniffed. “That’s because I didn’t want you to. Yet somehow you managed to wheedle the truth out of me.”
Some part of myself that I’d thought long since dead wanted to put my arm around her, but I kept my hands planted firmly on my knees. I wasn’t exactly the cuddly type, and yet I couldn’t imagine how hard it must be to avoid all physical contact. Not even a friendly handshake or a clap on the back.
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “that’s not what I was trying to do.”
“I know. You were just trying to save your father’s shoppe.”
I shrugged. “It’s all I have left.”
She wiped her cheeks with her sleeve and straightened a little. “That’s not true, you know. You have a home, and Argyle. You have Fin.”
A wry snort escaped me. “That’s debatable.”
“It’s not. Fin would do anything for you. You’re extremely lucky to have someone like that.”
Normally I would have blushed at someone saying something so personal, but now it elicited an odd pang of fear.
Something had shifted between Finlay and me yesterday, something that could threaten the one good, simple thing in my life.
“Do you?” I asked, desperate for a change in subject. “Have someone like that?”
She looked down at her feet again. “I did, once.”
There was a finality to her words that silenced me, but inside, I was imaging all sorts of horrible possibilities.
I knew her magic worked on objects, but what if it worked on people, too?
Had she fallen in love and touched someone, pulling out some terrible latent magic?
Even if she hadn’t, the very fact that she could might be enough to stop her.
She’d never be able to be close to anyone, I realized, and the urge to hug her was so strong I stood up to stop myself.
“I won’t try to touch you again. I promise.
But please don’t think the bees were your fault.
” I studied her cheek, relieved to see the swelling was already receding.
My arm was still sore, but it wasn’t getting worse.
“In fact, we’re lucky we discovered them when we did.
Imagine if we’d tried to sell that to a customer! ”
She managed a small smile. “I guess that would have been worse.”
I considered telling her what I’d overheard at the docks. She was suffering far more than I’d realized when she first appeared in my shoppe like a gift from the heavens, and even if the trader didn’t have The Oxblood Book, she had a right to know we had a lead on it. “Bri—”
She pushed to her feet. “We should get back to the shoppe.”
Tell her, you eejit. Tell her before it’s too late. “What about searching for your grimoire?” I asked instead, because I’d gotten rather good at ignoring my conscience. “There must be someone who can help us. A collector, maybe.”
She shook her head. “No, you were right. We need this venture to pay off. My parents…” Bri looked up at the sky, as if she were trying to stanch the flow of her tears through gravity alone. “I spent all the money they gave me already. It was supposed to last till Yule.”
“We’ll write to them,” I said, unlocking the shoppe door. “You’ll tell them that you’re safe. That school is going well and you have a lead on how to break your curse.”
“But I don’t,” she protested.
“Not yet. But by the time your letter gets to them, we will.” All I needed were a few more weeks. I’d tell her about The Oxblood Book by the end of the month, if we hadn’t found another solution by then. She’d be home in plenty of time to spend Yule with her parents.
She looked at me, the despondency in her eyes replaced with a glimmer of hope. I knew that look all too well. Hope was a beacon, but it was also a trap. You could let it guide you, only to find yourself standing on the edge of a cliff.
“How?” she asked.
I swallowed the guilt forming a leaden lump in my throat. “Instead of hunting for your grimoire, we’re going to make it come to us.”
As we walked to the print shoppe, I cobbled together the pieces of my ridiculous scheme.
I hoped it would be enough to satisfy Bri’s need to search for her grimoire while still giving me time to get the shoppe in order.
We needed to do a full inventory, which was going to require more hands, especially considering Bri couldn’t touch many of the items in the shoppe.
“Do my eyes deceive me, or is that Willow Stokes?”
I had to bite my lip to keep from groaning. This was the problem with going into downtown Ardmuir: a much higher risk of running into people who knew me.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Shilling,” I drawled. Trystan’s mother was the pinnacle of Ardmuir society, and she was twice as odious as Trystan, which was to say equally awful, because two times infinity is still infinity. (See, I did learn a thing or two in school.)
“Let me look at you,” Mrs. Shilling said, taking my hands before I could run screaming for the highlands. She’d never spoken to me once before, and now she was acting as though we were old friends. “You’ve matured since I last saw you.”
“It’s been nearly two years,” I replied, trying not to sound sarcastic.
“Has it?” She blinked. She was an attractive middle-aged woman, her light brown hair swept up in a tasteful bun, her waist almost waspishly thin. Behind her, a servant struggled under a mountain of parcels.
“Yes. My father’s funeral,” I reminded her.
“Oh, dear. I’d almost forgotten. How have you been getting on?” She glanced at Bri before I could respond. “Who is this lovely young woman?”
“Brianna Hargrave,” I said. “She’s working with me at the shoppe.”
“That’s right,” she cooed. “The shoppe. Trystan mentioned something about it to me this morning.”
Ah. That explained why she was suddenly being so nice to me. She was angling for magical objects now that Trystan knew I had them.
“It’s closed this week,” Bri explained. “For inventory.”
“Of course, of course.” She leaned toward me conspiratorially. “You know, Trystan’s birthday is coming up next week.”
I couldn’t even feign enthusiasm. “I had no idea.”
“He has been begging me for a magical object for months now. I don’t suppose you have anything special you could set aside for him?”
I wanted to tell her no, I wouldn’t sell anything to Trystan for all the tea in Achnarach, but the Shillings had money. A lot of it. “I’ll look into it,” I said.
Beaming, she squeezed my hands again. “I’m so happy to hear you say that. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of each other very soon.”
As she walked on, I couldn’t help thinking how curious it was that people treated you very differently when you had something they wanted.
All this time, I’d hoped that one day I could clear my father’s name—and that I could continue to eat, of course.
But now, I realized that there was more than money or my family’s good name at stake.
There was power, influence, acceptance.
“Was that Trystan’s mother?” Bri whispered.
“Indeed.”
“She was being so nice to you, though.”
I sighed. “Only because she wants magical objects. It’s possible she’s unaware that Trystan has been my nemesis since third grade, but I doubt it.”
Bri arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t eight a little young for a nemesis?”
“Hi. I’m Willow. Have we met?”
She smirked. “Fair enough. But nemesis is a strong word, even for you. What happened between you?”
It hardly took any effort to conjure the memory of little Willow in her school uniform, braids as neat and tidy as Da could make them—which was to say lopsided and frizzy and a constant source of ridicule—her white knee socks stained pale pink because she’d washed them in the same water as Da’s favorite red sweater.
“The summer before third grade, Trystan’s father came by the shoppe to speak with my father. Mr. Shilling runs the bank, and since my father had a rather sizable loan, he wanted to see how business was going.”
Bri winced. “Not well, I’m guessing?”
I gave her a wry look. “No. Anyway, he must have mentioned it to his family, because from the first day of third grade, Trystan made a point of telling everyone how low class I was. He would walk behind me, waving his hand in front of his nose as though I hadn’t bathed in weeks.
He told everyone I had fleas so no one would sit next to me.
He made a point of splashing mud or paint on me, knowing I often wore the same dress several days in a row and wouldn’t be able to wash it before the next day.
“A few months into the school year, he placed a jar of money on my desk with the words alms for the poor written across it. Unbeknownst to me, he’d taken up a collection to buy me a new pair of shoes, because mine were coming apart at the sole.
It was humiliating enough that I had scroungy shoes, but that was the final straw for me.
All the slow, methodical torment built to a breaking point, and I snapped.
I started throttling him and wouldn’t stop until the teacher pulled me off. I was suspended for a week.”
“And Trystan?”