Chapter Nineteen
Sorcha did not see him again until the next morning, when she took him to Hallow. They did not speak about the night before.
Even if she could not stop thinking about it.
He donned the shield of affable curator the moment they arrived. His glittering eyes were shielded by his spectacles again. As he moved through the crowd, people stopped to greet him and to eye Sorcha speculatively. The earl and the duke’s granddaughter.
She decided it would be faster to take the back streets, the crooked alleys not thrumming with students and visiting academics.
She ducked into a narrow lane between two shops selling bewitched ink and books on poisonous flowers.
Gargoyles watched her from above. One wore a pigeon as a hat, and the bird cooed a greeting.
Sorcha scattered crumbs from her pocket and stepped over a puddle of liquid that was questionable in nature.
A face appeared in the oily substance and glared at her.
Aidan noted the posters and placards pasted to the walls as the lane brought them to a set of water-worn stone steps.
Reward for the Red Cloak.
There were several more than there used to be.
Sorcha wrinkled her nose at the sketch of the tall, thin witch, swallowed by a red cloak that sent people fainting and screaming at their feet. There was more blood than she generally saw in a day’s work. And were those horns? Why were they lopsided? “That’s not very flattering.”
Aidan was not as amused. He looked as though he had been carved from stone. He ripped the poster down, folded it, and slipped it into the pocket of his dark-blue coat. He tore the others down and tossed them into the puddles as they walked on.
“There’s nowhere mentioned on there to bring any information on the Red Cloak,” she pointed out.
“Not in so many words.”
She halted, frowned. “How, then?”
“I’m not sure yet. In the ink, perhaps, or the paper. A spell on the drawing. I can see threads of magic, but not where they go. They’re tangled. Blurry.”
“Those blighters.” Still, it meant she was getting under their skin, didn’t it? If they were getting desperate, they might also get careless. She could use it against them.
“The look on your face is set to give me nightmares,” Aidan muttered.
“I’m only thinking.”
“Aye.”
She nudged him with her elbow, and he grunted.
It was such an ordinary thing to do, an unremarkable gesture between friends.
Between betrothed. For some reason it made her swallow against some undefinable emotion swelling in her throat.
He was watching her, eyes shielded behind glass. “All right there?”
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
“Because you are leading us deeper into the parts of Hallow where even Iron Crows fear to tread. Is that a museum of murderous leprechauns?”
“Probably.”
“They don’t exist.”
She shrugged. “You never know.”
“But I do, actually.” He sounded disgruntled. “I’m serious.”
“You usually are,” she replied lightly. “It’s the museum curator in you.” She found she liked it more and more. “But there’s no harm in it,” she pointed out. “And they serve the best Devonshire Splits in Hallow.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Baked at Nettlestone Hall, I presume.”
“Naturally.”
“You didn’t bring me here for strawberry cream buns.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
There was no one around, only the watchful gargoyles and a rat scurrying past, whiskers twitching a hello, but Sorcha lowered her voice. “You’re searching for wolf teeth, aren’t you?”
“Among other things, yes.”
“And have you tried searching the Museum of Teeth?”
He halted, truly horrified. “There’s a Museum of Teeth?”
“There’s a museum of everything. Shoes, spoons. Evil-eye charms. Dolls.”
He shuddered. “Dolls?”
“Yes,” she replied cheerfully. “It’s extraordinarily creepy.”
The Museum of Teeth was both as disturbing as it sounded and somehow also stunningly mundane.
It was set in the upper level of a narrow building, also home to a shop that sold pasties stuffed with potatoes and onions.
The stairwell smelled like damp and fennel from a hundred small charms. A moth fluttered wearily, trapped inside the oil lamp in the hall.
When it emerged and crawled onto Sorcha’s knuckle, she noticed its wing, papery and thin.
“Poor thing—you can’t fly well, can you?” she whispered. “I’ll take you home. You can rest by the lights in the barn. Nimue likes moths.” She settled it gently on her hair, where it sat in a twist at her nape. “You just sit there for a bit.”
Aidan watched her with an amused half-smile.
“It’s injured,” she explained. What must he think of her, wearing insects like hairpins. Ah well, it was unlikely to be the oddest thing she did that day. That hour, even. She was taking him to a Museum of Teeth, after all.
The front part of the museum was remarkably well cared for, with sparkling glass-fronted cabinets where teeth sat on velvet boxes with descriptions in faded brown ink: tooth of a rabbit, tooth belonging to a kelpie.
There was even a tooth taller than her, purporting to have once belonged to a kraken.
It still looked sharp. The deeper one dared to venture into the museum, the more cluttered the exhibits, and the dustier.
There were a surprisingly great many teeth on display, most with magical properties as well as historical or natural significance.
And, equally surprising, Sorcha and Aidan were not the only patrons.
The equinox brought magical tourists from all over England as well as the local island witches looking for a holiday.
And teeth were apparently deeply interesting to a little girl, barely seven years old, currently marching through the aisles, her face pinched in serious contemplation.
She spotted Sorcha and Aidan. “Did you know that mermaids have twice as many teeth as wolves?”
Aidan smiled, hiding his own wolf teeth. “I did not know that, actually. Thank you.”
She nodded, like a small, solemn professor meeting a peer in the halls of the University. “Papa, may I have a strawberry tart? The ones with the teeth made from frosting?”
“Another one?” her father asked.
“I like to bite it before it can bite me. Since you said I wasn’t allowed to bite anyone anymore,” she grumbled, stomping away. The pink ribbons on the back of her dress fluttered. Her father chuckled, looking only a little bemused.
“Is she a wolf?” Sorcha whispered to Aidan.
“No, but she ought to be,” he whispered back. “And she was right about the mermaids.”
“Welcome,” a heavyset older gentleman said, emerging from between two cabinets.
“Good afternoon,” Sorcha returned.
“I’m Barnabus, the proprietor of this fine establishment.”
Sorcha was fascinated by the fluid and immediate change in Aidan’s demeanor.
He was still taller and more muscled than anyone in the vicinity, still tattooed and scarred.
But he was also contemplative, a furrow of serious thought between his brows, with a sort of befuddled amiability.
The light glinted off his spectacles, the tousled brown curls.
And he was suddenly holding a book bound in old leather, faded and clasped with brass hinges.
And a pencil. Where had it even come from?
“You have a very unique collection,” he said to Barnabus.
“Museums don’t have to be stuffy old things, now do they?”
“Certainly not,” Sorcha agreed. Aidan, she noted, did not.
It wasn’t a museum so much as a carnival exhibit that stayed still instead of moving from fair to fair.
Along with the exhibits and the bakery treats, there were trinkets and gifts for purchase.
A row of small paintings showed the trapped images of krakens and spectral dogs, clacking their formidable teeth together.
There was an imp in a scrolled birdcage, blue skinned and black eyed, with leathery wings that sparkled.
Next to him, a framed notice: Imp bites cure impotence. One guinea per bite.
She frowned and sent him a question. She received several images and slightly sinister cackling: he had the key—fresh apples in the morning, wine in the evenings. And he liked to bite people.
“Some of these items are very rare,” Aidan said, taking his spectacles off only long enough to wipe the lenses with a handkerchief. “You are to be commended.”
“Why, thank you.” Barnabus’s chest puffed up. “It’s my life’s work.”
“Would you happen to carry anything of wolf provenance? Something from the Anthus Pack?”
“They are a living Pack, sir. It is forbidden by the Order.”
“Of course,” Aidan murmured easily. “My mistake.”
Sorcha pouted and tried not to look as though she was enjoying herself. “But they are supposed to bless a marriage with good luck. And you promised me something truly unique as a betrothal gift.”
“So I did, rabbit. We’ll find something.”
She huffed. “Lady Carrington had a crocodile from the Nile. She made it dance. I must have something equally rare.”
“And you will. I am sure there are other museums to visit. I shan’t rest. Nothing is too good for my future countess.”
Barnabus’s eyes widened at the reveal. Dramatically. He coughed. “Felicitations, my lord.”
“Thank you, Bernard,” Aidan said, getting his name wrong whilst sounding so uninterested that Sorcha bit her lip to keep from laughing. “Shall we be on our way, rabbit?”
“I suppose so,” she sighed. “This would have made such a good story at my ladies’ tea. Even with her crocodile, Lady Carrington is too scared to walk down this alley, the goose.”
“We’ll find a better one.”
“Er…” Barnabus interrupted with another cough.
Sorcha raised her eyebrows. “Oh dear, are you getting ill? We should go.”
“No!” He smiled so widely it was a bit off-putting. “That is, I am perfectly well. Just need a cup of tea.”
“I see. That’s good to hear. I don’t wish to sneeze through my betrothal ball. It will be the event of the Season, I assure you.”