Chapter 4
CHAPTER
Four
The following day brought a hive of activity.
Each time Thea had a spare moment to glance out of the window, the Magic Quarter was thronged with customers.
Was it her imagination or were there more non-magical folk than usual?
Not even a sudden rain shower that fell in brilliant violet drops and fizzed on the cobblestones managed to deter the shoppers.
Everyone was hungry for a taste of magic.
And if the rain spattered their wigs and silks with purple, well, that only added to the enchantment of it all.
Thea wrapped orders in paper and took coins, working her way through the queue as she dragged her tired bones through the day, pointedly ignoring the crack along the ceiling.
A raven flew through the open window and landed on the counter in a rustle of night-black feathers.
Thea’s latest customer, a young shape-shifter with a frightful cold, waited as the raven hopped over to Thea and stretched out one leg with a caw.
Thea quickly untied the little note affixed to its leg.
With an inky glimmer, the words revealed themselves.
Is there a holiday coming that I don’t know about? Run over when you’ve got a minute, I’ve made you lunch.
Zofka never added her name to any of the notes she sent via the Magic Quarter’s messenger ravens, but Thea read the note in her voice anyway.
Lunch. She cast a wistful glance outside as the raven flew away, past the street lamps struggling against the gloom.
Fog was setting in, thick enough to be a lost cloud.
Perhaps it was. Rose occasionally dragged a cloud down from the sky when she was feeling overwrought.
Zofka too, had bouts of the weather becoming inextricably linked with her emotions; either one of the witches could have accidentally conjured the violet rain, not to mention the cackle of weather-witches who dwelled in a windmill the far side of the Quarter.
A loud sneeze drew Thea’s attention back to her customer. ‘Here.’ She thrust a jar of lemon and moon-mothwing pastilles at him. ‘Chew two immediately.’
‘Not so fast!’ Paní Dagmar squeezed herself to the front of the queue. She wore a traditional patterned headscarf, tied beneath her chin, and her face wrinkled like parchment as she beamed. ‘Sneeze into this vial for me, young man.’
Thea pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘No. You cannot possibly have a potion that requires a sneeze—’ Paní Dagmar opened her mouth.
‘Stop pestering my customers!’ Thea took a different tack in a hurry.
‘My apothecary is not your hunting ground for spell ingredients!’ Nobody knew what kind of witch Paní Dagmar was but it was rumoured that she was well into her second century.
Though she herself claimed that she was at least twice this age.
The young man sneezed into his sleeve. Paní Dagmar sighed and shuffled away.
An hour or so later, when the storm of customers had relented to a quiet drizzle, Thea flipped the sign on the apothecary door to Closed and ran across the street to Zofka’s.
The thick walls of gingerbread that had given Zofka’s café and bakery its name were iced and glossy.
Icing sugar puffed from the chimney. Thea entered the darling door and crossed the floorboards – planks of hardened biscuit – and weaved between packed tables – also a rich brown biscuit – to the sugar display cases.
When it came to cake, Zofka was unparalleled.
Blackberry torte and apple pies with cinnamon-dusted crusts, biscuits baked in the shape of leaves, trdelník, a sweet pastry wrapped around a stick and cooked on Zofka’s fire and chocolate mice with pink sugar noses.
And, of course, gingerbread. Slabs of richly spiced gingerbread cake, preening under a thick layer of icing, and rows of gingerbread people, happy and sad and everything in between.
Behind them stood Gretel, willowy in a way that called to mind long walks beneath the stars and lace-trimmed gowns, her beauty ethereal in her soft brown eyes and long, curling eyelashes, cream skin and dark hair.
‘Thea!’ Gretel smiled warmly at her. ‘Isn’t it busy today?
I’ve never seen this many non-magical folk here before. ’
‘It’s heaving.’ Thea couldn’t help returning Gretel’s smile, though her own was marked with dark shadows crawling under her eyes; she had been up all night, and it was wearing on her.
She mourned those years when the tiredness wouldn’t have shown.
She scanned the café, not glimpsing Zofka, though she noticed Rose had somehow managed to secure an entire table for herself. ‘Is Zofka baking in the back?’
Gretel softened with affection, and Thea felt an ungrateful pang.
What was it like to have someone in your life who melted when their thoughts wandered your way?
Thea often hoped that if she ever got her heart and memories back, she would discover a great love gracing the tapestry of her life.
Other times, she hoped not; what did it say of that great love, if Thea had willingly surrendered her heart to a monster?
‘She is.’ Gretel interrupted Thea’s spiral. ‘A batch of apple strudl. She also made goulash and freshly baked rye bread that’s being kept warm in the stove for you.’
Before Thea could thank her, a slender man with wiry spectacles and an impressive, powdered wig forged a path to the front of the café, stepping in front of Thea as he addressed Gretel.
‘Am I to understand that since this establishment is housed in these . . . conditions’ – he eyed the café dubiously – ‘that these confections contain magic within them?’ He stared at the cakes and biscuits in their sheer sugar cases.
A gingerbread person took it into its biscuited-head to leap up and begin pirouetting.
The man stared at Thea and Gretel. ‘I see,’ he murmured. His face was painted white, his lips and cheeks reddened, and this close, his wig gave off the distinctive whiff of bergamot oil, though it couldn’t distract from the lice crawling between his curls, attracted by his beef-fat pomade.
Thea inched closer to Gretel, misliking him at once.
‘As you can see, they do,’ Gretel said. ‘Is there anything in particular that catches your eye?
Gretel had a good dash of woodland spirit in her ancestry, but her greatest gift was her serenity. Gretel kept Zofka grounded and together; the pair were in harmonious balance.
‘You may address me as Pan Novak. I am a court-appointed Magic Hunter and I, along with several others, have been instructed to investigate this . . . curious sector of the city. Do you know, I am not sure I have ever been here before?’
Ice ran down Thea’s spine. ‘This isn’t possible,’ she breathed.
The snooping around was one thing, this was another entirely.
The wards should have protected them from this, as they had any other time Prague had become infected with intolerance.
Why must people be so distrusting of that which they did not understand?
The folk of the Quarter made easy prey for those who were only concerned with lubricating the wheels of society and stuffing their own coffers with gold.
Someone dropped a fork as the magical folk sensed the disquiet spreading through the café.
Gretel remained calm, though her fingers, resting atop the counter, slowly turned white.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Pan Novak asked crisply.
Rage uncoiled in the pit of Thea’s stomach like a dragon awaking from slumber. How dare this man bring his political machinations into the Gingerbread House? She had to know how he’d slipped past the wards’ magic.
‘I only wondered how you stumbled upon us . . . We are in such a quiet spot.’ It took effort not to betray her fury, but if Gretel could maintain that calm demeanour, she could emulate her. Keep her voice steady.
Pan Novak’s smile was slow and creeping as fog. ‘Then you admit you were hiding. How curious indeed.’
‘Not at all,’ Thea protested.
‘We have no reason to hide,’ Gretel added calmly.
Pan Novak’s lack of words spoke volumes.
‘What could you be investigating here?’ Thea asked, not without bite. ‘This is only a café; there’s nothing more harmless than a piece of cake.’
Pan Novak surveyed Thea over the top of his wire-rimmed spectacles.
‘I am afraid I must disabuse you of that notion. These products are being imbibed; I have been sent to ascertain exactly what they contain and if they provide any adverse reactions in those who consume them.’ His gaze fell to the pirouetting gingerbread man, a frown worming across his forehead.
How had he managed to cross the wards? Thea glanced past the Hunter to the rest of the café.
There were an extraordinary number of non-magical folk seated there, including a family whose children were happily biting the heads off chocolate mice, laughing with glee at the resulting squeaks.
They were oblivious to the current of alarm rippling through the magical folk.
Some tables had silently emptied, leaving plates of half-eaten cakes and untouched hot chocolates.
Others remained, though their heavy-lidded, vacant looks suggested they were tapping into a myriad of magical abilities, readying to fight or flee.
Rose, who was mid-munch through a slice of blackberry torte, was lost in thought.
‘Pan Novak, all of our wares are freshly baked here each morning and I can personally assure you that we would never wish harm on anyone,’ Gretel said, clear and firm, wisely refusing to raise her voice to a pitch which might alert Zofka in the back.
Zofka was a whirlwind that could not be contained and if she unleashed herself on this man, the consequences could be devastating for all involved.
The glazed sugar windows gave a menacing rattle. Pan Novak’s attention flitted to them, and back. ‘As that may be, my directives are clear. I must take a sample of your wares away for further investigation.’