Chapter 20
CHAPTER
Twenty
Ican’t do this.’ Thea stared up at the duck-egg blue sky and the shivering trees.
She had woken to frost, laced over the cobblestones.
The first frost in the Magic Quarter – the cold snap that had stuck birds to branches and blown out all the street lamps after the blizzard didn’t count; according to gossip, that had been a failed attempt to repair the ward by one of the weather-witches.
Thea held onto Biscuit’s box for another minute.
His presence soothed her and she was still frustrated with Jasper this morning; he knew something about the attack on the Magic Quarter and its wards, she was sure of it.
Worse, she’d dreamed of their encounter in the forest last night, reliving every second of it until she’d woken tangled in her bedsheets.
‘Of course you can.’ Zofka impatiently bit into one of the cinnamon buns she’d brought for breakfast, sweet and steaming in the frigid hour before the shops rolled up their shutters and unlocked their doors.
It had been a few days since Fleur’s defence had chased Pan Novak and the Hunters from her modiste, but judging by the stare Pan Novak had given Thea as he’d walked away, it would not be the last they heard of him.
The witch light gourds were gone, replaced with golden stars strung between the street lamps and trees, which glittered when someone happened by. Their resident pixies seemed fond of them, judging by the trilling laughter that had danced into Thea’s open windows last night.
Talibah, in a berry-red headscarf, wrapped extra snugly around her neck, nodded in agreement. ‘It’s time. Biscuit belongs with the other messenger ravens and the sky, where he can stretch his wings.’
Thea knew all of this. It didn’t stop her throat from aching as she stroked Biscuit’s beak one last time. He gave a soft caw, rustling his feathers. ‘I’ve loved having you stay with me,’ she told the raven. ‘Come and visit sometime, I’ll keep your jar of worms ready.’
Zofka pulled a face.
‘I didn’t know witches were squeamish,’ Talibah teased.
‘Kitchen-witch,’ Zofka amended primly. ‘I deal with pastry, not invertebrates.’
Thea set Biscuit’s box down. He hopped free and with a flutter of his wings, flew down the street to the Crypt, with its crooked turret stuck on its roof like an awkward additional limb.
‘Well done.’ Talibah interlinked her arm with Thea’s.
Thea watched until Biscuit’s dark plumage vanished into one of the tiny windows in the turret, where the messenger ravens dwelled. Until the lump in her throat had hardened into a rock. She was going to miss that bird.
The following week presented itself like a gift: Thea’s headaches did not return, all seemed quiet in the Magic Quarter, with not a peep from Pan Novak, and the magical folk began returning to the tangled streets and alleys as the wheel of time shifted further into winter.
The resident weather-witches decorated the streets with cascading snowflakes and bewitched the frosted windows to paint wintry scenes of sleighing and snowpeople, and everything smelled like baking.
‘I don’t like that he’s missing.’ Zofka was whirling round her kitchen like a winter’s gale.
A cinnamon-sweet scent emanated from the stove, and with the addition of iced gingerbread biscuits hanging from the windows and beams, it was starting to become believable that Christmas would be here in a few short weeks.
Outside, a snow was falling that the weather-witches had nothing to do with, and Thea was spending the evening with Zofka after opening Stiltskin’s early to serve a waiting line.
The most welcome sight she’d seen in days, even if half her customers had been inflicted with colds.
She was running dangerously low on fire-ginger now.
But the Magic Quarter was coming back to life and Thea had fallen in love with it all over again.
Here, books and coffee and magic and kittens were a way of life, and a slice of enchanted cake could put a smile on your face like nothing else.
Thea perched on Zofka’s scarred table, nibbling a gingerbread person she’d liberated from the nearest window, brewing her own potion under Zofka’s supervision. ‘Who’s missing?’ she asked, grinding the lake spirit’s fingernail and last pair of the silver spot-dabbles into a shiny grey paste.
‘Pan Novak and his pack of leeches.’ Zofka glanced out the window. ‘It feels nefarious, like he’s planning something.’
‘I agree,’ Thea sighed, ‘But when I raised it with Rose, she seemed inclined to believe that the weather-witches mended the wards—’
Zofka snorted. ‘I love the weather-witches, but it’s going to take more than some ice to fix those wards. It’s complex magic, you can’t just’ – she gesticulated wildly, scattering sugar everywhere – ‘patch it up with a bit of ice and expect that to solve everything.’
A spirit drifted through the wall.
Thea almost fell from the counter.
‘Sorry to startle you,’ the spirit said, rather pleasantly. ‘My name is Radim; it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.’
Zofka pointed to Radim with her wooden spoon. ‘My spirit.’
‘So, I guessed,’ Thea said dryly. She smiled at Radim, making a concerted effort not to glance at his medieval vestments, which were stained with blood, nor his neck, which bore the kind of wound you could not survive. ‘I’m Thea.’
‘Ah, the apothecarian.’ Radim gave a knowledgeable nod. ‘Terrible business with the wards, isn’t it?’ he tutted. ‘What are you making?’
‘It’s meant to be a potion, but I’m not quite sure it’s coming out right and I don’t have any spare ingredients.’
Zofka cast an expert eye over it. ‘That needs thinning.’
‘With what?’ Thea asked.
Zofka snatched something off one of her many shelves without looking. ‘Pop a bit of rose water in there. Anything watery will thin it, but rose water will improve the smell.’ She wrinkled her nose.
Thea did as advised. Sitting next to a hot stove was chasing the chill away, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible was waiting around the next corner.
She agreed with Zofka; she’d seen the intricate wards – patching them together with ice of all things would have done nothing.
Which meant Pan Novak was planning something more nefarious.
And none of the patrols had unearthed any hint of any fate-weavers or Hunters, which made her very nervous.
Zofka wrapped dough around a wide stick with slick, practised movements as she formed the signature shape of the trdelník. ‘Now you can add the fairy’s tear.’
Thea carefully uncorked the tiny shimmering vial and tipped a single tear into her bowl. It bounced, once, twice, then sank into the mixture like a stone.
‘And stir it all together until its silky.’ Zofka shooed Radim away from her own bowl, brimming with sugar and spices, and began scattering her pastry – and half the flagstones.
‘Jasper was in here the other day, ordering one of these.’ She nodded to the trdelník, now cooking on a stick over the flames.
She rotated some of the others in the line.
Thea stirred her potion. ‘Oh?’ she asked, curious despite herself.
She hadn’t seen him in days, but her body still ached from his touch.
She wouldn’t beg him. She wouldn’t, she vowed, telling herself that was the truth, even as she tasted the lie.
But yesterday, when the night had been at its blackest point, swollen with stars like ripe hanging fruits, her heart-spell had thumped at the thought of never feeling his lips on hers again.
‘Though he may not be dead, the man is haunted,’ Radim commented, peering at Zofka’s dough.
Thea paused. ‘He lost his daughter some years ago,’ she told them.
‘Oh.’ Zofka snapped upright. ‘How sad. No wonder he always seems so . . .’
‘Grumpy?’ Thea suggested.
‘Lost,’ Zofka declared. ‘He looks lost. And no wonder, being a widower, too.’
‘He is? Why didn’t I already know that?’
Zofka wrinkled her nose. ‘I presumed you did.’
‘Who was she? What was she like?’ Thea resumed stirring, reminded again that Jasper was not grumpy, he was lost in grief.
It was too easy to villainise him as a heart-thief, a fate-weaver, but he was just another person muddling through this strange and wonderful existence.
And maybe he was even lonelier than her, for at least she had friends and a community. Jasper was all alone.
Zofka shrugged. ‘Nobody knows. He doesn’t speak about it, Paní Dagmar just happened to mention it in passing one day when she was collecting her bread.’
Thea pursed her lips. She couldn’t picture Jasper with a wife, something about the image made her feel uncomfortable, like lacing into a too-tight gown.
‘Now plop the dead man’s finger bone in,’ Zofka said, with no little excitement.
Radim cringed. ‘Please excuse me.’ He floated away.
‘He doesn’t like the d word,’ Zofka winced. ‘I should have been more sensitive. I’m sorry, Radim!’ she yelled, before turning to Thea. ‘Do you think he heard that?’
‘I think half the Magic Quarter heard that.’ Thea drew the bone from her pocket, cleaned since the last potion, and dropped it into the bowl.
‘Please don’t be a disaster.’ She could not afford to hunt down another lake spirit or water demon or whatever that horrible thing was that had almost drowned her.
‘It’ll need to brew for at least a day and a night, more if you can spare it,’ Zofka told her. ‘Then it’ll be perfect for you to do your thing.’ She wiggled her fingers.
Perfect timing for the Winter Ball. Provided it worked this time.
A raven tapped on the window with its beak.
‘Hello there, Biscuit,’ Thea crooned on letting him in. Biscuit nudged his head against her hand and she laughed, petting him as she untied his note with the other. ‘Oh, it’s Malek, he’s replied.’