CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR #2
This time, Dot saw Salamander with unpanicked clarity.
He had wide, amphibian eyes and chalky, grey skin that seemed in places almost translucent.
His body was long and, if he had a heart, they could have surely watched it beat.
He swam up over the edge of the tank and dropped onto the concrete before them with a wet slap.
He drew toward them, towering over each of the women.
‘Knox, was it?’ hissed the daemon at Dot.
‘A false name, of course,’ said Theodora. ‘This is Jane Spectre.’
‘Jane, a pleasure,’ said Salamander, inclining his head. Dot looked into those knowing eyes, and she suspected that the daemon knew very well her name wasn’t Jane. He turned to Theodora. ‘Have you my money, Kae?s?’
Theodora stiffened. Dot glanced sideways at her. Money?
‘The payment is scheduled,’ said Theodora, ‘as always, for the last day of the month.’
‘Of course.’ Salamander walked wetly on two legs to the table on the far side of the room.
It was cast in shadow, but Dot spotted a smaller tank there and, within, a human arm floating.
Carved into the flesh were intricate runes.
‘How ridiculous of me to forget,’ said the daemon in a way that told Dot he never forgot a thing.
‘I have been quite consumed of late, what with all of my lobbying. What brings you to me, Kae?s?’
‘My apprentice,’ said Theodora, nodding at Dot. ‘I know you have an interest in strange magics. Can you tell us anything about her affliction?’
‘This is not the first time you have requested my help,’ said Salamander. ‘I am surprised you wish to again.’ He glanced back at her. ‘You went by a different name all those years ago. What was it?’
The witch and the daemon eyed each other.
‘Edwina,’ said Theodora.
Dot’s attention was drawn back to the floating arm in the tank.
‘Not to worry, Miss Spectre. Just a bit of science.’ Salamander tapped at the glass. ‘I am about to do some more.’
And he smiled again, in such an uncanny fashion that Dot took half a step back. She looked at the witch, and saw Theodora narrow her eyes. Dot was missing some vital piece of information here. Whatever did these glances between the daemon and the witch mean?
‘For a fee,’ said Salamander. His head inclined.
Theodora stared for a long moment at Salamander, as if trying to decide something that Dot could not discern.
The daemon nodded. Theodora was still.
Then, he pounced.
Dot was knocked violently to the hard floor.
Two long, white barbs shot out of the daemon’s back and wound around her wrists, tugging her arms up over her head.
The scent of magic, cloying and sweet, was thrown over her like a blanket – incense, woodsmoke, gunpowder and something chemical she could not place.
Something of the body, almost faecal and rotting, but tinged with the acrid pinch of scientific laboratories and fetid water.
‘Dorothy!’ cried the witch from beyond.
Salamander’s barbs were slimy and strong. They wrapped tight around Dot’s wrists. Dot could not spot Theodora beyond Salamander’s grotesque frame. She kicked her legs and two more barbs appeared and pinned them down.
‘Salamander,’ came Theodora’s hoarse voice from somewhere beyond. ‘This wasn’t what we agreed—’
A thud sounded and the witch fell quiet.
The daemon’s face drew close to Dot’s, grinning horribly. His breath was cold on her skin. Another long, white barb appeared. It slid up the side of Dot’s neck, oozed over her cheekbone and touched her temple.
‘Stop me,’ said Salamander. His voice was low. He was enjoying it.
Dot thrashed against him.
‘How many spells have you memorised, Dorothy?’
Dot thrashed again, her head hitting the wet brick below her.
‘A witch’s apprentice,’ whispered Salamander in her ear, ‘who cannot cast a spell.’
‘Dorothy!’ shouted Theodora from somewhere beyond. ‘Do not use magic.’
Salamander put his dripping mouth to Dot’s ear. ‘She plans to sell you to me, Dorothy.’
Dot pushed at him, but the daemon wrenched her closer.
‘You do not mean a thing to her.’
Dot ripped her afflicted hand free of his grip and slapped him. As her scales connected with his wet body, a burst of cold magic threw the daemon off her. She clutched at her hand, the pain immediate. New scales formed and the daemon leaped on her once more, pinning her down.
Salamander seized Dot’s afflicted hand with one long, slimy barb.
With another, he touched her temple, and against it came a hard impact, as if a hammer had struck her skull.
Dot’s vision left her. The dungeon beneath the department store disappeared.
In tumbled a gentle wind. Gunpowder. Sea salt. Children’s chanting.
She was in the ocean again.
And Emily was drowning.
‘Dot!’ the girl shrieked, but Dot was too far away, scooped up by the waves, beating her fourteen-year-old arms against the darkness. Another wave crashed, catapulting the girls further apart. Dot kicked her legs. Her skirt was logged with water and her shoes tugged her down.
I did it.
I was the one who killed her.
They had been walking along the wooden pier. Dot stepped on every third slat.
‘He’s quite good at kissing.’
‘Foul.’ Dot grimaced.
‘You only think that because he’s your brother,’ said Emily, running her hand along the railing. She had long, pretty, unbitten fingernails. Beyond them, the waves were like great warring beasts, rolling and thundering over one another. ‘He’s lovely.’
‘Not to me,’ said Dot, showing Emily the burn upon her arm. ‘Look what he did to me three weeks ago. I told him he was rubbish at maths, so he threw the kettle at me.’
Emily laughed at her; the sound was a slap.
‘I’m sure there was more to it than that.’
‘There wasn’t,’ said Dot. ‘He was being horrible. I’ll have this scar forever.’
‘Oh, you are a little girl, Dottie.’
‘We’re the same age,’ said Dot, covering the burn with her sleeve.
‘In body,’ said Emily. She gave Dot a knowing smile. ‘Not in spirit. You are so prone to infatuation and yet you have never even spoken to a boy. One day, you’ll grow up.’
Emily ran further down the pier, twirling against the wind.
It was night-time and they were alone, taking their usual detour as Dot walked Emily back to her house on Lamprey Road.
As Emily ran, Dot watched her disappearing in real time.
Now, her one friend only visited their little cottage to see Willard.
Emily stayed for dinner and, after, with barely a word to Dot, climbed out of Dot’s window and in through her brother’s.
With increasing viciousness, she mocked Dot’s chatter about Alliaster and the cathedral and magic.
More and more, in Emily’s presence, Dot found herself collapsing inward.
I wish I weren’t so strange.
I wish I weren’t so plain.
I wish I were entirely different. Then, maybe, she would still like me.
Emily climbed the first rung of the pier’s railing and stood over the darkness of the ocean. As Dot came to her, Emily said, ‘Willard and I are in love.’
‘The only thing you are in love with,’ said Dot, her eyes stinging, ‘is the attention.’
Emily glared at her. They’d never had a true, grown-up argument before. The girl’s pretty face turned sour. ‘You are simply a jealous little girl.’
‘I’m not,’ said Dot. Her throat was tight; she forced out her words. ‘You are simply in love with the idea of being a boring, ordinary grown-up far more than you are in love with my brother.’
‘Tell me how I shall prove it to you, then,’ said Emily. ‘Shall I throw myself off a cliff, perhaps? Would that satisfy you?’
‘Maybe it would,’ cried Dot. ‘Get up on that railing. Humiliate yourself and scream that you love him.’
Emily hoisted her skirts and grabbed hold of the metal.
Dot should have stopped her, then.
She didn’t.
Emily stepped up to the middle of the three rails. Into the wind, she shouted, ‘I love Willard Archibald Walcott! And his little sister is a jealous child!’
‘No, I’m not,’ snapped Dot.
‘You are.’ Emily laughed at her, her hair ghostly in the night wind.
‘And frankly I’m a bit fed up with this ownership you believe you have over me.
All you do now is mope that I’m not spending time with you.
’ Emily stretched her arms up against the wind and shook her lovely, short hair.
‘Dottie, you have your peculiarities and your questions and your obsessions. Oh, you have that cathedral – you’ve not shut up about it since I gave you that drawing, and I regret it.
Truly I do. But don’t turn bitter and nasty because I am loved and you are not. ’
Dot had never meant any harm.
How many times had each of them climbed that railing and been utterly safe?
‘You should have climbed to the top,’ said Dot. ‘Not to the middle rung like a coward.’
And Emily had scoffed and hoisted herself to the very top and that was all it took. A rush of wind startled her and the girl gasped and teetered and a look of terror broke over that pretty face as she flailed. Before Dot even had a moment to reach for her, Emily fell into the ocean.
A horrible splash ripped through the night.
‘Emily!’ Dot had shouted. She jumped into the water after her.