5. Chapter 5 #2
“I’m afraid I’m bound to this city. I cannot leave its borders and I cannot even remember what it is that is still keeping me here.”
“I could help you.”
She patted my cheek and shook her head. “Next time you come to the city, I will find you.”
Liam knocked on the glass case, watching me with narrowed eyes. He was joined by Logan’s two other men, Henry and Arthur.
“One more and we can get a brass band going,” I said, and turned to Arthur—the perpetually sulking, beardy one with the dark long hair thrown up in a tight chignon. “You look like you’d be good on the triangle.”
Liam shook his head. “Good luck to you two. I need a break.”
Henry quietly chuckled, still smiling as he cautiously watched me wave my fingers at poor Liam. “There’s orders to bring you home.”
“I want to stop by the library.”
Arthur stepped forward, all tall and menacing. “Didn’t ye hear, witch-woman? Home.”
“Library,” I said, opening my parasol in his face and throwing it over my shoulder, nearly taking his eye out before I spun on my heel, heading north where Gerda had told me it was.
“I’m not beyond dragging you to the carriage,” Arthur grumbled under his breath, cautious for his fuss not to be heard by the staring and glaring passersby.
“By all means, try.” Lifting the parasol, I said, “I love screaming.”
Both of them followed me quietly down the street. It was of course Arthur who asked, “How’d you know where it is?”
I tapped a finger on my nose. “I can sniff the knowledge in the air. Except when I turn your way. Something…less.”
Henry stepped in front of him. “That’s enough playing around.”
My nose wiggled in his direction. “Is that bread you’re holding?”
Arthur shoved a paper bag in my direction. It was bread.
I looked between the three of them. “Is it for me?”
“Who else eats here?” the grouchy one said.
My eyes narrowed on him. “Is there poison in it?”
“A bucketful.”
“Arsenic?” My eyes remained on him as I took a generous bite. “My favourite.”
“What’s your problem now?” he snapped at me when I just kept staring at him.
“Thought you hated us, that’s all.”
“Why would I hate you? Ye’ve done nothing to me.” He sent a scathing look around us. “You creep me out, but that’s ‘bout it.”
“Some of our mothers are witches. Including mine,” Henry added, handing me his lavender-scented handkerchief. “You’re not all that special, Lady Duncan.”
Except, those mothers were dying and you’re not telling anyone about it.
But there was something about it that put me at ease. Maybe it was the fact that they only saw me as a witch, that they didn’t know Willow Briar the way everyone at the Crimson Weaver did. Maybe that’s why I felt more comfortable around them despite what they were.
“Just call me Willow.”
Henry smirked. “Not unless I have a death wish.”
“Where’s your lord?”
“Called to the parliament. He’ll probably be there until morning.”
I stopped chewing. “Having a vampiric orgy or what? What takes them so long?”
Henry cocked a dark brow in my direction. “Vampiric orgy?”
“The thing where you all turn into bats and hump one another.” I took another massive bite out of the bread.
It was too good—soft and buttery and herby.
A witch had to have cooked it because what the Hell did they or humans even know about cooking herbs?
They were terrified of salt; thought it was a witch’s version of gunpowder.
“Is there garlic in this?” I pouted. “Are you all going to die now?”
Henry chuckled, but Arthur sneered in my direction. “When did you sell your soul to the devil?”
“I love this question. It was the summer of my eighteenth birthday. Big bash we had, me and the devil. Many orgies with many devil folk.” I nearly choked trying to swallow a big bite.
“By the way. What does this devil you keep mentioning look like? I’ve always pictured a small man that looks like a mole rat.
Wet-looking, very saggy skin.” Peeling my front lip over my teeth, I said, “Sort of like this. But naked and mole-y.”
Chewing like a proper cow, I glanced between the two of them who were just staring at me, yet again.
“They say you cut open folks back at the coven,” Henry said, handing me another loaf of bread. “Like a coroner.”
I nodded.
“Gruesome, that is,” Arthur said under his breath.
“What’s so gruesome about it?”
“The cutting, the slicing people up to pieces like they’re meat.”
“They don’t feel anything. They’re dead. Mostly.”
When they both did that staring thing again, I added, “My Goddess, can’t a witch make a joke around these parts of town?” I lifted Henry’s handkerchief up. “Is this lavender I smell?”
Arthur snorted. “Fancy-ass is a lord’s son. Never outgrew his noble habits.”
“Fourth son,” Henry clarified. “Which by mathematical terms puts me at about a clothing merchant level heir at best.”
“At best,” Arthur grumbled, shaking his head.
My eyes kept bouncing between the two. “How did you end up with grouchy toes here?”
Henry laughed. “Hit a rebellious phase in my early teens and joined the army. I expected my father to fight back for me. He never did. Got my ass beaten up by tender toes here in squad drills after I called his snotty ass a guttersnipe—in all fairness, you should have seen the state of the poor waif. His knickers were glued on to his balls, that’s how tight they were.
” His shoulders shook from laughter when Arthur nearly shoved him across the street.
“Logan jumped in to split us up. Got banged up pretty good himself. All three of us were locked in a dungeon for six days. And the rest is history.” He flashed me a fangy smile.
“Pissing in the same tiny bucket for six days does wonders for a friendship, that I can tell you.”
“Awe. That’s incredibly adorable.”
The amusement didn’t slip off his face for even a moment. “We’ve done everything together since then. Shared everything.” He hummed as his gaze raked all over me, forcing me to look away. “Not anymore, I suppose.”
“Why’s that?”
Arthur closed his eyes and sighed. “Henry, shut the fuck up.”
But his friend did indeed not shut up, his smile only growing bigger. “Logan won’t let us even look at you, let alone touch you.”
Oh. My eyes widened. Oh.
I nearly choked.
“That’s very sweet and all, but I don’t do community work.
” A little awkwardly, I pointed at the library.
“I’m going to go in now. You two have fun.
Snog or hold each other’s willies or something, whatever calms you two down.
” I turned again. “Or pinch each other’s nipples and bond some more.
There’s work to be done between you two, I can sense it. ”
The librarian’s head snapped up in my direction when I stopped by the front desk. He was an elegant man of some age. Shorter than me, wearing a slim suit and a monocle, his thin, long greying moustache curled up.
“Hello, I’m—”
He took the monocle off, sticking it in his jacket pocket. “Lady Duncan. How can I help?”
“You know who I am?”
“You’re married to the most affluent person in Mortdale. After the king, that is. Your face was on the papers.”
A little horrified, I just stared at him. “What?”
He dug through an open shelf and smacked a paper on the table—and yup, there I was. Wearing just my nightgown, holding Logan’s hand as I came down from the carriage. What a mess.
I put a hand over my eyes. “That's an unfortunate-looking sight. I’m sorry you had to see it,” I said, folding the paper and sliding it back to him.
“It comes with the position,” he said, somewhat sympathetically. “Your husband is close in the public’s eye. By default, so are you.”
My fingers pitter-pattered on the desk’s surface. “How far back do you keep the newspapers? I’d really love to go through them to get accustomed to what’s happening in Mortdale. I figured there’s no better way to keep up with whatever latest thing is in.”
There was a long stretch of silence after my words, filled with the stale ticking of the old clock hung on the wall behind him.
“It’s a clever way indeed,” he said, narrowing his eyes on me.
Unperturbed, I gave him my best grin and folded my hands on the table as politely as I could, attempting to look as harmless and clueless as possible.
“And any domestic, fashion, or fiction periodicals you might have out there. With as many pictures as possible. I love looking at pictures.” If Ethel had been here she would have laughed until she cried.
“Domestic,” he hummed, raking his clever gaze all over me. “Follow after me, Lady Duncan.”
He took me down a few aisles past the serial department where the smell of damp grew more prominent and the acidic scent of iron gall ink was drowned by the burnt tones of lampblack and linseed.
The space was windowless, closed in by tall shelves and a peeling mustard-coloured wall, lit by a few flickering old and dim gas lights.
We stopped in front of a long row of open literature racks.
“They’re bound in books by year,” he said, reaching for one of the hardbound stacks of newspapers at the very end and set it on a thin, wide lectern lit by a small chamber lamp. “They’re archival. Be gentle with them.”
“Thank you,” I offered.
“Mhm,” he hummed, waltzing away and disappearing into the tall shadows of the shelves.
I skimmed through all the obituaries, death notices, and fancy funeral reports of the rich trying to outdo one another nearly four years back.
In the fifth year, I was starting to doubt everything.
By the seventh and eighth year back, something was starting to feel ominous.
There were no reports of any noble witch dead.
No Harriet Derby, not a single other name in the list of married red maidens that Agnes had given me to cross-reference.