CHAPTER TEN #2
‘Says it’s good business.’ Rupert shrugged.
The days etched past, punctuated by spoons dropped into tea cups until his eighth day in the house when, at two o’clock in the morning, he woke to the sound of raucous hooting, and he climbed down the stairs and saw the witch again at last. Theodora was on the living room floor, squawking with laughter.
She wore a beret and a painter’s smock. In one hand, she held a long cigarette and in the other, a glass of sherry.
Two other women and a large bird-like spirit accompanied her, all of them smoking and cackling.
‘Oh!’ cried Theodora, seeing Lio. She flourished her hand tipsily. ‘He’s the one I told you all about – just turned up, of all things! No telegram, no letter. Now he’s here, using up my hot water, no compensation, all as if this is some artists’ cooperative.’
‘What relation are you, darling?’ asked the woman with jewelled braids. She wore a burgundy mourning dress. ‘Justine’s cousin’s friend’s brother, isn’t it?’
‘Who’s to say?’ said Theodora, and the four of them laughed.
‘He looks like he’s about to give you a right telling off,’ said the bird-spirit, who was two metres tall with the face of a woman on her belly.
The last of them was a large woman with cherry-wood hair, sat beside the statue of the maiden. She let out a demure stream of smoke from her lips. ‘He would be handsome if he wasn’t so sour.’
They hooted again and Lio strained to smile.
‘Justine, I need a word.’
‘I do not care one stitch what you need,’ said Theodora. She tipped her glass to him. ‘I let you into my house. I have done enough.’
‘Then these ladies might care for me to stay,’ said Lio. ‘Perhaps we can discuss your younger years, before you became the notable oil colourist, Justine Allonse.’
‘Oh, let’s!’ said the bird-spirit with her belly-mouth.
‘J is so secretive,’ said the woman with the braids. ‘Do tell us!’
But Theodora was already on her feet and darting across the room.
She took Lio by the sleeve and yanked him away and up the stairs (‘Oh, drat!’ ‘Justine, bring him back!’).
When they reached the top, the witch deftly swept her hand over the banister and a crackle of magic snuffed out the sound below.
Theodora glared at him, fierce and sober.
‘We had an agreement, Liutprand.’
‘We had no such thing,’ said Lio. ‘You threatened me and then you disappeared and took all the towels and milk and eggs with you. My patience is gone and I’m growing curious. How many names do you have, Justine?’
‘As many as I bloody-well want, Robert.’
Lio bristled. ‘Why are you letting me stay here if you detest me?’
‘Believe me, I don’t want to,’ said Theodora. ‘Oh, how you have a knack for turning up and ruining things.’
‘If my being here sets fire to your paper empire, you can only blame yourself. Do you see how flimsy this all is?’ He pointed at her paint-stained smock and satin slippers.
‘What about the police and Article Thirteen? What about Salamander? This is his city, not yours, and your packet spells are in direct conflict with his. Even I know that.’
‘My, my,’ said Theodora. ‘How worldly and intelligent you’ve become. Please keep explaining my own city to me. Didn’t you make a new life for yourself? Why turn up now and trick poor Dorothy?’
‘The same reason you did not throw me out,’ said Lio. ‘Loyalty.’
Theodora scoffed at that. ‘I have no loyalty to you.’
‘Nor I to you it seems,’ said Lio. ‘But we both do to Opal.’
Theodora stilled and, immediately, Lio regretted his words. He added, ‘Truly, I thought you would appreciate the warning about Acanthi.’
‘Who was it that warned you, Lio?’
‘No one,’ lied Lio. ‘I was in Caelin Forest. I overheard them.’
‘But you said Acanthi found you here, in Alliaster?’
‘I – well,’ Lio stumbled. ‘They did. I found them in Caelin Forest first, you see. They didn’t start chasing me until I came here.’
The witch’s gaze turned Lio’s stomach cold.
‘Lio,’ she said, ‘I have a solve for your idleness after all. Starting tomorrow, you’ll work in the tea shop.’
With a flourish of her hand, Theodora removed the muffling spell from the staircase. She cleared her throat, turned herself once more into an elegant drunk. She swayed clumsily down the stairs and dived heavily onto the landing below.
‘Oops!’ Theodora cried and then cackled with her friends, and Lio was left to watch from the darkness above as a shadow play took place against the floorboards: Justine (as she wanted to be known in this performance) and her three companions.
He wondered fleetingly if the girl from the forest – the pretty, studious young witch with her nervous hands and desperation to be liked – had ever been real at all.
He supposed it did not matter, that he should not get attached to this Theodora, or to Justine, or to the girl she had been. All he cared about was the letter in his breast pocket and the river-ruined words upon it, penned in Opal’s script, and the final two lines that read:
Find a way into the tea shop, Lio.
Find her wards and break them all.