CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE #2
‘What kind?’ asked Dot.
‘I don’t know, leafy ones? It’s dark. I think that’s a ticket booth down there.’
Dot thought hard. She had spent weeks searching Alliaster for the tea shop and, prior to that, years poring over books and newspapers and journals on Alliaster’s history, architecture, politics, street design.
‘What can you see in the distance, Rupe?’ asked Dot. ‘Oh, can you see the moon?’
‘No. It’s cloudy.’
‘How about landmarks? Big buildings?’
‘There is a building, faraway. It’s got a dome, I think, but it’s not Saint Penelope’s.’
‘What colour is the stone?’
‘White,’ said Rupert. ‘Hang on. Is it the library?’
‘Oh, of course it is!’ shouted Dot, jumping from the couch. ‘Can you see the statue of the owl?’
‘Owl?’ asked Rupert, panicked.
‘Yes,’ said Dot. ‘Big wings. It’s a round kind of bird—’
‘I’ve seen a bloody owl before, Dot.’
‘Well, is it there?’
‘Yes!’ shouted Rupert. ‘It’s facing me, dead-on.’
‘You’re west of the library!’ cried Dot, holding up her map against the wind. ‘Probably the King’s District, or the Park District.’ Dot traced her fingers along the map. ‘Wait, Rupert, did you say a ticket booth? Are you at the Alliaster Zoological Gardens?’
‘Oh!’ shouted Rupert, clutching the opera glasses. ‘Saints, how did I not realise that? Yes, actually – I am. I can see the sign now. It’s far away, but – yes, I’m on the roof of the admission building!’
‘Success!’ shouted Dot.
Lio, still chanting, smiled grimly at them.
‘Alright,’ said Rupert, ‘Theodora, let’s wipe the rune.’
A pulse of magic shot out of the witch.
And that was the moment that Lio’s head tipped back.
And in tumbled the smell of gunpowder, incense, woodsmoke and blackberry.
Lio’s chanting stopped. His eyes snapped open and flashed black.
Dot was, for a moment, terribly confused. And then a roar ripped out from the walls of the house, as if, once again, the tea shop was being yanked by its roots.
‘Lio,’ hissed Theodora, her voice weak but growing in panic, ‘what are you doing?’
Lio’s magic, dark and addled, surged from his fingers, from his eyes, from his mouth and into the wards.
A violent crack issued as the living room ward fractured, the tea shop ward fractured and, finally, the strange magic spilling from Lio connected to the final rune in the workshop below – and severed it.
Theodora leaped up at him, and before Dot could fully discern what she was seeing, the entire tea shop thundered with magic that shook the walls and floors, and an almighty bang rang out. Catherine Weyer stepped out of a portal and into the living room.
‘Get out,’ shrieked Theodora. She reached for her runes, but Cate sent a spell at the younger witch that thrust her backward, crashing into Lio. Theodora gasped and clutched at her chest, and Rupert and Dot flew to her side.
‘Lio?’ hissed Rupert. ‘Did you – are you helping Acanthi?’
‘N-no,’ stammered Lio, untangling himself from the rest of them. ‘What happened?’
‘Enough of all of this stupidity,’ said Cate. ‘Where is she?’
‘Who?’ asked Theodora. Dot spotted the bandages and salve that had been set aside for the witch. Quickly, she began to treat Theodora’s injuries from the blood magic.
‘Agytha is dead at your hand,’ said Cate. ‘Think very carefully before wasting any more of my time.’
‘Agytha?’ asked Theodora, wincing as Dot worked. ‘I only banished her.’
‘Rupert,’ Dot hissed. ‘Scissors.’
The boy handed them over to Dot, not once taking his vengeful eyes off Cate. Dot cut the bandages and wrapped them around Theodora’s chest.
‘I didn’t kill Agytha,’ said Theodora, wincing. ‘Dorothy, really—’
‘How did she get in here?’ hissed Lio.
‘It was you, pet,’ said Cate, stepping past the rune and the toppled candles. ‘We have tried every moment since we came to this city to penetrate the tea shop. We sensed the weakening. We wanted to help.’
‘Where is Moira?’ demanded Theodora. ‘Ouch!’
Dot had tied the bandages around her chest.
‘Where do you think?’ spat Cate. ‘She is down in your tea shop, holding onto the runes that Lio reconfigured. I’ll not have you eject us.’
All of them looked at Lio, yet the young man’s face held in it only confusion.
‘Lio wouldn’t touch the wards,’ said Rupert.
‘Lio would do anything for my Opal,’ said Cate. ‘Why else would I follow him to this awful city in the first place?’
‘You attacked Belchamber,’ said Theodora, rounding on Lio. ‘You used Cate’s knife.’
‘I didn’t,’ insisted Lio. ‘I would never.’
‘What knife?’ demanded Cate.
‘The bread knife!’ said Theodora. ‘The one I used to summon you when I was a child. Look at the marks on him.’ Theodora thrust a hand at the unconscious spirit, still in the armchair.
‘Listen to your babbling,’ said Cate, irritated. ‘I have not seen that bread knife in almost a decade.’
Theodora went very still.
In a whisper very unlike her, she said, ‘But that could only mean . . .’
A familiar creak came from upstairs.
For a moment, Dot thought absolutely nothing of it.
Half a year she had lived at the house and she had become so accustomed to its sounds that the creaking of the attic had altogether faded into the background.
It was a homely noise, so ancillary it was almost inaudible – like the ocean.
Dot had taken comfort in it. It was the sound of Theodora pacing or, if the witch was out, surely the sound of Belchamber.
But then Dot realised in a horrible rush that both the witch and the spirit were here in the living room.
Unmistakably, another creak came. Then, the croak of a raven.
Cate looked at Theodora.
‘Surely not,’ said the older witch.
Another creak. Theodora looked at Lio, then at Dot. She whispered, ‘Forgive me.’
And then the room burst into movement.
A bang exploded from Cate’s hand and Theodora, Dot and Lio were knocked backward. A strange, purple smoke enveloped the older witch, vaulting her from the living room. Theodora, who seemed to forget her magic entirely, shouted ‘Cate, do not!’ and chased her into the hallway and up the stairs.
Lio groaned but did not rise. His head had collided with the wall.
‘Rupert, check he’s okay,’ Dot said, untangling herself and rushing after the two women.
She stumbled, fatigue descending, but pulled herself up and pushed on to the staircase.
A fierce ringing erupted in her ears and her brain began to fog over.
She couldn’t understand how Cate had come to be in the house because surely Lio could not have harmed the wards.
She pushed on up the stairs and found that Theodora’s trapdoor was already open.
‘Saints,’ said Dot, and she climbed the ladder.
The effort made her arms and legs shake, but she pushed on ever upward, into Theodora’s bedroom. Dot cried out as she pulled herself up and into the space. She swivelled but could not see Theodora or Cate until, at last, she spotted the two of them standing inside the wardrobe.
Inside it? Then, foggily, Dot thought: What kind of a wardrobe has a window in it?
But it was not a wardrobe at all.
The doors were open, and Dot stumbled toward it, realising that within was a hidden room. A bedroom, directly over Dot’s own.
Dot’s hand clasped the edge of the doorway, and she stepped into the secret room.
Here, Theodora and Cate stood, the younger witch’s cuts reopened and bleeding through the bandages.
The walls of the hidden space were a deep purple.
Rabbits’ feet dangled from the ceiling. There was a bookcase decorated with paintings and sketchbook pages.
A cauldron in the corner. An icebox. A shelf of tinned goods, onions and bread.
The north-facing window looked over the street just as Dot’s did.
Why had she not noticed, upon finally seeing Theodora’s bedroom from within, that the space lacked the northern window that she had seen from the street and in the photograph sold by the carpet seller?
Dot stepped out from behind Theodora and at last her eyes fell on the woman sitting in the middle of the bed.
‘Dottie!’ said the gaunt young woman. The lamplight was harsh on her skin, giving her hollowed face the shadowy quality of a corpse.
Her olive skin was unhealthily pale and pockmarked.
Still, the woman tipped back her head, assessing Dot with the superiority only a person who had once been uncommonly beautiful could possess.
Her cracked lips split into a smile. Her fingers, with nails the colour of burnt oil, clasped an old bread knife.
‘I’m Opal.’