CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE #3
‘No,’ said Lio, swatting Dot away as if she were closer than she was. Had he taken the bottle from the Raven’s Attic? ‘No, no – not you. Not with those eyes, like a bloody nine-year-old’s. Don’t look at me.’
‘You should go lie down, Lio. Here – let me take the whiskey.’
‘Ha!’ he shouted, and it frightened her a little. He giggled and then began to sob.
‘Oh Lio,’ said Dot. She sat beside him on the porch and, after a moment of hesitation, carefully took his hand. He did not react. She went on holding it, watching him; he was shaking. Beneath the reek of the liquor, he smelled of sesame and ink. ‘You’ve had a nasty shock.’
‘I could care less.’
‘Couldn’t care less,’ corrected Dot before she could stop herself.
‘Could,’ snapped Lio, and he yanked his hand away.
‘I could care less because I care a great deal that my entire life has been a humiliating waste.’ He lurched off the porch.
Once he started shouting, he grew only louder.
‘I gave my youth to the worship of a woman who never even existed, Dot. Who in actuality was a vile, manipulative creature, laughing at me up in that attic, watching me faff about with wards, while I pined after her, and why? Because her boss asked her to? Because she was bored?’
He hung his head in his hands.
‘I am twenty-nine. I am old and I have nothing.’
He crumpled against the far wall and sobbed. Dot’s whole chest ached for him.
‘Lio, I’m so sorry,’ whispered Dot, eyes on her hands. ‘You deserve so much better.’
‘Have you a brain?’
Dot looked up sharply. Lio was glaring at her.
‘There will never be anyone better,’ said Lio.
‘That is precisely the point. I don’t mean that wretched shell we met in the attic, I mean Opal as she was.
And you—’ He was on his feet again now. ‘You, Dorothy, are a child. You are so young that you don’t even know how to look at me without yearning. It is embarrassing.’
‘Lio,’ said Dot.
‘Truly!’ Lio shouted. ‘Opal’s up there watching the house, and what are you doing?
Putting on a show for her! Do you think I didn’t notice?
Every time I walk into a room, you jump a metre in the air or you stop mid-conversation or you turn plum-red, and, if you aren’t in the room already, you appear magically for a glass of water or a lost jumper every single time. ’
‘Stop,’ whispered Dot. ‘Opal’s spell is making you—’
‘No, it isn’t,’ he snapped. ‘I am myself and I am telling you that you have made me desperately uncomfortable since the very first second I spoke to you. Even the customers noticed!’ Somewhere inside, there was movement.
Rupert was listening. ‘Every other day in the tea shop, I was tortured with it. “How’s that young lady of yours? Oh, she’s clearly quite taken with you!
” Humiliating. You know what else is wrong with you? ’
Dot could not reply.
‘You’ll forgive her, won’t you?’ said Lio, pointing upward to Theodora’s attic.
‘You will let her treat you terribly and then you’ll forgive her because you want so badly to be liked you’ll take the scraps of decent treatment and lord them as love.
’ He laughed. ‘You have already forgiven me. Your arm is bleeding at this very moment because I broke the wards again.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘It was!’ he shouted. ‘Because I was an idiot! Because I was weak! You sit here comforting me like a lapdog desperate for a pat.’
‘Please,’ breathed Dot.
‘No,’ said Lio, ‘it’s better you hear the truth. Someone should have bloody well offered that to me when I needed it. Why, Dot, are you so obsessed with chasing after the affection of people who do not like you?’
Anger surged from Dot’s abdomen and down her arms, both afflicted and unafflicted. In tumbled the warm rage of magic.
‘I will be damned,’ shouted Lio, coming to her, ‘if I am subjected to the discomfort of your presence for a second longer.’ Dot felt the pool of bubbling fury within her and she reached for it. ‘Just grow up, Dot! You need to—’
A blast of hot air shot out of her right hand and sent Lio soaring across the courtyard and into the gnarled hydrangeas.
Dot was left on the porch, panting. She’d pictured the expulsion rune as she’d done it, and now she braced herself for the pain of new scales growing. She watched Lio pull himself up, dust off his trousers, and disappear into a portal.
She stomped up to her room as quickly as her body would allow her.
Dot took the carpet bag off the hook. She took her blouses and skirts and cloche hat and stuffed them in.
She collected the phials of tonic and the ambergris that was dwindling to crumbs.
Her maps. Her spell books – damn Theodora, she was keeping them.
Dot packed up the last of her belongings and looked about the room: the crack in the wall, the old desk.
Heavy tears fell onto the floor. They were the only thing of hers she left behind.
She forced her tired body across the landing and down the stairs.
She exited out of the tea shop door and onto Wren Court, carpet bag in hand, cloche hat on her head, and did not look back.