CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The tea shop sat empty. Theodora and Dot were below in the basement, testing Dot’s blood.
The witch took phials of it, mashed it with ambergris, boiled it, smeared it beneath magnifying glasses, scribbled notes onto parchment.
However, for all of Theodora’s skill in magic, she was no expert in this kind of scholarship; after many hours of theorising and testing, they were no closer to halting the progression of the affliction.
‘The affliction is compounding,’ said Theodora. ‘And with a steep curve.’
‘So one day the rest of the scales will just sprout at once and swallow me up?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Theodora. ‘We need to make a plan for you, in any case. Once I’m gone, you will need help.’
‘Stop,’ said Dot weakly, but Theodora ignored her. She tore her cauldron from the flame, dumped its contents in the workshop sink, and began her testing again.
‘We’re reopening the Raven’s Attic,’ Dot shouted up at Theodora.
The witch peered through the trapdoor and found Dot holding a sheet of paper filled with neat calculations.
‘I do not care about your business ethos. We’ll rip off everyone in Alliaster if we have to.
We’ll hold an event and we’ll charge for premium packet spells and we will pay off your debt. ’
‘I respect your gumption, but there’s no point,’ said Theodora.
‘With Salamander’s obscene cut of my profits, we would need to sell twenty thousand spells.
There simply are not twenty thousand people in Calléum who need or can afford what we’re selling.
He knows it’s impossible to pay back. There is nothing to be done for me or the tea shop. ’
‘There is if I am the one being paid,’ said Dot. ‘I’ve signed no contract. I will make the spells and I will sell them and collect the money and I will owe Salamander nothing, and then if I decide to give you a very generous gift – say, when is your birthday?’
‘New Year’s Day,’ said the witch.
‘We’ve already passed it,’ said Dot. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Dorothy.’ Theodora sighed. ‘The contract specifically precludes schemes.’
‘A gift is not a scheme.’
‘Regardless,’ said Theodora, ‘I mean you no offence but your magic isn’t—’
‘Who cares!’ said Dot. ‘Your good name will be worth nothing if Salamander rips it away from you with the conduence.’
Still, Theodora shook her head. ‘In your condition—’
‘I think I’m the one who should decide what I can or cannot do in my condition.’
Theodora scrunched her nose.
‘Either I die helping or I die waiting,’ said Dot. ‘I know which I would prefer.’
However, Dot did not assist with a single packet spell.
That afternoon, Theodora unlocked the door to the Raven’s Attic and led Dot down the long staircase, through the black curtain and into the darkened club.
The space reeked of stale smoke and spilled liquor.
Dot squinted at the shadowy edges of the armchairs, the tables and chandeliers, and remembered the first time she had seen the space filled with life and spectral colour and felt now that she could see echoes dancing on, beads bobbing, heels flicking.
She closed her eyes for a moment and heard the memory of the music.
Then, a terrible shriek ripped out through the space and the floor dropped away from beneath their feet. Dot screamed and Theodora seized her arm. The witch sent a spell up at the heavy black curtains, which engulfed them and pulled them up and out of the abyss.
‘I’m sorry, T,’ howled the voice of Casimir.
Theodora and Dot scrambled into the alcove of the stairs.
‘Cas!’ shouted Theodora into black emptiness where the carpet had been.
‘Your wards are weak. Those women and Lio have seen to that.’
Theodora cursed. ‘Which of my wards have been compromised, Cas?’
‘Can’t tell you,’ came his voice from the darkness below them. ‘Most of them. I—’
A horrible croak rang out.
‘He’s trying to fight the conduence,’ muttered Theodora. ‘Cas!’ she shouted. ‘Quick! Tell us what Opal has done with Dot’s blood.’
Casimir’s voice was strained now.
‘The sample wasn’t potent enough,’ came Casimir’s voice from the darkness. ‘Salamander wants more of Dorothy’s magic. He wants it very badly, T. That’s why he sent me. If I can’t bring back Miss Walcott, Opal will—’
A strangled cry ripped out of him; Dot threw her hands over her ears, and the Raven’s Attic exploded.
The black and empty abyss that had once been the floor of the club now opened its eyes.
It took shape. It writhed and in plumed the sudden stench of magic and fetid pond water, and Dot realised that this was Casimir.
He roared, and the thunderous timbre of it rattled the walls.
Theodora yanked the two of them inside the staircase just before his spell hit them. She pulled the door shut.
‘Hurry,’ said Theodora. The witch flew with Dot up the stairs and into the hallway. Theodora sealed the door to the Raven’s Attic.
She took out that black chalk that she only used for the trickiest of spells.
‘If I do this right, Casimir will live,’ said Theodora, and she deftly scribbled a rune against the door and shoved her hand against it.
A terrible ripping noise came and the whole tea shop shook and several bangs and thuds thundered from behind the door until Theodora collapsed against the floorboards and the door to the Raven’s Attic vanished altogether.
‘What happened?’ asked Dot, reaching at the wallpaper.
‘It’s gone,’ said Theodora, pocketing her chalk. She rubbed hard at her eyes, and then stared at the ceiling. ‘The Raven’s Attic. I destroyed it.’
Theodora and Rupert barricaded the tea shop doors, taped newspaper over the windows and stuffed straw into the mouse holes. They fortified the nooks and crannies of the house until, at last, night and noon were coated in the same dull lamplight.
‘That’s what will happen to you when the conduence charm takes over?’ Dot asked as Theodora heaved the wardrobe against Dot’s window. ‘Casimir had no control at all.’
‘On the first day of the third month of autumn,’ said Theodora, ‘I’ll be summoned to Salamander no matter where I am. I have less than a month. But I have not given up. I’ll fix the wards. I will think of something. And you, Dorothy, can still hide.’
Dot spent her waking moments beside Belchamber practising her runes.
Repel. Elevate. Summon. Sever. The injured spirit had, here and there, begun to talk again.
‘Good morning, Miss Dorothy,’ he wheezed, once or twice.
Still, there was something odd about the way he bobbed his head, not unlike the dazed soldiers Dot had seen when she’d first come to the city, bumbling about, begging, building tents along the Lourdes and screaming as if the bombs still dropped.
The scales had grown past her elbow and every four days or so, another appeared. She had, perhaps, one powerful spell left in her. She would not waste it.
At last, a thunderous knocking came at the Ethel Avenue door, so loud it seemed to shake the entire house.
Dot awoke and leaped from her bed. The hallway lamps flicked on, and Rupert raced across the landing and down the stairs.
Dot downed a mouthful of her tonic, yanked on her boots and pulled her coat over her nightdress.
Opal was surely here to claim her for Salamander, and Dot would not let that horrid woman sweep her away from the tea shop as the waves had once swept her from Emily.
Repel. Elevate. Summon. Sever.
Dot envisioned the runes as she stumbled out into the hallway.
‘Oh,’ Rupert called from the living room below. ‘It’s a man!’
‘What kind?’ called Theodora as she slid down the ladder. She and Dot took the stairs together. The witch raced to Rupert’s side while Dot fell into her favourite armchair, dizzy.
‘I can’t really see,’ said Rupert. The knocking came again. ‘There’s two of them.’
Theodora swept the curtain back and looked down.
‘Is that Lio?’ asked Theodora, and Dot spotted the edges of him through the window, dishevelled, coughing into a hanky and, for some reason, sopping wet.
‘And,’ said Rupert, ‘an old man in a red coat.’
Dot let out a shriek.
She leaped from the armchair and bounded out of the living room and across the hallway and down the stairs. Theodora called after her. Dot hurried clumsily, slipping against the bottom step, and ran through the halls toward the side door that led to Ethel Avenue.
Dot pulled it open, and there he was beside Lio: scented of mothballs and menthol, in his patchy red coat, stocky in his old age with a clean face and white hair. The Walcott nose. Archie.