A chain latched the door closed, leaving a gap too narrow for me to reach through.I groaned in exasperation.This was Mrs.Lewis’s doing, no doubt, butwhyshe did it was another question.Perhaps merely some Friday amusement on her part.
At least it had stopped raining.
I shut the door and rounded to the back of the building, where the rusted fire escape rungs led up to the second floor window.It had never been opened before, but it was worth a try.I wiped my hands on my skirt and hefted myself up the fire escape, one rung at a time.The rusted metal bit into my palms, but luckily I had callouses aplenty.
When I finally reached the window, I made the mistake of looking down.The alleyway below was dizzyingly far away.The pavement was slick with fresh rain, the moisture highlighting its unforgiving ridges and cracks.
I swallowed, carefully grabbing the bottom of the window and pushing it up.It was encrusted with grime, but after some effort, it gave.The window opened with an ear-splitting screech.
I tumbled inside the building into the stairwell, nearly falling down the steps in the process.
“What is going on down there?”Mrs.Lewis demanded.Clunky footsteps sounded from the flight of steps above, until a pair of slippered feet came into view.The landlady set her arms akimbo as she glared down at me.
I unhooked my leg from the windowsill and stumbled to my feet.“The front door was locked,” I said with a huff.“I had to get inside.Didn’t you need soap?”
“Well!”Mrs.Lewis said, as ifshewere dealt a great insult.“You are no longer welcome here.”
“Excuse me?”Surely I hadn’t heard correctly.“I paid my rentyesterday.”
“It has come to my attention that my daughter Prilla needs a place to stay,” Mrs.Lewis continued, undeterred.
I sputtered.“So?You can’t kick me out for no reason!”
Her eyes narrowed.“Oh, I have a reason.You have beenstealingfrom me, witch girl.Explain this!”
She held something white up.My eyes widened at the bodice of Narcissa’s gown in her gnarled hand.I had used Mrs.Lewis’s thread to secure the beading along the neckline.
That’s it.You’re done for, Gigi, my inner voice said.
But my real voice didn’t want to succumb so quickly.“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said airily, straightening my skirts as I stood face-to-face with my landlady.Her spine was straight for her age, so she was nearly my height, but I was still two inches taller.I used that to look down on her.“If you would kindly give that back.That’s for a particularly illustrious client.”
Mrs.Lewis shook the bodice.“The thread along these seams!I know the luster of it from a mile away!They were spun from the finest Olderean-bred silkworms, which I had harvested and refined myself thirty-four years ago!”
My mouth opened, then closed.Who knew Mrs.Lewis would recognize that bit of thread?She had sharper eyesight than I’d thought.“It was hardly a yard of thread,” I said, my face heating.Stealing from her was not my proudest moment, but it wasn’t as if she were a saint either.
Mrs.Lewis pointed a trembling finger at me.“I knew your kind was the unsavory sort.The flippant way you use magic is bad enough, but add onto that your thievery and insolence!”
She marched down the last flight of steps and strode into my shop, thrusting open the curtains past the fitting room.I followed.My jaw dropped at the state of the place.The shelves were swept clean, nary a bolt of fabric in sight.Nearly every drawer was open, the contents upturned onto the jacquard rug.Pins, tapes, and loose threads littered the floor and countertop.Charred paper pattern pieces lay crumpled beneath the fireplace mantlepiece.She must’ve rifled through everything when I was gone.
“Clearly I have been too lenient toward you,” Mrs.Lewis said.“You are no longer welcome here and I will collect what you owe me.”
“Collect what I owe you?”I ran to the counter, looking at the empty storefront display that should have held mannequins with dresses on them.Even my shelves of fabric were gone.“My fabric...those dresses.They weren’t yours to take!”
“Hah!Now you know the taste of your own medicine, eh?”Mrs.Lewis sneered.“But you are wrong, girl.Everything on this floor is now mine, as repayment for the damage you’ve done and the scandal you breed.I should have never leased my property to the likes of you.”
“You wouldn’t still have this property if it weren’t for me!”I burst out.“No onewanted to rent this place!”
“Don’t you talk back to me, witch!”Mrs.Lewis said, marching toward me.
Rage simmered underneath my skin, along with an answering thrum of magic.It always reacted with anger.I gripped the countertop.Inches from my hand was an overturned box of buttons, beneath which were two scraps of paper, both an angry tomato red, inked with the foul symbols I had drawn last winter to hypnotize Dominic Turner, a convicted traitor of the crown.
It would only take a second to stick one on Mrs.Lewis’s forehead.I could make her taste her own slap.Return my belongings.Leave this place and give it to me.
Something like fear flashed in Mrs.Lewis’s eyes, and I realized that the overturned box, as well as everything on the counter, was rattling from the agitation of my magic.
I abruptly turned away and unhooked the chain from the front door.“This shop is everything I have,” I said quietly, refusing to cry in front of someone who would surely revel in my tears.
“Then you’ll go back to that village of yours?”Mrs.Lewis asked almost gleefully.
