‘Her favourite,’ said Theodora.
A silence came. She watched him pour his tea. Theodora’s silk blouse and bandaged chest were still soaked from the rain and smeared with blood and dirt. A faraway part of her realised that she was shivering, yet she could not ask for a blanket. Her father did not offer her one.
‘What is all of this, Tessa?’ he said at last. ‘Are you on that opium stuff?’
‘What?’
‘You need money from me.’
‘Of course not,’ said Theodora. ‘I didn’t even mean to come here. I cast the portal wrong.’
Stephen shook his head and folded his arms. He leaned against the kitchen counter, the table between them. ‘MyTessa would have telephoned. Do you have any idea what you put your mother through, running off like you did?’
‘You had a funeral,’ said Theodora.
‘Did you expect us to wait for youto bury our Justine—’
‘I don’t mean Mum,’ said Theodora. ‘For me, you had one.’
‘I had one for my daughter,’ said Stephen. ‘You are not her.’
Lio stared into the fire. It was three o’clock in the morning, the witching hour, and beside him, his soup was cold. His pant legs were muddy from wandering uselessly through the willows. Archie dozed in an armchair. Dot had fallen asleep upon the couch. Theodora had sat in the kitchen for a long time before, at last, returning to the sitting room, checking Dot’s wounds, and taking the final armchair. She had offered it to Lio; he had refused.
And so Lio sat against the cold slate floor.
He relished the discomfort.
It stopped him from screaming or crying as he saw in the flame the flashes of Opal driving the knife into Rupert. Of Opal, eighteen and radiant, laughing with him, cuddling him, slipping into his tent to make love to him, and it was all he could do to not be sick.
All of this – Dot’s mutilation, the tea shop’s destruction, Rupert’s death – was his fault.
Because he had been the one to reach for that letter from Opal.
Because he had, his whole adult life, convinced himself that Opal was the only woman who could ever love him.
That was why he had been so horrible to Dot, wasn’t it? Oh, how she’d held a mirror up to him. Lio scrubbed his fingers through his hair, and not for the first time did he take out the notebook – now sodden – where he’d copied down the runes for memory removal.
He could end it all.
The pain would be gone.
The guilt would be gone.
Lio could live the rest of his days in peaceful amnesia. Yet – he glanced up at the archway leading to the room where Rupert now lay – the boy deserved to be remembered.
Lio turned back to the sad little fireplace. What a wretch he was. A mistake in human flesh. He never wanted another human being to look at him again.
Rupert.
The boy’s magic had been snuffed out before it had even ignited.
Lio had not liked the tea shop at first, but it was Rupertwho made it bearable, through the hours he spent crafting spells with him, playing cards with him, listening to the wireless.
Lio keeled over onto the cold slate floor and sobbed.
It was almost sunrise, and Belchamber sat in the imaginary library, in the old armchair, beneath the window that cast shadows like gaol bars. His body was frail and his magic was weak but the hold of Opal’s addled spell had been extinguished at last on the rooftop. His body and mind were his own again, although they were aching and weak, and still he could taste the distant memory of Salamander’s power as it channelled through Opal Weyer.
When Belchamber was not sleeping, he was helping. He cooked dinner. He saw to Dot’s bandages. He forced Theodora, at last, into a clean shirt. He made a tincture for Archie’s shock.
