Page 57 of Magpie
One step after another, I ascend into the attic, the room where I ceased to exist. I hastily scan the space, waiting for his white gloves to emerge from the shadows and grab me. My eyes lock on the fortune teller’s table across the room. I suck in a breath at the sight, expecting to find him seated behind it. But the room is entirely empty. My shoulders deflate as I let out an unsteady breath.
He’s not here.
Not allowing myself to panic, knowing he is most likely toying with me, I move on. Bypassing the table entirely, I step towardthe wall. There is a small indention, nearly invisible. Gripping it, I pull the wall back, revealing Alister’s study.
It is a small chamber with an entirely glass ceiling and walls, telescopes of all shapes and sizes lining the room. He spent his time up here on nights when the moon was full, whispering his dark incantations to his spell books. The space is claustrophobic and stifling with the incense that is constantly burning. The musky scent instantly gives me a headache.
I scowl when I scan the room and see it’s also empty. Closing the door behind me, I storm into the study, dropping my bag on a desk littered with books and maps of the night sky, and even a few handheld telescopes. Placing my hands on my hips, I turn, studying the room but not truly seeing it. He knows I’m here; he must. I can’t imagine why he hasn’t come for me yet.
Opening my backpack, I pull out a plastic shopping bag. Before I went to the diner, I stopped by a lingerie store, buying a black teddy, the simplest one I could find. I strip, pulling my hoodie and shirt off and stepping out of my sneakers and jeans. I pull the black silk nightdress over my head. The cups around my breasts are lacy, barely covering the more intimate parts and leaving very little to the imagination. Slowly, I remove the luna key, knowing I won’t be able to hide it in the revealing garment. I hold it for a moment longer, waiting for it to thrum, to glow, to guide me.
It is nothing but a hunk of cold metal.
Shoving the pile of my clothes in the corner, I turn and look at myself in the reflection of the glass walls. My breath catches in my throat. The darkness that bleeds out of me is thick and heavy, like a fur coat trailing down my shoulders and pooling at my feet. My key normally held all this energy, this deep blackness that lives inside of me. Now it is eating me alive. Soon I will be gone, and all that will remain is Magpie.
“No,” I snap, forcing myself to look away from the grim figure of my reflection. I will not give that thought the slightest attention. He will never trap me in that cage again.
Then the world tilts as I feel him approaching.
I sense each step he takes up the attic stairs, can almost hear the wood creaking beneath his weight. He crosses the attic floor. He’s standing outside the door, waiting,savoringthis moment.
The door slides open behind me, the sound as he snicks it shut deafening in my ears. I do not miss hearing a lock clicking into place. I almost laugh at the effort. I don’t plan on running from him, not anymore.
Turning, I set my eyes on Alister.
I’m rewarded with a brief look of shock as his eyes roam over me, over the dips and swells of my entirely too-exposed body. The shock falls from his face, replaced with a triumphant grin as he finally meets my gaze.
I smile, the expression like plastering war paint across my face, and I prepare to go to my death.
With a great effort, I drag myself up from the dizzying depths of the fever dream. It tries to hold me in its clutches, tries to lose me under the delirious waves of the sickness that has plagued me my entire life. With a final, weak grunt, I am able to break its hold, and open my eyes. I’m pouring sweat, even in the biting cold of the tent. My visions swims, and I have to blink several times before I am able to focus.
There is a weight on my stomach, and I loll my head down to see what it is. Irina is passed out, the top half of her body sprawled over me, as though she fell asleep sitting beside me. I notice a pile of strange books littered around her, one even open under her outstretched hand. She shivers as a gust of frigid winter wind screams through our tent. I struggle to sit up, the effort making my vision swim again. After taking several shaky breaths, I lean forward and tug the threadbare knitted blanket around her.
“That girl will follow you to death and back.”
I jump at the voice, darting my feverish eyes around the tent. The once cramped space, barely big enough to fit Irina and me inside, is now the size of a small room. I press a hand to my clammy forehead, wondering if I’m still dreaming.
I hear a steady, rhythmic creaking, and turn to the noise. Swaying back and forth on a rocking chair sits a figure I instantly recognize. Elspeth, the witch who travels with our roaming group. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I try to determine if she is real, or just another hallucination of my fever.
She’s sitting across from me, taking drags on a long pipe, letting the twisting clouds of smoke fill the tent. It makes the space hazy, harder to see in the muted light of the tent. The wind cries softly outside. It sounds almost like a warning bell.
“Did you hear me, boy?” she asks, leaning forward, her dark eyes holding mine.
I balk, gripping the blankets around me. “I’m no boy. I am five and ten,” I say, raising my chin.
She has the audacity to laugh at me, the sound like the crackling of logs in a fire. I flinch at the noise, snapping my mouth shut and watching her. Leaning back in her chair, she busies herself filling her pipe again. Elspeth is a reclusive member of our group; I only ever see her when she is doling out fortunes and spells to earn a few coins. She keeps mostly to herself outside of performances, preferring to sit alone in her tent, reading her books.
Her books…
My stomach drops as I look down at the books scattered around Irina. The strange ones with the words and symbols I do not recognize. I only have a basic understanding of my letters, but even I know enough to realize these books are not written in the language of man. This is the language of the oldgods. They are the witch’s books, and I have no idea how they ended up in our tent.
My mouth falls open, my feverish mind still trying to shake the delirium of sickness as it runs wild. Surely Irina didn’t take them.
“She did indeed,” the witch answers, drawing my attention back to her as she grins around the pipe between her lips. For the life of me I can’t remember if I spoke those words, or if I only thought them.
I scrub at my eyes, forcing myself to focus on her, desperately trying to peer through my tired eyes and the fog of smoke her pipe is spewing forth. “My apologies, Elspeth. I am sure Irina only meant to borrow them,” I say, my lips dry and cracking, stinging as they split open.
“She stole them, boy,” Elspeth says.
