Page 14 of The Unweaver (Unwoven Fates #1)

A pale wash of sunlight slanted across her eyelids. Cora sat up and looked, bleary-eyed, around the Victorian library. Memories trudged back. The snow-felted cemetery. The ambush. Teddy’s decaying body, preserved by a Sanguimancer and Hydromancer, and stuffed in an icebox.

Now she’d found his spirit and body, she was that much closer to getting him back. Maybe, just maybe, they’d celebrate their birthday together this year. Some of the heaviness eased from her chest.

Despite the roaring fire and the blanket, she shivered. No amount of whiskey or warmth had broken the icy film of Purgatory or the snowy graveyard.

She pulled her ermine coat tighter and felt something wet. Various people’s blood was in various states of evaporation on the fur. Further inspection confirmed all her clothes were likewise unsalvageable. Charred by a Pyromancer, caked in cemetery dirt, and matted with the blood of at least a dozen people.

The clatter of plates and delicious aroma of cooking wafted from a room beyond. Her stomach rumbled. Cora couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.

Padding across thick rugs and scuffed wood floors, she tried several doors in search of a water closet. The casual excess of Bane’s Gothic house overwhelmed her. She trailed her adoring fingers across the gorgeous Steinway piano in the parlor that begged her to play it. Beside the gramophone sat a collection of hundreds of records, from Beethoven to Jelly Roll Morton.

One door opened into a cellar the size of the Starlite Club with twice as much booze. Bottles of fine Irish whiskey, Caribbean rum, and wine vintages dating back to Napoleon’s time lined the meticulously labeled shelves. The bootlegger’s private collection. She stuffed a bottle of brandy in her coat before ascending the narrow steps.

At last, she ducked into a water closet and caught her ghastly reflection in the mirror. Hair snarled, countenance pale, weary eyes smudged with days-old mascara. Blood and dirt crusted her.

By either the miracle of magic or indoor plumbing, hot water sprang from the faucet. Her flat’s limited hot water was used up by the time she crawled out of bed in the afternoon.

With a pang, she remembered the life she had shed like dead skin. Her flat. Mary. The family of misfits at the Starlite. Mother .

Had anyone noticed she was gone?

Ten minutes of washing and scrubbing led to little improvement. Her chestnut mane defied taming, her paleness resisted brightening. She stripped down to her chemise, still smelling faintly of goat milk, and washed her dress to no avail. She considered wadding it in the rubbish bin. Unless Bane also had an impressive collection of women’s clothing, it was her only option. She hung the dress on a towel rack to dry.

Clad in only her chemise and coat, she was wandering towards the smell of cooking when a sound made her steps falter. From somewhere in the house came a distant, rhythmic thumping. A subtle drumbeat of need calling out to her, craving her nearness.

Unthinking, her feet propelled her past the parlor and dining room, up the creaking stairs and down a dark corridor. Gas lamps flickered on as she passed a glass-walled conservatory, as humid and lush as a tropical rainforest. Her feet continued past the midnight blue bathroom and a masculine bedroom dominated by a four-poster bed.

The thumping grew louder when she neared the door at the end of the corridor. It pounded over her own heartbeat, pleading with her to unleash it. Her hand reached for the doorknob and—

A vice clamped around her wrist and snatched her hand away. She was spun around to face Bane, his features illuminated with cold fury. He backed her against the door, imprisoning her wrist beside her head. Obsidian eyes, blazing hellfire, bored into her.

“What are you doing?” he said, so soft she scarcely heard him over the loud thumping beyond the door. “I told you not to go near that fuckin’ door. Ever. It’s off-limits.”

She could only stare at him, dressed in a crisp three-piece suit with his hair slicked back, and grapple for why she was in front of the forbidden room. The press of his body sent her thoughts into disarray.

“S-sorry. I thought I heard something and… found myself here.”

Without loosening his grip, his gaze slid over her, as if he knew she wore only a thin chemise under her coat. Fury melted from his features, replaced with a different heat. “You’re at this door when I told you not to be,” he murmured. “You tried to shoot me when I told you that you wouldn’t. I wonder, Cora. What else would you do if I told you not to?”

The insinuation curled low in her belly. Her body remembered what her mind refused to acknowledge His muscles tensing beneath her hands in his office. Skin sliding against skin in the clawfoot tub. Soft lips kissing her senseless in the feverish imaginings of her unconscious.

Instead of frightening her, these glimpses of Malachy Bane coming undone left her curious for more. She wanted to muss his perfect hair, wrinkle his pressed suit. Thaw his coldness. Unmask and unravel him.

“Are you hungry, Cora?”

Her gaze shot to his. “What?”

He released her hand but didn’t move away. “Breakfast is ready.”

She rubbed her wrist, and he absentmindedly rubbed his own, with the arm that had been shot. “Your arm. It’s working again.”

“Astute observation.” He vanished.

She blinked at the empty corridor. “Irish goodbyes,” she muttered.

After several moments, she pieced her shattered composure back together. Imagining an angry man naked while he pinned her against a door was a novel experience. One she buried in the dark recesses of her mind.

The thumping had slowed and steadied, but its longing remained fierce. An unrelenting pull that slowed her steps away.

Hunger won out over the desire to avoid Bane for the foreseeable future. Following the mouthwatering scent of frying butter, she went downstairs and teetered on the threshold of the cozy kitchen.

If their earlier interaction was cause for concern, this abrupt domesticity was doubly so.

Morning light streamed through bay windows and a gramophone played a soulful jazz tune she didn’t recognize. Bane, his back turned, cooked something on the stove. She would have expected a man of his criminal prosperity to have a French chef on staff.

“Going to stand there all fuckin’ day?” he said without turning, his tone more teasing than reproachful. At her continued silence, he glanced over his shoulder and arched a brow.

“That depends. Are you going to get mad at me some more?”

“That depends.” He flipped the pan with an expert flick. “Are you going to do something to deserve it?”

“Probably.”

Lips curving, he gestured at the teapot on the counter. “Drink up. Sure to be another manky day.” Amusement colored his expression as he watched her pour a cup and drop in cube after cube of sugar. “Would you like any tea with your sugar?”

She lifted her chin and added a fifth cube. The sugar rations were over, not that Bane had gone without any luxury during the war while the rest of London starved.

She sat at the kitchen table with the steaming cup clasped between her palms. The first sip of tea, syrupy sweet and scalding, drove away yesterday’s residual chill. As her muscles relaxed, she observed Bane under her lashes. After all the horrors of the last week, the Realmwalker was now cooking her breakfast.

“What are you smirking about?”

“I am not smirking. I’m not,” she insisted at his pointed look. “All right. Fine. It’s just… Malachy Bane is making me breakfast.”

“No, Malachy Bane is making himself breakfast.” He slid a loaded plate in front of her. “You just happen to be here.”

Sausages browned in rosemary butter. French toast smothered in a decadent sauce, garnished with clotted cream and fresh strawberries in the heart of winter.

Avoiding the sausages, Cora tucked in, ravenous. “This is good,” she said around a mouthful. “Really good. Where’d you learn to cook like this?”

Over his cup, he watched her devour toast like a famished animal. “My mum.”

“Oh?” She washed down a particularly ambitious bite with tea. “Where’s your mum now?”

“Dead.”

She glanced up. His focus was on his plate, not her. She knew better than to say sorry. “And your family?”

He was mired in thought for so long she didn’t think he’d respond. “All dead.”

Like mine . She winced at the lash of grief. “Did you have a big family?”

“Aye. Of thirteen born, nine survived past their leading strings. I was the oldest.”

Her fork stalled. A boy’s words in a sea of grass came to her. I’m the oldest. Da says I’m supposed to take care o’ them . That dream grew stranger in the light of day.

His even tone didn’t mask the ache of a loss she couldn’t begin to fathom. She’d lost one sibling— temporarily, please let it be temporarily —and he’d lost a dozen.

“Can I ask what happened to them?”

“That story requires a three-drink minimum.” He almost smiled when she set the nicked bottle of brandy before him. “Do I want to know how you got that?”

“No.”

He pushed the bottle aside. “Another time.” Gesturing to the uneaten sausages on her plate, he asked, “Not to your liking?”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“Good lord, why?”

Necromancy was full of nuanced horrors. She could taste how the animal died. Not even the savory crispness of bacon could compensate for the phantom feeling of being strung up by your hind legs and bled dry. Beef and pork were traumatizing meats. Chicken, less so, until she’d taken a bite of a particularly self- aware bird. That final spasm after its head was chopped off had ruined the taste. Vegetarianism was the safer option.

“I don’t think anything should have to die just so I can live.”

“How moral of you,” he drawled. “But didn’t that grain die for you? And that fruit?”

“Any sentient thing.” She nudged the sausages onto his plate and stood to grab more toast.

“Vegetarian,” he said under his breath. “Likely a damned suffragist, too.”

“Of course you’re against women’s rights,” she scoffed, heaping a second serving of a meal she hadn’t prepared onto her plate.

“On the contrary. We should be grateful women only seek equality, not revenge.” He bit into a sausage. “I think it’s grand that women can vote. Prohibition has been very good for business.”

She shot him a cross look as she returned to her seat. He pulled out the Chronomancer’s silver watch, frowning. The watch hands pointed at archaic symbols in a random pattern.

“How can you read the time on that?”

“It doesn’t tell the time, really,” he said. “It’s a Doomsday Watch. It’s counting down.”

The fork stilled halfway to her mouth. “Counting down to what?”

“I wish I knew.” His frown deepened. “Whatever it is, it’s gone from being years away to weeks away since I last checked.”

Her fork dropped to the plate. “That can’t be good.”

He slid the watch back into his waistcoat pocket. “Anything strike you as odd about yesterday?”

“Other than the entire bloody day? Well, whoever attacked us, if they didn’t know what I was before, they do now.”

“They knew. But they underestimated you.”

Her shock gave way to consideration. “It’s not that they set a trap for a Necromancer in a cemetery,” she said, twirling the fork. “It’s which cemetery. Dozens of graveyards around London, and they took Teddy to the oldest one. Full of centuries-old corpses not even I’d thought I could reanimate.”

Smelling something metallic, she glanced down. Unthinking, she had disintegrated the fork into flakes of rust. She brushed them off the table. “Er, sorry. Those nasty human bastards. How’d they even know what I am? I can count on one hand the mages who know.”

He considered her. “Why have you kept your Necromancy a secret? And spare me the bullshit.”

“The Covenant. Every mage keeps their affinities a secret.”

“Bullshit. It’s a secret from humans, not from each other.”

Her gaze dropped to her plate, appetite evaporating. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Why? Because appearing out of thin air doesn’t scare the piss out of people too?”

She poured a hearty splash of brandy into her tea and sat back. “So. Now we just need to break the curse so I can reanimate Teddy. Where do we begin?”

“Does deflection normally work for you?” He scrutinized her averted features. “Let me get this straight. A priest dies while fuckin’ a nun and you’re the abomination?”

Her head jerked to him. Had he dredged up an entire arsenal of muck from her past? And if he knew about Father Hoyt, what else did he know? All the misfortunes going back to her death-soaked birth?

She remained silent.

He sighed. “I can’t pull your head out of your arse for you. Cora, you are your own greatest obstacle. This guilt over being born, it’s so… Catholic .”

His uncanny knowledge and gentle tone unnerved her. “Your candor, as always, is most appreciated,” she said. “Were you also raised Catholic?”

“More like had it beaten into me. Best cure for Catholicism is to be raised Catholic.”

“Amen.” She toasted with her teacup. “You’re from a Catholic part of Ireland, then?”

“You’re changing the subject again. Why do you hide your Necromancy?”

She shifted. “Safety.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not.” She wasn’t going to hand over her secrets to him like knives and show him where to stab. “Humans think I’m a murderer, and every mage who’s found out has tried to kill me. People underestimating me is the best protection.”

“More bullshit. You’re the Unweaver. Your reputation protects you more than hiding will. Anyone would be a fool to fuck with you. You can commune with myths. Reanimate the centuries-dead. You could do to a man what you just did to that fork.”

She raised a brow. “Care to test that?”

He stretched out his long legs and contemplated her. “You don’t scare me.”

“Even though I could rot your heart out?”

The corners of his mouth lifted. “You’d have to find it first.”

“Sold it on the black market, did you?”

“Don’t like answering personal questions, do you?”

“Is this breakfast or an interrogation?” Huffing a breath, she folded her hands on the table and sent him a challenging look. “Fine. What’s in the locked room?”

He watched her without answering, a subtle emotion rippling across his features.

“Don’t like answering personal questions,” she said. “Do you?”

“I will tell you. But not today.”

“That’s convenient for you.”

Shaking his head and muttering about stubborn vegetarians, he drained his teacup. “I can tell you the next step for your brother. We’ll need a specialist to lift the magic block so we can find out the curse and undo it. A Sciomancer.”

Knowledge diviners had a sixth sense for magic. Like detectives for magical signatures, they could sense what affinities a mage had, and which spells they’d performed or been victim of.

“Any Sciomancers in your gang?”

“No, but I’ll get a friend to help. Master Lazlo Lyter.”

The Tribunal—the only semblance of magical law and order—consisted of Masters deemed worthy by their rigorous standards to enact their version of justice and train apprentices. Master status was a rare distinction only one mage per affinity held the honor of at a time.

The best Sciomancer in the world might just do the trick.

“Brilliant.” Grinning, she pushed away from the table. “Let’s get started. You fetch your Sciomancer and I’ll gather whatever else we need.”

“Not yet.” He grabbed her arm as she stood. “Until I recover from this fuckin’ bullet wound, I can barely ward the house, let alone traverse with Lazlo from Budapest. The magic block and Profane curse are strong enough that we should wait for an auspicious date to crack them. The next is New Year’s Eve.”

“A week ? This can’t wait another week! With your house full of contraband, surely we can manage without waiting that long. Teddy, or some shade of him, could return in time for—”

The house quaked. Plates and cups clattered. Gas lamps flickered. Doors slammed. Then came a loud knock on the front door, out of sight, followed by a muffled shout.

Someone had found the Realmwalker’s unfindable house.