Page 60 of The Unweaver

In the library, she scaled spindly ladders to bowel-liquefying heights and rummaged through dusty tomes for any insight into Teddy’s curse. The more she looked, the more she found, and the less she understood. At the end of the day she had little to show for her efforts except a headache.

Bane had several forbidden texts on the Profane Arts, of course. She combed through the more promising titles for acurse where the victim’s heart was removed—there weremany—then for Coshoy’s Egg.

She gleaned little about the former and nothing about the latter. The only references she found were to something called the Hag’s Egg, a dark magic relic like an external womb. For what nefarious purposes, she could only imagine.

For hours, she puzzled over a manuscript detailing a Necromancer’s journeys into Purgatory. The Necromancer, named only as Rasputin, had full conversations with expurgated spirits, whereas Teddy’s spirit hadn’t spoken a word to Cora.

The fog-wraith of her brother had seemed incomplete, she realized with dawning terror, because his spirit was. Only a piece of him existed in Death’s waiting room.

The manuscript mentionedspirit splitting in passing. That a person’s essence could be fractured at all was its own bottomless well of horrors. With an infuriating lack of detail, the vague Rasputin hadn’t clarified how or why spirits were split, let alone where the pieces went afterwards.

If Teddy’s spirit wasn’t in the Death Realm and only a fraction resided in Purgatory, where could the rest be? Trapped in yet another Realm, or in an impenetrable prison in this one? Or was it still within his missing heart, clutched in his murderer’s hand?

Her tears spilled onto the yellowed pages. To have his spirit hacked into pieces and strewn across Realms was truly a fate worse than death.

How could she possibly bring him back now?

Reshelving the manuscript, she climbed upstairs and crawled into the soft bed, hoping no one overheard as she cried herself to sleep.

Chapter 17. Felix

Cora sat up in the soft bed. She had emptied herself of tears—for now, at least—and a grim determination had settled within the aching hollowness inside her. She would find the missing pieces of Teddy’s spirit by any means necessary or die trying.

Despair and hope clashed within her. The plan would only get them so far if it was all futile. She banished the thought.Focus on the next step. Think about everything else later.

Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, she padded across the thick rugs to see where the house had traversed today. A slight tremor in the night had been the only indication the house and everything in it had leapfrogged through space.

She gazed out of the stained-glass windows spinning a brilliant spectrum of color from the bleak winter sunlight. Outside, the streets and roofs were loaded with sooty snow. People hurried by below, dressed in heavy coats against the bitter wind. The Gothic house now jammed between two brick buildings went unnoticed.

With a jolt, she recognized the neighborhood in Camden. Bane’s house was only a half-hour walk from her flat.

On her way to the kitchen, she noticed an unlabeled folder left on a side table. Curiosity nagged at her. She opened it. The nameat the top of the first page made her heart clench. The name that Mother had held over her head for years.

Felix.

A clammy hand silenced her scream—

The memory gripped her by the throat and slammed her against the wall. She was helpless against it, taken against her will back to that dark day eighteen years ago when she had learned there were many ways to die.

* * *

London, 1902.

She leapt between shadows on silent feet, hugging the alley walls as she inched towards her mark. The woman, with fat oyster fruits around her neck, had sealed her fate the moment she wandered into this dead-end alley. Those pearls would feed Cora for weeks.

The alley was better lit than she’d like, but starvation made her desperate. Her stomach was sour from hunger. A hunger that cloyed her all day while she prowled for easy marks, and all night while she tossed and turned in her nest made of garbage.

In her twelve years, she had learned the contours of scarcity. Its hollows and crevasses. Mercy had left her vocabulary the day the nuns chased her onto the streets and she was left to fend for herself. The torment of those years still throbbed.

Every day was a struggle. Some nights, she didn’t know if she’d survive until morning. Most nights, she didn’t want to.

If there was one thing the streets of London had an abundance of, it was orphans. Everywhere she roamed, dirty faces filled with tired despair peered back at her from shadowed stoops and rubbish bins. She never stopped searching those faces for Teddy. She sensed her twin was still in London somewhere, a far-off light to guide her lost spirit in the darkness.

For years she had flitted between roving gangs of other unwanted children, banding together for protection and surviving off what they could steal. Crime, from the petty to the heinous, was an ugly necessity of life on the streets.

Together, the unwanted children played games of survival. The only rule was not to get caught. The only reward was to survive another miserable day. Nimble fingers or a swift death.

After years of playing the game, she held no qualms anymore. Starvation had stripped the frivolities of kindness away. Conscience was a distant luxury she couldn’t afford. She was an opportunist. And today, opportunity was a fat necklace of oyster fruits. It’d be all hers, too, since she’d been kicked out of yet another gang when her devilry slipped out. Her secret abomination.

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