Page 63 of Of Socialites and Prizefights

A GROUP ATTEMPT AT CURSE-BREAKING

The problem was that none of Deepa’s close friends particularly excelled at magic.

Aaliyah was very good at small, practical magic, the kind that made sure things went where they were supposed to go, polishing away scuffs or mending tears. Jasmine could sculpt with magic and breathe life into those forms. Elizabeth had her textile illusions and her good-luck charms, and Coxley had the showy sort of magic he liked to bring out at parties to break the ice or cause a scandal here and there. Alphonse, Aaliyah’s de facto husband, was all but useless at the stuff, as was Arthur, Elizabeth’s husband, though Alphonse had never had the talent, whereas Arthur had lost his in the war. Cherie could do little flashes of magic, but never on command, and rarely intentionally.

The only person in their group who had any chance of cracking anything as complicated as a curse was Jacobi, Alphonse's former valet and now husband. Jacobi was strikingly competent in every other aspect of his life, so it followed that he should be equally competent when it came to magic. However, he played his cards so close to the chest that Deepa had no idea, really, if he was up to the task, or if it was just an assumption.

The one person to whom she wished she could have brought her problem was a former associate by the name of Sebastian, whom she had hired last autumn to execute that Kew Gardens robbery on her behalf. Sebastian had strong, clever magic, and furthermore, he was the sort of conniving con artist whom she could ironically trust, what with the both of them being cut from the same cloth.

Unfortunately, Sebastian had stolen a truly outstanding number of jewels from The National Gallery and fled the country to start a new life in America, with his special gentleman friend — with whom he wasn’t in love, Deepa remembered him maintaining — in tow. So, regrettably, his help wasn't really an option.

“Why isn’t Roz with you?” Aaliyah asked in an undertone, as things were getting underway. “She doesn’t seem the sort to miss something so important.”

“Scheduling conflict,” Deepa replied, turning to the rest of the group before Aaliyah could interrogate her.

They had gathered at Aaliyah’s house to try to break her curse, or rather, more properly, at the Kaddour-Hollyhock household. Deepa sat in the middle of the living room floor with her friends sitting in a circle all around her, the furniture pushed out of the way against the walls. Seeing as none of them had any experience with curse-breaking, or indeed, with curses at all, none of them knew what might happen if they succeeded.

Or, Deepa supposed, if they failed. Presumably, a failure to break the curse would simply result in her continuing to turn into a leopard every night, but there was a chance it could backfire and cause the magic to lash out in a defensive or destructive way, depending on just how much of a bastard Phillip was.

It seemed safe to say the answer to that last question was ‘an enormous one.’

“I can feel the magic on you,” Elizabeth said, a pretty frown furrowing her brow as she clasped Deepa’s forearm. “It’s in deep, isn’t it? I found an old book with a chapter on curse-breaking. I'm not sure if it’s at all outdated — some of its other chapters are a bit suspect, I admit — but it says, basically, that to break a curse, you have to untangle the threads from the victim’s own magic, where they’ve got tangled up.”

“I imagine that’s rather easier said than done,” Deepa noted.

“Really?” Alphonse asked. “It sounds simple enough.”

“You couldn’t untangle a ball of yarn if it had snarled in your lap,” Aaliyah pointed out to him. “This will take some doing with a delicate touch, but it's certainly not impossible.”

“I had a chat with an old friend who’s run into a curse here and there in his time,” said Coxley, sitting cross-legged and peering at Deepa intently. “His account was much the same as Elizabeth’s. You’ve just got to sort out whose magic belongs to who, and cut out the bad stuff.”

“Like flushing an infection from a wound,” Arthur said.

Deepa took a steadying breath. She didn’t terribly like the sound of that, but it had to be better than these nightly transformations. “Alright. Who wants to give it a try?”

“Show us your magic first?” Coxley requested.

He had the same look as when she had first modelled for him, an expression of intense concentration as if puzzling out a complicated composition, mapping the colours in his headbefore putting them to canvas. It was a different sort of attention than most men paid her, and she had enjoyed it then in his studio, and she enjoyed it well enough now, though she could do without the raised stakes.

Centering herself, she let her magic flow to the surface and well up in the palms of both hands, showing it off without directing it into any particular spell. Her magic was a rich plummy colour, dark purple with maroon and burgundy tones at its core, and indigo-navy on its surface. It billowed gently from her hands like dry ice, drifting this way and that with the room’s air currents. Her friends all huddled close, studying the colours and getting a sense for it, hoping to tell the difference between her magic and Phillip’s.

She’d mostly avoided thinking about his actual magic thus far, but now it was unavoidable, and it left a bad taste in her mouth. Previously, she had taken care to only think of it as ‘the curse.’ ‘Phillip’s curse,’ even, but like it was a separate entity from him, a misfortune that had befallen her. Not like it was his actual magic in her body, in her blood and bones, making a home where he had no right to be.

She hated the invasion of it, the unwanted intimacy, and her own magic flared in a rush of defensive fury. She couldn't feel that foreign magic in her, but she wanted it out. She would rip it out with her own nails and grind it under her heel into the nice hardwood of Aaliyah’s living room floor before she put up with it for one more night.

“Lovely,” said Coxley. “Just keep holding it like that, my dear, and we’ll hunt down this curse and see what it’s made of.”

It was indeed easier said than done. With their own magic, Deepa’s friends poked and prodded at her, every exploratory tendril they sent accompanied by a wincing apology. Spellwork was perfectly common in Britain, but it was supposed to be performed very properly, every bit of it controlled andcontained. Deepa found it overly rigid, an entire culture of denying one’s better instincts and keeping oneself in check. But now, with so many people surrounding her and putting her under their metaphysical microscopes, their magic brushing up against hers as they tried to sniff out her curse like a pack of hounds routing out a stubborn badger, she suddenly quite understood the appeal of keeping everyone’s magic firmly buttoned down.

It was all terribly close, to the point of claustrophobia. Much as she enjoyed being the centre of attention, she disliked actually being seen, and this felt like being stripped bare of every glamorous illusion she’d ever worn, every societal mask behind which she liked to hide, to stand naked, plain and shivering, before a panel of judges who could read her every secret.

Abruptly, she wished she were alone in a room with Roz instead of with her friends. Roz, with her keen nose for magic, could surely sniff out the curse’s root. The same way she’d so tenderly wrapped that fabric around Deepa’s hands, she could unspool the curse from Deepa’s bones.

The worst part was that if Deepa asked, Roz would try to do it, even if she was still angry with Deepa, even if she didn’t want to otherwise see her.

Just as Deepa was about to insist they take a break so she could be left alone for a minute, Elizabeth declared, “I’ve got it!”

Phillip’s magic wasn’t suddenly made visible, and Deepa didn’t feel any different, but Elizabeth seemed confident that she had located the foreign magic, even if she hadn't broken Deepa free of it.

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