Chapter 14

Fourteen

"You cannot force a miracle. A petitioner’s heart, a willing spirit, and a clear mind are needed for a miracle to want to give its blessing. Miracles are not wishes. Saints are not djinn. You will give the miracle that is needed but not always wanted." — Sayings of the Blessed Crow.

Mara didn’t see Augustus for the next three days. A part of her was worried that he’d somehow managed to learn of the wish on her leaf and was embarrassed by it and wanted to give her space. She was surprised by the wish herself, even though her neck tingled if he got too close to her, her mouth following if he touched her.

Wanting to kiss him when she had been drinking was one thing. Wanting to do it sober was something else entirely.

They are just leaves. What do they know?

It didn’t stop her from looking outside of her windows at least three times a day, subconsciously searching for the tall sorcerer with his long overcoat, his collar turned up against the chilly fall wind.

Mara spent the rest of her time dispensing tea and miracles and reading the books she had found.

She tried not to think about the poor ghost girl and the twinge of misplaced guilt that she could be helping more people by going to them instead of expecting them to find her.

Maybe she could help Augustus with more of Melbourne’s problems? That is if they both survived closing the hole in its magic.

The story about the freak storm had been troubling her. Could trying to interfere with the magic only make it worse?

These are sorcerer thoughts and problems. You are a saint. Such things are not your concern, Mara tried to tell herself, summoning Sophia’s stern voice. But even her mother’s lecturing no longer sounded so sure.

The real problem was that her growing friendship with Augustus made it her problem.

That evening, Mara went to turn the closed sign, and she spotted Augustus standing under the florist’s awning opposite her. His face was in shadows, but his eyes were gleaming with intensity and magic and indecision.

How did no one else feel the power radiating from him? Normal people barely noticed he was there.

Mara was incapable of looking away as she opened the door and leaned against the frame. She couldn’t force him to come in and share his grief. It was wrapped around him like a cloud, choking him slowly.

Mara folded her arms and refused to drop his gaze. I see you, sorcerer. Are you standing there because you are afraid of little old me?

Augustus’s brow rose at the challenge in her stance. Of course, I am, saint. You aren’t the one spilling your guts to a stranger.

Mara rolled her eyes. So much for the terrifying Judge of Albert Street!

That got his attention. Augustus stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked through the misting almost rain to join her.

"I wanted to try and catch you, but you’re closing for the night. I can come back at a better time," he said from the bottom of her steps.

It was the first time Mara was at the same height as him, and it made her stomach flutter to have his face so close to hers.

"I can make time to see a grumpy sorcerer," Mara said and stepped to one side to let him pass.

"Are you sure?" he asked, his eyes silently begging her to let him off the hook.

"Come in out of the rain, Augustus," Mara replied softly. Looking like a man walking to the gallows, Augustus stepped inside the teashop and sat at his regular spot at the bar.

"I woke up this morning, and I could feel it. The blasted call. It pulled at me until I gave in to it and came to find you. I don’t understand. I was fine a few days ago. Today it came on so strong, it’s like I couldn’t breathe," Augustus complained.

Mara locked the red door and walked about the room, switching on lamps with their colorful glass shades, sending warm light around them.

"Do you think it’s the magic? Or did something happen to trigger a particular memory or grief?" Mara asked, just as curious to understand the sudden change in him.

She was too busy turning on the pot of hot water to see the look that he gave her, an expression torn between fear and want and anger and desire.

"Maybe it’s just time to move on," Augustus said, looking at the bar in front of him and straightening the stag signet ring on his finger.

"Would you like some scotch first? Might help," Mara suggested.

Now that he was inside, the pain radiated from him, making her hands tremble as miracles shivered under her skin. She took the bottle of Balvenie from one cupboard and set out two teacups, pouring a healthy shot in each.

"You feel it too?" Augustus asked as he lifted the cup.

"Yes, it’s going to be a big one. To making your demons dance," Mara said, and the ashen terror in his eyes warmed a little.

"That’s a terrible toast, but I’ll take it," he replied, tapping his porcelain lightly against hers before they both drained them. He looked into his empty cup. "This is going to be awful. Get your teapot, Mara, and let’s get this over with."

This time when Mara went to her cabinet, her hand went to a fine pot of creamy porcelain, its scalloped edges dipped in gold.

As soon as her fingers rested on it, she knew his heartache was going to be about a woman.

A woman that he had loved deeply.

Mara lifted the lid and turned back to him. Augustus looked like he was going to vomit.

"It’s going to be okay, you know that," she said, changing her tone to be soft and reassuring like she would with a frightened dog. "Tell me about her."

Augustus’s expression shifted as the compulsion from her gift settled on him. He rested his chin on his hand, his whole posture relaxing as he gave in to the inevitable.

"Our relationship began with a stolen pocket watch and a dead whore," he began ominously, his accent smoothing into a storytelling timbre as the memories pulled him under.

Each person reacted differently to the divine power building in the air. Meek nuns would swear and rage, and the toughest of men would speak like scared children.

Augustus became finer, his aristocratic upbringing and schooling shining with a captivating elegance that would have been intimidating to Mara if she wasn’t about to rip out the darkest parts of his soul.

"I came to Melbourne in 1890, under the orders of the Merlinus Academy. There was strange new magic on the London black market, and they knew it was coming from the colonies. They wanted to give me a few years away from England to help me get over Emmaline’s death and my obsession with the Leopard Sorcerer."

"I left the Vance Estate in the hands of my housekeeper. She was always most capable after Emmaline. I brought my valet, William, with me to Australia. I was barely a month off the boat when I bumped into a woman at the Grand Hotel, now the Windsor, and she stole my pocket watch."

As Augustus spun out his tale, Mara walked about the shelves, taking down jars and adding leaves to her pot.

"The woman’s name was Gwen, and she was a shapeshifter, a thief, and Irish. She had been staying at various expensive hotels around Melbourne. She had gotten away with people asking questions about a woman traveling alone by taking the form of an older woman and posing as her mother. I got Will to steal my watch back and had him replace it with a card, offering my congratulations on cleaning out not only my pockets but everyone else’s at the party I had been suffering through.

"The man hosting the party was a Mr. Ulysses Rutherford. He was the other contact the Academy had sent to Australia and decided not to return. I sought him out and didn’t find him in danger at all but living the life of one of the most celebrated and richest men in Melbourne."

"The city was like that then. Anyone could arrive, make a fortune, and become a gentleman. Rutherford had been mediocre as a sorcerer, and yet he was seen as the most powerful practitioner in Melbourne," Augustus said and shook his head.

"The man was an idiot who got himself in the worst kind of trouble and was too stupid to realize how deep he was until he was drowning."

Mara stirred her leaves, waiting for him. "And then what happened, Augustus?"

"I started to follow up leads on the murders and found Gwen doing the same digging. She had been acquainted with one of the murder victims called Katie, who was half-fae like Gwen. When her body went missing from the morgue, Gwen and I decided it would be better for us to start working together. In other words, I disagreed, and she ignored me until I stopped fighting with her about it. The thing about Gwen was that she could talk her way into anything and get information I had no way of acquiring. People liked her, gravitated towards her, and I was no better.

"We got a lead on one of the dead girl’s friends, a were-fox who was working for Madame Brussels. Once Gwen had convinced the madame that they were interested in sharing the girl, we got an insightful meeting with Lizzie Friar. She was scared. The man who she thought killed Katie had also done horrible things to people who had betrayed him."

"I convinced her that I’d be able to protect her, that my magic would rival his." Augustus’s voice broke, and he cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Lizzie t-trusted us. She told us that Ulysses Rutherford was a pawn for a greater sorcerer working his way through Melbourne’s underbelly. We encouraged her to go and stay with Gwen, but Lizzie needed to finish the night off so as not to arouse suspicion with the madame. She was responsible for her little brother, Tommy, who worked as a bouncer for the brothel. They were both due to move in with Gwen the next day."

Mara stilled, her stomach and heart fearing what would come next. If Augustus knew he had tears in his hollow eyes, he didn’t show it, her grief magic still holding him tightly in its thrall.

"I woke the next morning to hear William shouting. I went down the stairs and followed the noise to the backyard. Slung over the fence were two were-fox furs, all that remained of Lizzie and her brother. The pieces of fur had been torn off and slashed with what I initially thought to be knives, but later turned out to be c-claws."

Augustus was gripping the bar so tightly, his hands had gone white.

"Not just any claws. Those of a leopard. They matched the scars on my body, and I knew. I knew he was here. I followed him, even as I was escaping him.

"I got Gwen to move into Albert Street within the hour. I shut my wards up so tightly that no one could get through without me. You are the first person I’ve built into them since then," Augustus said. "And I never did find out what they had done with the bones of Katie, Lizzie, and Tommy."

Augustus shuddered all over as the memory, and the magic released him.

His gaze focussed on Mara, his eyes going wide in horror as he wiped at his wet cheeks. Mara quickly put her hand over his and held on.

"Don’t do that. Let them come. They need to. It’s okay, Augustus," she whispered, her heart in her throat. She didn’t let go of his hand as she poured out his tea. "Drink. It’ll get better."

Augustus didn’t say a word while he winced his way through six cups of tea, the final one making him choke down a sob.

Mara didn’t ask what it tasted like. She only let his hand go and fetched her scotch. He held his cup out, and she filled to the brim.

"I hate this," he said hoarsely.

"I know." Mara hesitated before she added, "But I’m your friend, so you aren’t doing it alone."

"Ah. There’s that forbidden word again," Augustus said, a slyness replacing the horrible pain on his face.

"Just don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to keep, and people will talk," Mara replied.

Augustus laughed a little like she hoped he would. "I promise, but only if you don’t tell the cat you made me cry, or he’ll never shut up about it."

* * *

That evening, curled up in bed with a mug of soup and a sore heart, Mara finally learned what it was like to have a friend in pain with no way to help them. The irony that her first friend was also a dreaded sorcerer was not lost on her.

She thought about all he said about not knowing what the Leopard Sorcerer did with those poor people’s bones and dreading what happened to Gwen. Amazing, stubborn Gwen, whose vitality seemed to beam out of him as he talked about her.

"A shame I missed him. I was hoping he’d be a good boy and bring me more catnip," Athanasius yawned before curling up at the end of the bed.

"You’ve had enough," Mara said automatically and opened The Lives of the Crow Saints. Twenty pages in, and her heart stopped.

"It can’t be," she murmured and reread the passage again. Augustus said he had no idea what happened with the bones of the murdered half-fae. Mara had a horrible feeling she had just found out. Taking a deep breath, she reread the passage:

Saint Anoushka Korvolova fell in love with a sorcerer in Moscow in 1912. When his enemies poisoned, shot, and drowned him in an assassination attempt, Anoushka used her miracles to save his life.

When he was well again, he killed her, boiled her bones, and ground them into powder so he could sustain his long life through the divine power of her relics.

Mara tasted smoke and bone dust at the back of her throat. She reached for her phone and stared at Augustus’s number.

Would telling him make him feel better, or worse? Augustus was a man who wasn’t happy with unsolved mysteries, so she took a photo of the book and texted him.

Foundthis. Doyou think this why their bones were taken?

Mara sent the text and the photo. She didn’t expect a reply. She imagined him drunk in a bar or getting lost in the arms of a beautiful woman.

Just the thought made her chest ache uncomfortably, and the strange miracle shudder inside of her. Her phone buzzed with a single word, one that conveyed layers of meaning.

Fuck.