Chapter 3

Three

"Miracles have the power to override even the most stubborn of curses." — Sayings of the Blessed Crow.

Mara Corvo hated two things more than anything: surprises and that the Sorcerer of Albert Street had somehow managed to find her shop again.

She had finally gotten over her shock of seeing him the first time and had gone to water the shop’s succulents when he had burst through the door again.

He stared down at her from his six-foot-two height, eyes blazing and scarily sober. This charged staring competition drove a series of facts into Mara’s shocked brain.

Firstly, the sorcerer wasn’t as young as she thought. He had a light speckling of gray through his dark hair and eyes much older than his face. Secondly, he was handsome as the Devil and twice as dangerous, and thirdly, he had done something no one had ever been able to do, and that was find the teashop for a second time.

Mara could hope that it was a coincidence. "Have we met?"

"Of course we’ve met. Don’t you remember me?" he asked incredulously.

Not a coincidence. Damn it.

"What are you doing back here?" Mara demanded.

"Looking for you. Why else would I be here?"

"What color is my hair?"

"It doesn’t have one. It’s like…snow. Why? Is that important?" he said, and she clutched the watering jug, her vision clouding as she swayed. The sorcerer hurried to steady her, but when he touched the bare skin of her elbow, magic and pain slammed through her.

The jug hit the floor, smashing to pieces, and a streak of black and gray pounced between them. The sorcerer swore as he caught Athanasius and slipped over. Mara clutched her knees, breath ragged.

"What did you do to me?" she asked.

"Funny, I was going to ask you the same bloody thing," he groaned. "Would you mind calling off your psychotic cat? I was only trying to help."

"You can help by never touching my granddaughter again," Athanasius hissed.

"So you can talk! I fucking knew it." The sorcerer slowly sat up. "I don’t suppose you could tell me what is going on?"

"Only if you tell me how you found this place again…and how you can see me," Mara added. Then guilt got the better of her, and she held out a hand to help him up.

She was ready for it this time. The sense of his magic glided along her skin, and underneath it, a well of grief so deep, she doubted she could cure it with all the tea in the store.

Augustus conjured a cloth and began to wipe up the spilled water. Mara picked up the jug pieces, careful not to touch him for the third time.

"Thank you. Ah, I’m sorry, I don’t know your name."

He gave her a short, elegant bow that Mara hadn’t seen since the eighteen hundreds. "Augustus Valentine Vance, at your service."

"That’s quite a mouthful."

His smile was charming. "My father had a thing for the Roman emperors, and my mother was one of the Irish Greatrakes, so I got both emperor and sorcerer in my name. Most people just call me Augustus. And you are?"

Never tell a sorcerer your name for he’s bound to use it for nefarious purposes, her mother’s voice reminded her.

After feeling his pain and the gaping hole inside of him, Mara figured she had more to use against him than he could possibly have on her.

"Mara Corvo," she replied.

"Mara," Augustus repeated slowly. It sounded different coming out of his mouth, his accent rolling the R. She didn’t like it, and neither did she like the danger on her spine that had sat there all week.

Most people trusted their gut, but Mara found hers too unreliable, so she trusted her spine instead, and it had never, ever lied to her.

"May we talk like adults, Mara? I’d like to know what’s going on without being attacked by your feral tom." Augustus and Athanasius glared at each other and would’ve kept going, so Mara intervened.

"I’d also like to know a few things," she said, and then because hospitality demanded it of her, she added, "Would you like some tea?"

"Thank you, although something plain. I don’t know if I could handle another cup of whatever you dosed me with last time." Augustus gave Athanasius a smug smile of triumph before sitting down at the counter.

"I have a particularly nice Earl Grey. You like bergamot, don’t you?" she asked, remembering the aroma of the tea she’d first brewed him.

"Earl Grey would be perfect," Augustus said.

"Don’t make him too comfortable, Mara. Sorcerers are freeloaders. Everyone knows that. And he’s Welsh to boot, which means he’ll be twice the trouble," Athanasius hissed.

"I’m English, not Welsh despite the traces in my accent, thanks to going to school there. Is your cat always this racist?" Augustus asked her as she placed a cup in front of him.

"My family has a complicated history with sorcerers," Mara replied carefully.

"Well, we are complicated beings. I can imagine saints’ lives are just as bad. While we are talking about saints, what is this place, and what miracles are you peddling?"

Mara poured his tea while considering what to tell him and then poured her own. "This place is as you see it. It’s a teashop."

"I’ve been to many teashops over the years, and whatever you gave me the other day not only cured my hangover, a miracle in itself, but I feel different. I need to know what you put in it," Augustus said. He smelled the tea in his cup before taking a careful sip.

"I don’t know what I put in it. It doesn’t work that way."

"You don’t have recipes?"

"No. Every cup is different."

"Why? I don’t understand."

Athanasius bumped his head angrily against Mara’s arm. "Don’t tell him any more! He’s nosey, and I don’t trust him."

"Why not? I’ve done nothing to you. I’m not trying to cause harm, only understand."

"A sorcerer never means to cause harm, and yet, that’s all they do! You know better than this, Mara. Kick the bastard out," Athanasius said. Mara picked the cat up, placed him in the back of the shop, and closed the door.

"I’m sorry about him."

"He’s really your grandfather?"

"Yes. He was turned into a cat by a sorcerer."

"And that’s the reason your family hates sorcerers?" Augustus frowned.

"Sort of. Partly. It’s a long story," Mara said, keeping her distance on the opposite side of the counter.

"Sounds like a good one. You’ll have to tell me about it sometime," he said with a small smile.

"I don’t think so. You probably won’t find this place again after you leave. I don’t even know how you found it again today."

Mara sipped her tea, trying to remember if she’d somehow botched the cup she’d given him the first time, which could be the reason he returned.

"I felt like I had a hook in my guts, and the shop dragged me in. I thought you might’ve put a curse on me," Augustus admitted.

"I wouldn’t know how even if I wanted to. It’s not how this place works at all!" Mara replied, trying to push down the panic in her voice.

What in the Saint’s name was going on?

"Tell me how it does work, and maybe I can help figure out why I came back. You’ve managed to keep hidden from me for years. I don’t think me being a sorcerer means anything." Augustus sounded annoyed by that, and Mara felt a little better.

It was true that she had known about the sorcerer of Albert Street. He had a reputation in the supernatural undercurrents of Melbourne as being some kind of authority figure. Hating both sorcerers and authority figures, Mara and Sophia had avoided him at all costs.

"The teashop attracts heartache," she explained slowly. "My customers come in and tell me what their grief is while I make them tea. They drink it and are healed, and once they leave, they forget me and that this place ever existed."

"God, that must be lonely," Augustus said softly.

It surprised her so much, she took an extra step back from him.

"It was better for my family that they were forgotten when they left a place. No one can track you and try and burn you at a stake if they don’t know who you are," Mara replied with a little more venom than what she intended.

"My kind were persecuted, same as yours," Augustus pointed out. "That’s why you were so surprised just now? You thought I’d forgotten you?"

"It’s how it’s always worked. I don’t know why it hasn’t now."

Augustus studied her carefully over the steaming rim of his cup. "What part of the process is the miracle?"

"People can move on without their heartache crippling them."

"So your gift is hearts?"

Mara laughed, and it was small and bitter. "No, sorcerer. My gift is grief."

"A saint of grief? How did that happen?" Augustus asked curiously.

"All the Corvo women are saints. It’s something we are, not what we choose to become," Mara said. Something moved inside of her, and it was as if she was having the same reaction to the sorcerer that her customers had to her tea. She opened her mouth, and the words came out.

* * *

The Corvo family knew that Mara would be a good saint when three miracles occurred on the night of her birth.

The night itself had been wracked by a terrible storm, with lightning cracking the sky and the camp fearful it would hit one of the caravans and set it on fire.

Her mother was determined that her baby not be born during such an ominous event. Mara was determined to be born.

It was the first argument mother and daughter had. Mara won. She had struggled free from her mother and was greeted by the angry thunder.

For her first miracle, Mara rebuked the thunder for scaring her, and the storm had begun to cry soft rain in apology.

The second miracle happened when the entire camp came to look at the newest saint, only to start weeping as they told the sleeping infant the deepest pains they carried in their hearts.

The third miracle happened when her mother and the Corvo family had been about to throw her over a cliff and into the sea for being the most cursed Corvo ever born. As they reached the cliff’s edge, Mara had laughed, and all the open wounds in the hearts of her family were suddenly healed.

They didn’t toss her into the sea after that, but they’d always viewed their latest saint as a mixed blessing.

There was something otherworldly about her with her silver hair (her aunt claimed it had been a gift from the lightning the night of her birth; her other aunt had said it was from the Sami blood her father had given her), and her too black eyes (her mother claimed it was a mirror of the grief she could see in others; Mara said it was the Egyptian blood her mother had given her).

The family soon realized it was another blessing that Mara looked like a saint as it encouraged petitioners to open their hearts and wallets to them.

It didn’t take long for Sophia to realize that the family who had always protected them was beginning to exploit them, so mother and daughter left them in the middle of the night and never returned.

* * *

"As you can imagine, my upbringing was…complicated," Mara finished. She reached for her tea and found it empty.

"And I thought I had it bad being shipped off to a boarding school to learn how to control my magic," Augustus said.

His odd, not gray, not green eyes were looking at her differently now, and Mara realized it was because understanding had softened them. She was embarrassed for sharing so much about herself already, so she said nothing.

"I can’t believe they were going to throw you off a cliff," Augustus said.

"That’s because you don’t know how many curses my family already has. They thought better of it and called me Mara instead. My grandmother picked it because it means "sorrow" in Hebrew and "sea" in Gaelic. So, you know, they thought about it a lot."

"Mara is also a Hindu goddess of death, but I guess that slipped their minds," Augustus said dryly.

Mara swallowed her laugh before it could escape. "They were frightened enough of me."

"You’re not so bad. Maybe I remember you because you made me tea without hearing my grief, and it confused the magic," Augustus mused.

Mara considered it, but then the sun coming through her shop windows hit the sorcerer’s dark hair just so and picked up the red highlights in the rest of the tangle.

Stay away from men with red hair because they are cursed and will only bring you trouble,Sophia’s voice reminded her.

Mara could just about hear her screeching in the Afterlife as she watched as her daughter shared tea with a red-haired sorcerer.

"You could be right," Mara said with a careful smile. "Why don’t you tell me your grief? I’ll make you more tea, and this misunderstanding will be cleared up."

Augustus adjusted the silvery gray scarf around his neck. Mara had studied people enough to know when they were uncomfortable. "If I tell you, I’ll forget you. Is that correct?"

Mara nodded. "It’s how it’s usually worked."

"Then I’ll have to think about it." Augustus got to his feet and pulled on his coat. "Thank you for the tea, Mara."

"Wait, you can’t leave! I haven’t done the miracle yet—" she protested.

Augustus opened the door. "I’ll see you soon, little crow saint."

Mara raced to the door, but by the time she reached it, he’d already disappeared down a side street.

"Sneaky bastard," she whispered to the wind, and the wind could only agree.