doesn’t notice (cloves; newsprint; machine oil).
She sees Miss Quinn a handful of times—at meetings of the Sisters of Avalon, flitting in and out of South Sybil as they plan their third spectacle—but somehow never quite remembers to return her derby hat; Quinn does not retrieve it.
By the eighteenth of June the summer heat has finally sunk through the limestone and wood-paneling of the library, so that sitting in her office feels like sitting in the damp interior of an animal’s mouth. Even the books look rumpled and disheveled, pages swollen.
Beatrice works until midafternoon, sweaty and glazed and lonely. Her eyes slide to the derby hat on her desk.
She stands and tucks it under her arm. It may be unwise to form any particular attachment to Miss Quinn, but surely Beatrice might enjoy her company. Occasionally. She informs Mr. Blackwell that she’s going home early and strides out into the bright haze of the square.
The trolley deposits her at the southernmost tip of Second Street, where the neat cobbles give way to hard-packed dirt and the stately homes are replaced by hasty tenements, and scuttles north again. Beatrice proceeds on foot, stepping across the invisible line that divides one neighborhood from the next—although New Cairo isn’t so much a neighborhood within New Salem as it is an assault upon it.
Instead of a neat grid of streets there’s a haphazard tangle; instead of pulled curtains and closed windows there are balconies crowded with flowerpots and laundry and bright awnings; even the churches are suspiciously cheery, ringing with raised voices rather than tolling bells and dour chants. The city has retaliated—passing fussy little ordinances and fines for broken windows, stuffing the entire neighborhood into a single odd-shaped voting district—but New Cairo persists in growing. The Jungle, Beatrice has heard it called, with a sour smile, or Little Africa; Beatrice thinks they’re frightened to say the word Cairo aloud, as if it might summon golden tombs and witch-queens from the air.
The offices of The Defender are six blocks south, in a sooty red building that hums with the constant churn of the press. The secretary looks up as Beatrice enters. “Cleo isn’t in, Miss Eastwood. Check Araminta’s, on Nut Street.” He says Nut strangely, almost like night.
After several wrong turns and two consultations with bemused passersby, Beatrice still walks past it twice: Nut Street is a long, crooked alley, deep-shadowed and cool even in the afternoon heat. Red-painted doors and dark windows line the walls, bearing discreet signs: LESLIE BELL, TAILOR; M. LAWSON’S CURATIVES; ARAMINTA’S SPICES & SUNDRIES. Beatrice taps at the door. After a long silence, she turns the handle.
She smells the spices first: a hundred shades of cinnamon and sage, clove and cardamom. The air itself glows reddish-gold, flecked with motes of pepper and paprika. The shop is filled with rows of tiny wooden drawers and brown paper packages, sacks of garlic and jars of ruby peppers. The floorboards sigh little puffs of saffron and salt as she crosses them. There’s another smell lying beneath the spices, colder and stranger and wilder, that Beatrice can’t name.
Beatrice edges toward the counter in the back, empty except for a small copper bell. Beatrice is reaching for it when she hears her own name, followed by: “—certain she isn’t holding anything from me. She doesn’t suspect anything. She’s just . . . cautious.”
Beatrice goes very still, her hand outstretched, her lungs half-full. She knows that voice.
Someone else says something, low, indistinct. It must be a question, because the first voice responds: “Tomorrow night. The Rose Moon. I told them a full moon was a foolish time for going unseen, but they’re getting cheeky, less careful. Foolish.”
Tomorrow the Sisters of Avalon work their third act of witching. Right now there are black gowns hanging ready in a dozen dressing rooms and boarding houses; words and ways waiting on a dozen tongues.
Another question, too soft to make out. The voice that Beatrice knows so well—the voice that has teased and tempted her, that has argued with her over worm-eaten books and stained letters—answers: “The witch-yard, in the city cemetery. Three hours after midnight.”
It sounds like a report, as a soldier might give to a general. Or a spy to her master.
Beatrice has been betrayed once before. She is familiar with the cold that spreads from one’s chest to one’s fingertips, numbing the flesh, muffling the pulse. It’s like that old tale about the witch so monstrous she turned men to stone with her gaze, except Beatrice is