Reap & Sow

Chapter One

Whenever the shop bell chimed, Eda liked to guess: had they come to trade with their coin or their soul?

She considered their newest customer as he stumbled in, shaking rain from his fur lined cloak. He hovered by the door uncertainly. Wealthy, she decided. Skittish as a dog.

This was promising.

“Welcome to Shaws’ Antiques & Curiosities. Can I help you?”

The gentleman stared at her. Eda smiled back. She was used to smiling when she did not feel like it. Ben always said a kindly face was difficult to mistrust.

“I…” The stranger swallowed. He looked around the shop’s interior: the towering shelves that brushed the ceiling, the low chandelier, the assortment of rugs strewn across lacquered floorboards. Cabinets and brass globes and strange pots littered the edges of the room, leaving meagre space to wander. If Lawrie were here he’d enthusiastically regale the poor man with the origins of all their stock, right down to the hinges on the doors.

Eda tried again. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

He pulled off his brimmed bonnet to reveal tidy, chin-length hair. “Is there anyone else here? Any other patrons?”

“No, sir. You’re our last customer of the day.”

Not that there’d been many. A snub-nosed woman spent an hour sniffing around their collection of antique tea sets, and a pair of academics purchased a tome from the Old Weslic collection. But no one else had crossed the threshold.

Eda suspected this man wasn’t interested in teapots or dusty books.

He approached the counter, splendid in buckled shoes and velvet doublet. His face was nondescript—but the wild look in his eyes struck her with eerie familiarity. She’d seen it before, a hundred times in a hundred different faces.

“I need a mirror with no reflection.”

Eda’s pulse found a new rhythm, fast and flighty as a hare. Her brothers did not share the passphrase lightly: if this stranger knew it, they’d decided he was serious.

She stepped around the counter. “You know what you’re asking?”

“Yes. I—yes.”

Eda peered through the bay windows. Blackbridge was a dark, noisy smear of wet stone and oil smoke, lanterns bobbing through the gathering night. Irregular bubbles in the crown glass made it hard to discern anyone coming up the street, but none of the distorted figures hurrying through the rain seemed like her brothers.

Never take someone to the mirror alone, Ben always warned. If they come looking to make a Pact, and neither of us are with you, you must turn them away.

In the glass, Eda’s reflection hovered like a pale-haired wraith. She bit her inner cheek.

Ben would be furious. Lawrie would be disappointed, which was even worse. But how long had it been since they last found someone desperate—or stupid enough—to make a Pact? Dealies, Lawrie called them. Those hopeless souls willing to pay the ultimate price for whatever wretched thing they sought. It had been months.

She could turn the man away, tell him to come back another evening: she’d done so before. If he was needy enough, he would. But Eda knew from experience that with too much time to think came the niggling whispers of common sense. He could talk himself out of it. He could go running his mouth to the Faithhood, unlikely though it was. What then?

They were running out of time.

Eda set her jaw and flipped the sign in the door to CLOSED. “What’s your name, sir?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Smarter than he looks. “He’ll need a name, I’m afraid. No use hiding it.” She pulled the drapes along their rail, shutting out the door and windows. In the flickering light of the chandelier, shadows about the stranger’s eyes yawned wide: empty sockets in a skull.

“He?”

“The demon you mean to make a Pact with.”

He swallowed. Steeled himself. “I am Bartholomew. Your family name is Shaw, I presume?” He scanned her from head to toe with a disdain common to noble folk. “You are rather young to be involved in…this sort of business.”

“I’m one-and-twenty, sir. And I’ve been involved in this sort of business since the cradle.”

That shut him up. Eda led Bartholomew to the back of the shop, through the maze like shelves as tall as hedgerows and down two steps to a door in the back wall. She withdrew the key from her pocket with a jolt of unexpected dread.

She’d opened this door many times, but never without Ben or Lawrie present. Their absence was a phantom all its own. Eda knew the shop as well as she knew herself—it was her job to mind it while Lawrie ran errands and Ben worked—but this expectant quiet was unfamiliar. Oppressive. She felt it breathing down her neck.

The key rattled in the lock. Steady hands, Eda, you damned fool.

The door swung open.

Bartholomew’s breathing quickened. She smothered her kindling guilt, for this was necessary, and it needed doing quickly. Her brothers were not here to stop him if he tried to run.

Eda lit the sconces as they descended the twisting iron staircase. The cellar was always cold, and the firelight did little to conjure illusions of warmth. It smelt vaguely musty down here; earthen and primal. She was reminded of tombs and catacombs. Places where the living did not belong.

Eda lit the final sconce before turning to Bartholomew.

He gripped the stairwell with white knuckles, staring. “Is that it?”

She followed his gaze. The Shaws’ cellar was entirely bare of ornament…save for the lonely mirror propped against the wall. “Yes,” she murmured. “This is a Gateway.”