The Witch and the Disguise

The next morning, on a busy thoroughfare where motorcars and carriages tangled together in a dizzying stream of traffic, Cecilia stood frozen for a long while, blinking her wide eyes.

Ruby was no better off.

Tucked away inside Cecilia's cloak, he could find nothing to say and merely clacked his beak.

What in the world…… is this?

There seemed to be twice—no, three times the usual number of city constables patrolling the streets. Had there been a murder in the night? The officers were pulling over random passersby to verify their identities, and they seemed to be singling out young women traveling alone above all others.

Uh-oh. This is not good.

As far as the world was concerned, Cecilia was a dead woman. She had never anticipated a situation like this, which meant she naturally had no forged identity papers or travel permits either.

Her white hair already drew the eye—and if she lied to a constable and word found its way back to Davion……

No. Not that.

Her husband's face, buried deep in her subconscious, flickered before her eyes. Before his image could sharpen into focus, Cecilia hastily turned and ducked into an alley as if fleeing.

But good heavens—there were constables planted squarely at the mouth of the alley too!

「I'll fly up and find a place where there aren't any hat-wearing humans.」

Ruby kicked off from Cecilia's shoulder and soared into the air. Cecilia hurried after the flick of his tail, but even so, she couldn't shake the gaze of constables threading every corner of the city.

"Pardon me for a moment, my lady."

Gah.

A hulking man abruptly blocked her path, and Cecilia staggered, losing her balance in fright. From somewhere above, Ruby's panicked cry echoed hollowly through the air.

"Something unpleasant has happened in this neighborhood recently. I'll need to confirm your identity."

Cecilia went rigid, too terrified to so much as breathe.

But by sheer, miraculous fortune, the thing she feared never came to pass.

Thud. A strange commotion rang out from deep within the alley.

Not only Cecilia but the constable blocking her way turned reflexively toward the sound. A moment later, something crashed over with a tremendous clatter, and a boy with his hood pulled low shot past them like an arrow.

Constables gave chase behind him, shouting at the top of their lungs.

"Stop that thief! Pickpocket!"

The constable standing before Cecilia sized up the situation in an instant. He tugged his cap down low and hurried off after his colleagues, chasing the boy.

……Is he gone?

Good heavens. That had been close.

In that fleeting moment she felt as though lightning had struck her. Cecilia leaned against the nearest fence, clutching her chest and forcing her breath to steady.

The mad terror curdled into relief, and cold sweat came trickling down the back of her suddenly chilled neck, arriving far too late.

Inside her head, Davion wore a scowl of profound disappointment.

Go away. Cecilia squeezed her eyes shut, light bloomed across her eyelids, and his figure dissolved like a mirage. Only the sound of a quiet sigh remained, lingering at the tips of her ears like a faint afterimage.

「Cecilia!」

Once the constables had gotten a safe distance away, Ruby hurried back down to the ground.

He burrowed straight into Cecilia's cloak, and the two of them trembled from head to toe together, shivering like a matched pair.

「I thought for sure they were hauling you away…….」

Cecilia pulled Ruby close against her chest. Fresh from flight, he carried, as always, the cool scent of winter.

「That constable just now had a camera hanging at his belt. If it hadn't been for that pickpocket, he'd have taken my photograph for certain.」

「We ought to thank that little male human……. So what now?」

Hair dye was surely toxic to a small animal like Ruby, and she wanted to avoid using it around him if she could. Her hair could simply be hidden under a hood anyway—the real problem was her face, which might end up snapped by a camera without warning, just as it nearly had.

「Is there anything that could hide my face……?」

A cloud drifted briefly across the sun.

Rainwater pooled at her feet, and Cecilia's reflection stared back at her from its surface like a mirror. After gazing blankly down at herself for a minute or so, a good idea suddenly struck her, and a knowing smile curled across her lips.

「There's somewhere I need to stop.」

Moving like a timid sewer rat, she finally arrived at a shabby little pharmacy without so much as a signboard over its door.

"Anyone home?"

Creeeak. The door, never properly oiled, let out a skin-crawling shriek every time it swung.

An owl resting on a perch by the windowsill met Cecilia's eyes and let out a piercing screech. It was the shop's announcement of a customer.

The pharmacy was a cramped space of barely a hundred square feet, yet display shelves taller than a man crisscrossed it like a labyrinth, packed edge to edge. Hunching her shoulders as far down as they would go to keep from bumping the shelves, Cecilia picked her way carefully toward the back.

A middle-aged woman in an enormous feathered wide-brimmed hat sat at the counter, reading a newspaper.

「A crow!」

The lizard playing with coins on the counter bared its mouth at Ruby in a threatening gape.

「Hush. That's no way to treat a customer.」

The woman covered the lizard's eyes with one hand and folded her paper. The moment she spotted Cecilia, a glimmer of interest lit her face.

"Oho. Twice now I've had the pleasure of an exalted guest."

"Thank you for the other time, Miss Aida. I seem to owe you quite a debt, one way or another."

Before getting to her reason for visiting, Cecilia pressed her hands together and offered a solemn word of thanks. Everything that had happened since she'd stumbled upon this place by chance roughly three weeks ago still burned vivid in her memory.

"A draught that stops the heart temporarily. With this, you can carve your husband cleanly out of the rest of your life."

In the moment that brown bottle had been held out before her, Cecilia had felt as though light had finally spilled into a pitch-black corridor where only darkness stretched on. To put it mildly, it would be no exaggeration to say that Aida had saved her that day.

"You flatter me with more gratitude than I deserve. You paid a fair price and bought it—there's no need to call it a debt."

When Aida removed her hat, a cascade of abundant auburn hair swayed down around her waist. Like the witch out of a fairytale, she puffed away on a long bamboo pipe.

"Now then—what brings the former Countess of Winterhall to my door this time?"

"I was wondering…… is there perhaps a potion that could make a person invisible?"

"Of course there isn't. Magic is not omnipotent."

Oh no.

At the flat refusal, a helpless groan escaped Cecilia. Aida's low, unhurried voice smoothed over the crestfallen feeling in her heart.

"There was a time when magic was omnipotent, mind. Turning bodies invisible was nothing—chant a few incantations and you could bring anything you imagined into being. But nowadays all that's left of it are its traces: crafting potions with peculiar effects, or chatting with animals, and that's about the extent of it……. Now, why on earth would you need such a potion?"

"For some reason the identity checks suddenly tightened up, and I can't move about the streets anymore. The constables are even carrying cameras around with them."

Remembering the alley sent a chill through the hollows of her ribs. Half-terrified still, Cecilia hesitated, then whispered:

"If my husband found out I was alive, then I'd truly be……"

"Here. Then how about this?"

Aida cut in abruptly and set a squat cylindrical jar down on the counter.

"An ointment I developed by studying wasp venom and pox. Apply it, and the skin swells up and breaks out in red blotches. Smear it on your face and it'll not only disguise your features—everyone will take you for a plague victim and steer well clear of you. One thing, though: the effect lasts barely an hour, so don't forget to reapply it often."

The bottle, wrapped in jet-black paper, radiated an unsettling aura. Cecilia brought the jar up to her nose, drew a deep breath—and gagged by accident.

Good heavens……. She hadn't even tried it yet, and already she trusted it completely.

"How much for one bottle?"

Aida tapped the gold coin she was holding onto the counter, and with her other hand held up the number four.

If each bottle's effect lasted only an hour, she would need to buy at least five……. While Cecilia was mentally tallying the state of her pockets, Ruby poked his head out from behind the cloak.

「That's steep. Got any witch member discount? Or a bundle deal, maybe?」

……A discount!

Cecilia's head snapped up.

One human and one crow—two pairs of eyes alike sparkled with brimming expectation. Aida blew a thin plume of white smoke through the gap in her teeth and clicked her tongue as though in genuine pity.

"You poor thing. Looks like your husband didn't put enough burial money in the coffin."