Roxanne DeMarco's Arc

Chapter 1 of 7

The dress arrived with no name, no dealer, no receipt, and Roxanne DeMarco had spent three days deciding whether it was worth anything at all. She ran a shop of real Victorian garments, not costumes, and she trusted her hands more than any tag. But her hands could not decide about this one. It hung in the back room, dark and torn at the hem, painted with symbols she didn't know. The fabric felt cold when the room was warm. Cold could mean old silk. It could also mean something else. She hated not knowing, and she needed to know before she priced it, sold it, or threw it out. A brooch sat pinned at the collar. Black stones, red stones, and a shape at its center like an open wound. Roxanne pressed her thumb against it. The stone was warm. That made no sense. The dress was cold and the brooch was warm, on the same hanger, in the same still air. She carried a snip of the hem to the one person nearby who dealt in strange things. Finnegan tended bar down the row, a leprechaun who studied every face that entered his door. He turned the thread in his fingers under the lamp. He did not smell it. He did not squint. He simply went still. "Take it back," he said. "Back where? Nobody brought it." "Somebody did." He set the thread down like it might bite. "That's not wear. That's a hex." "Hexes aren't a thing I sell," Roxanne said. "Then don't sell it." He wiped his hands on his apron. "Burn it. Bury it. Not my trade." She wanted a test, not a warning. She got the test on the walk back. The shop door was open. She had locked it. A woman stood before the dress, gray from hair to bare feet, pale as spilled milk. She reached toward the hem without touching it. The torn threads lifted toward her fingers on their own. "Get away from that," Roxanne said. The woman did not turn. "It isn't yours." "It's in my shop." "That's not the same thing." She lowered her hand. The threads settled. "The dead sewed their names into this. Someone stole them. You feel it. That's why you can't decide." Roxanne's mouth went dry. "Who are you?" "I've lost my name too." She looked at the brooch, and for the first time her flat voice tightened. "That was pinned to me once." Then she was gone. The door stood open on an empty street. Roxanne stared at the dress. The question was answered. Not old silk. Not wear. Real magic, and it had drawn something out of the dead world into her back room. She had wanted proof. Now she had it, and a pale woman who claimed the brooch, and no idea whose stolen names were stitched into her merchandise.