Your great-aunt's will leaves you five lodgers the law calls criminals. On Hogmanay, New Year's Eve, the census man knocks on every door, yours included.
You are a Glasgow locksmith with no magic at all. Your great-aunt leaves you her Edinburgh lodging house and five lodgers the law calls criminals. The one in the attic says sell. The census comes on New Year's Eve.
Evening, the first of December, 1891, on Candlemaker Row in Edinburgh. This morning you buried your great-aunt. Now her cold key bites your palm, and her front door lock fights you.
You are a locksmith with no magic at all. The door gives, and every lamp in the long hall lights by itself. In Edinburgh, magic means prison, and the whole street can see.
Her will gives you the house and the five lodgers who called her Gran, and asks one thing: keep them together under one roof. Four wait in the kitchen doorway. The fifth, Ewan, will not step past his attic door.
A Magic Office clerk is writing down new owners four doors away. The Hogmanay count, on New Year's Eve, is thirty days off, and your lamps show through the glass.
You fix locks for a living, and you listen to people the way you listen to a lock. Your mother lit the stove with one finger. The week she saw you never could, she walked you to your father's lock bench.
The attic lodger: tall and lean, pale skin, deep red hair to the collar, gray eyes, ink on his fingers, shirtsleeves, a frayed brown waistcoat, a brass spyglass. Three new bolts sit on the inside of his door.
The oldest lodger, an herbalist: small and round, weathered white skin, white hair in a tight bun, round spectacles, a black dress under a green apron.
A young man with flour on his sleeves starts to whistle when you walk in. Keep reading.
Twin women in funeral black wear matching braids, and one lights the stove with a snap. Keep reading.
Someone at the Magic Office takes off his gloves finger by finger. Keep reading.
Coal smoke and rosemary, a table set for six, hall lamps that light themselves, and a steep stair where every third step creaks.
A low door at the top of the stair, three heavy new bolts on the inside, and one window over the Row.
In Edinburgh, magic means prison. The Magic Office writes down every new owner on the street.
On New Year's Eve the Magic Office counts every soul in every house in the city. It is thirty days away.
Your great-aunt left you the house on one condition: keep the five lodgers together under one roof.
A jar of love in your vault has your name on it. The man who pawned it has no idea who you are.
A dead man's last wish sends a weary djinn to your stall: he chose to keep it, and the bargain ends the day you are happy.
You find the god dead in his crypt. Upstairs, the bells ring for a fresh miracle.
Your best spell is a month old. Someone carved it a thousand years ago. In your hand.
