She didn’t end up being able to go around to Hamish’s in the end. Kaito was rusty as all fuck, and there were bags under his eyes from lack of sleep – apart from not going to practice, he’d been playing a lot of games in the evenings, staying up late. He was behind on his homework, wasn’t keeping up with his revision.

Velma spent a good part of the week taking Kaito through his drills. He was still going to football and swimming a bit, so it wasn’t as though he wasn’t exercising, just that he wasn’t going to karate as much.

“Is it a problem with the class?” she asked on the Wednesday, watching him get Snowdrop to leap with surprising agility up into the air, desperate to grasp hold of the feathered toy on a string he was flicking from side to side and then throwing up above her head.

He’d already asked if his gift for Christmas could be for her to “catify” (she’d had to look that up) his bedroom so that Snowdrop could have more vertical spaces to run up and down – he wanted a length of carpet stapling to one wall and shelves and a little hammock and a long pole of a scratching post all around the edges of the walls so that she could go properly mental chasing her feather toy.

She would have said yes anyway, but she couldn’t help but think she acquiesced a bit more quickly than she otherwise would have, thinking of that poor demonic cat holed up for years – for decades – in just a single storage locker, utterly alone. Even if it was a solitary predator, the sort of animal that liked to be on its own and didn’t live in big social colonies, it was still fucked, just the concept of that sort of prison with nothing changing, nothing altering.

She didn’t know much about Anita Carr, what sort of woman she’d been like when she was alive, but a part of her couldn’t help but think that what she’d done had been so much crueller than the alternative, imprisoning the cat for so fucking long in what amounted to a slightly larger than average room with no escape, no variety, nothing.

It wasn’t the same – Snowdrop was an indoor cat, but Kaito did take her for walks around the neighbourhood or to the park so she could bully large dogs and aggressively groom smaller ones, and she had no small number of toys and playthings, not to mention people – but Velma still couldn’t help but want to add whatever she could to Snowdrop’s habitat, add in what variety she could.

It wasn’t really a present for Kaito, she’d pointed out to Mum when she’d asked if it would be alright to do, which Mum had said yes to, although not without anxiously asking a bunch of questions about how reversible the modifications would be and what they might do to the price of the house.

“Can you afford to get him something separate?” Mum had asked, tight-voiced and stressed, speaking through clenched teeth, in the way she often did about money.

“Yeah, I can,” Velma had answered. “The stuff for the cat’s not gonna cost that much at all, really, I can build all of it from scrap wood and old furniture and bits of old carpet and rope – I’ve got most of what I’ll need already in the shed. It’ll just take time, that’s all, and not longer than a day’s labour. Why, are you worried about money for Christmas?”

“No,” Mum had said without looking up from the dishes, which she was washing very hard – much harder than they needed to be – with a scrubbing brush.

“Do you want me to lend you any—”

“No,” Mum had snapped at her, and Velma had exhaled, leaning back in her seat and putting up her hands.

Kaito reminded her too much of Mum, sometimes – he was stiff as a board now, scowling tightly even as Snowdrop fell over herself to grab hold of the feather toy, tumbling arse over tit across the carpet and landing clumsily, skidding on her side.

“No,” he said.

“Anyone in the class said anything?” Velma asked. “Or, what, is it uncomfortable wearing your binder while you spar, you’re worried about how it looks, or hurting yourself?”

“No,” said Kaito, and he tossed a jingling ball across the room, watching Snowdrop leap – completely unnecessarily – five feet into the air before skidding underneath the dresser to get it. “Just— I don’t know, I’m just not in the mood for it, that’s all. I’m training more at football and I’m swimming more—”

“Dad said you only went swimming twice this month, and that last month you didn’t swim at all, that you weren’t going swimming next month either because it was gonna be too cold.”

“Yeah, well, I just don’t want to,” Kaito said through gritted teeth.

“Bro, what—”

“Look, I just don’t want to!” Kaito snapped at her, and his raised voice made the cat jump in surprise. She looked fucking stupid, peering up at him with her eyes wide and the plastic ball dangling from her mouth, and Velma took it off her, tossing it this time up on top of the wardrobe and watching her wiggle her arse before trying to jump up it and failing.

Her paws landed flat against the wood and her front paws tried to grab for the upper edge of the door but were off grabbing it by a good two four or five inches, and she let out a pitiful noise as she slid down it and landed on the floor, then hopped up onto the bed to try again.

She did make the jump this time, but she wasn’t exactly graceful as she managed it – her back end collapsed off the side of the wardrobe, banging the looser door, and she had to scrabble with her back legs to push the rest of her body on top of it.

“Are you sure that she’ll be able to use this stuff you want for her?” Velma asked sceptically. “She’s not exactly a gymnast.”

“I figure it’ll help her get better,” Kaito said, although he didn’t look as confident as he had when he’d asked about the catification in the first place with his messy sketches on note paper. “And there won’t be as big gaps between like, the top of the wardrobe and the floor, because there’ll be more stuff at that height.”

“More chances for her to fall from that height as well,” Velma muttered, and as if to refute – or maybe illustrate – her point, Snowdrop jumped from the top of the wardrobe with the ball in her mouth and landed belly first onto the middle of the bed, her limbs spread-eagled beneath her, with a squeak around the jingling ball between her teeth.

“Good girl, Snowdrop,” said Kaito, trying not to laugh.

“If I’m pressuring you too much too, that’s fine,” Velma said. “You don’t have to do the karate just because Ginchiyo and me do it – Dad’s always been shit at it. But you’ve got your purple belt and your white stripe, so it just seems a shame not to continue with it.”

Kaito didn’t say anything, his jaw set.

“I’m not trying to pressure you if you really want to give it up, Kaito, it’s your choice. If you don’t want to spar with me anymore, we can just—”

“No, I do, I like sparring with you,” Kaito said, huffing out an irritable, frustrated sound, and he tossed the ball again onto the bed, but Snowdrop had had enough, and she started to bonk her big head against Kaito’s knee, purring when he stroked under her cheeks.

That demonic cat couldn’t have been pet like this, but she couldn’t help but wonder if it would like to play with a toy ball or a feather toy – that thing was a damn sight more graceful than Snowdrop was, anyway.

“It’s okay if there’s no reason, either,” Velma said, exhaling as she leaned back in her seat. “Not trying to nag, just… just to understand. We can drop it.”

“Thanks,” Kaito said, sliding his thumbs against Snowdrop’s pudgy cheeks and listening to her purr. “Can you drive me to the doctor’s and back on Friday? I have my shot, and the bus stops like half an hour away at the moment because of the roadworks.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Velma said. “You like the injection better than the gel?”

“God, it’s so much better,” Kaito muttered. “The gel is not made for people that do fucking sports as much as I do, and not for people that have cats either. I’d have to lock this idiot out of my room while it was drying and setting in, and sometimes she can jimmy my bedroom door open if it’s not closed quite all the way, and even if I’d washed my hands, I’d have to run away to stop her jumping on my shoulders and rubbing her face in it! Dad thinks she likes how the alcohol in it smelt.”

“Oh, Snowy,” Velma said, leaning forward, and Snowdrop immediately stepped forward with her tail in the air, coming to put two front paws on Velma’s knee, looking up at her lovingly as Velma tickled under her softly vibrating chin, her purr pigeon-like, with a trill to it. “Are you a fucking idiot, babe? Are you really fucking stupid?”

Snowdrop purred louder, and Velma patted her on the head as Kaito started to laugh.

*    *    *

Once she was home in London again, she moved out of the flat and into Ginchiyo’s place – her lease had been up in October anyway, and it wasn’t too much of a hardship to move everything over. She didn’t take Ginchiyo’s bedroom, simply locking it up, and took the guest bedroom instead.

Ginchiyo had texted her saying it was fine to take the master bedroom, and when Velma had gone in she’d seen that basically all of her aunt’s personal items – her clothes and jewellery, her non-professional books and DVDs, her own magic stuff – had all been packed neatly away in boxes and crates that were stacked in the back of her walk-in closet.

What she hadn’t packed away were the huge shunga prints framed on every fucking wall, mostly depicting lesbians but the huge one across the ceiling the iconic Hokusai of a fisherman’s wife having sex with an octopus, and for all she could appreciate a bit of vintage erotica, she didn’t want to appreciate her aunt’s vintage erotica, and she certainly didn’t want it literally looking down on her while she tried to sleep.

The guest bedroom got more sun than Ginchiyo’s, anyway, because Ginchiyo tended to sleep in late, and at least Velma didn’t have to worry about upsetting the landlord here – this was an all-magical building, owned by some ancient wizened vampire who lived on the basement level and had sold Ginchiyo the leasehold for a song back in the 90s after she’d sorted out some sort of infestation for her in her great-granddaughter’s family home, magical termites or something like that.

Velma had met the old lady – Kunigunde – a few times before, and she had once remarked very approvingly, in a thick accent, “Ah, another girl whose soul hails from Lesbos, hm?” and not waited for an answer, drifting down the hallway to pet number 9’s pet dog.

Velma had laid out her sheets and put away her books and clothes, and she figured she could take apart Ginchiyo’s bed and use the room for storage just as soon as she felt up to taking down all the prints.

The only annoying thing about the place was that the flat she’d been in with the mundie students had had a car parking space included – the only reason she’d taken it, to be honest, because the lads were fucking filthy – and Ginchiyo had a van that she kept in a stock warehouse, because she relied on public transport around town.

“Ah, we do not have this,” Kunigunde had said when Velma had asked if there was anywhere attached to park her car in the building, which made sense, given that her place was down on the basement level. “You know what, though? I have a friend, he is haunted, you will go to him. You say I sent you, you wish to use his vehicle parking, he has more spaces than he needs, and you take the haunting away.”

“Okay,” said Velma mildly, watching Kunigunde painstakingly scrawl out an address she could only just make out, but she recognised it as a place only a few streets away, a tiny little pawn shop which had – she’d noticed before – an unusually generous car park attached.

This was how she ended up driving up to Nottingham late that Friday afternoon, a file box of work to get through on the seat beside her, and up against her breast in the driver’s seat, a haunted doll.

*    *    *

“Oh,” Hamish said quietly, and he cradled the doll very gently in his arms as he took it from her, holding it up against his breast in the crook of one arm. The doll was exquisitely crafted of peach-painted porcelain and dressed in a yellow dress and bonnet and matching yellow wool booties. Her dark blonde curls, carefully brushed and cared for, were made of real human hair. “Oh, hello, little one, hello.”

The shop keeper had answered her irritable and sleepless, and had all but thrown a keycard for the night-time carpark gate at her before she’d even finished saying who she was, even before Velma had had a look through the most recent stock he had in, stuff from an older woman who’d recently died.

He’d been kept up for the better part of a week with the crying at all hours, and as soon as Velma had touched the doll, she’d felt it quake through her, the enchantment written on the inside of the porcelain, and more than that, the sheer weight to it.

“Please tell me it’s not what I think it is,” Velma said, and Hamish gave her a rather sad look over the top of his glasses, gesturing with a nod and a movement of his hand for her to flip over the sign on the door.

Velma felt a churning sickness deep in her belly as she obeyed, and then she followed Hamish up the stairs and into the kitchen. The alastora tumbled over themselves, buzzing, to grab and tug at the old man as they usually did, but they faltered at a sharp, authoritative bark of sound from him, falling around him on the floor and the bannisters like smoked bees.

“Come here,” she said, making kissing sounds at a few of them, and about twenty of them took the invitation immediately, coming to fall over her shoulders, one climbing into the collar of her turtleneck and tucking itself in underneath her bob, its leathery wings curling around her neck and under her ears, and she laughed despite herself, reaching back to scratch its back as she held most of the other alastora in a pile in the crook of her arm, some of them in the pockets of her cardigan, another one wrapping around her ankle and chewing on her sock, though it stopped after she nudged it with her other foot.

She sat down at the dining table and watched as he pulled another of the chairs closer to the fire with his foot, keeping the doll firmly against his breast as he reached into the back of a cupboard with his spare hand and pulled out a very small baby’s bottle.

He was singing softly under his breath as he rocked the doll in his arm, a song she didn’t know – it wasn’t Scots Gaelic, but one of the similar fae languages, she guessed, because the rhythm was familiar even though the words and tune weren’t. Around him, a saucepan levitated into the air and sat itself on the job, a little milk pouring from the glass bottle in the cold cabinet.

She felt even sicker at the realisation that he’d done this before, and she wondered how many times, how many, he’d had one of these fucking things in his arms, how many times she’d held one of them just like this, and she was grateful he’d taken it off her so quickly.

He’d been a bit curt with her on the phone when she’d said she was on her way, but his face had changed when she’d come in, and he hadn’t even hesitated as he’d reached out for the doll.

“Have you had a lot of these?” she asked as he poured warm milk into the bottle, testing the temperature against the inside of his wrist.

“There there, take that, won’t you, mo leanbh, there you are, how’s that now? What a hungry girl you must be, there, that’s it, there you are.”

She could hear it, the sucking sound, and she watched the milk slowly begin to drain out of the bottle as she leaned her elbows on the table, letting one of the alastora chew on her thumb, although flicked one with her finger and knocked it over when it did the same thing and tried to eat a bit of her nail polish.

Nausea bubbled in the base of her belly.

“These little things are very uncommon these days,” Hamish said quietly after a few more moments. Velma could see the slow blink and shutter of the doll’s eyes as it drank, and although she couldn’t see its cheeks move as it sucked, she almost imagined she could do.

It had cried most of the drive up, and truth be told, she’d cried a bit too, hadn’t been able to keep the hot, wet tears from her cheeks.

“They should be,” Velma whispered. “That should be illegal, that.”

“Where did you get her?” Hamish asked.

“A pawnbroker near where I am, just had this bunch of random crap from an old woman’s house – you know when the council just goes through and clears out all the magical stuff leftover from a mostly mundie citizen’s house? Well, they have a deal with this guy for basic enchanted stuff, you know. The council guy must not have realised what it was, and the pawnbroker didn’t recognise it.”

“Didn’t he?” Hamish asked, raising one eyebrow, his tone very arch.

“He wasn’t that much older than me,” Velma said. “His dad’s place, I think.”

“Mmm,” retorted Hamish, not seeming softened by the excuse. “Do you know how long he’s had her?”

“Six days.”

“And the Fates only know how long she was alone in the house,” Hamish whispered. “You don’t know her name?”

Velma shook her head, and Hamish sighed, shaking his head.

“How old is she?” Velma asked. “I mean— I know the… the baby inside is, has to be…”

“Judging by the craftsmanship of the doll, the clothing, I would guess she died in the late eighteen-hundreds, poor thing. She’s been very well cared-for, I would guess, up until now – I expect it was her mother who died, and if, as you say, she was living as a mundie, she must not have arranged a magical will and testament with particular instructions. She may well have given instructions in a mundie will to an appropriate relative – look after the doll, or where to take her – but it mustn’t have been registered in advance if they dropped her in a box and left her with the first pawnbroker they saw.

“You seem so horrified,” he added, and she looked up at him from around the alastora that were crammed in a pile between her chest and the table, snoring and buzzing quietly, very different from Snowdrop’s trilling purr. The one against her neck was fast asleep, and she could feel its tiny little hot breaths up against the back of her neck.

“They should make them illegal,” Velma said, and Hamish’s smile was soft now, strangely indulgent – his eyes looked very, very sad, and he took the bottle away from the mourning doll, wiping its porcelain chin with his thumb before pouring a little bit more milk into the pot to heat. “She can’t get sick, right?”

“No,” Hamish said. “This sort of necromancy, they really just need any sort of liquid with sugars or protein – these dolls can suckle from mothers still breastfeeding, until their milk dries up wholly, even, but so long as I don’t physically overfill the vessel within before she has time to turn it all into magic, which I couldn’t do with what I’ve left of the bottle, it won’t leak.”

“Is it—” Velma started, and then swallowed. Hamish wasn’t looking at her angrily or with annoyance, just with a polite expectation. “Is she still crying?”

“No,” Hamish said softly. “A little grizzling – grumpy about her last few weeks – and that’s all. She’ll sleep, once she’s had her fill.”

“They sleep, then? They eat, and sleep, and…?”

“Eat and sleep,” Hamish said. “Gurgle and groan and laugh and such. They don’t develop, as a living child might, frozen in the state they are, but they do as they will have alive – no sneezes or coughs, no rashes, no illness that might have besieged them in life. Only hunger and tiredness.”

Velma nodded. One of the alastora had sprawled on its back on the table like Snowdrop, and she was stroking a tuft of fur-like hair on its leathery wing between her thumb and forefinger the way she used to with their old cat’s – Roger’s – loose armpit skin. Snowdrop hated that, and wouldn’t stand for it.

“It isn’t out of cruelty she’s been kept like this,” Hamish said softly. “It will have been a balm for her mother, I would expect, keeping her like this, in semi-animation – the theory is not dissimilar to the modern therapy dolls for the purpose today, those very realistic babies that cry and toilet and so forth.”

“Keeping a dead baby’s soul bound up for a century, though,” Velma whispered. “That’s not the same. Are you going to destroy it? The— not, not her. The doll. Can you…?”

“Yes,” Hamish said, nodding. “I’ll give her a feed and once she’s been asleep for a little while, I’ll break the bindings holding her in place – she’ll go free, and the doll will be empty. I might destroy it, then – spirits love dolls like this, with all that magic clinging to them, real human hair – can’t have been hers, will have been her mother’s, or maybe a sibling’s, this is probably a dress she wore in life as well. These little booties, they’ve been repaired once or twice – I expect they were the first she ever wore as a babe.”

Velma’s eyes were teary again, and she turned her head away, not looking at the old man, who to his credit, started to sing quietly to the mourning doll again – this one was in Scots Gaelic, and it was a sad one, a mother’s lament for her baby stolen by fae.

She didn’t know how long she sat there for – long enough for Hamish to go away again, long enough for her to lean back in her seat.

Long enough for her to wake up she didn’t know how long later, a blanket in her lap, her eyes wiped dry, every alastora in the flat crammed up against her because Hamish was downstairs and gone back to work.

“Come on, get off,” she mumbled, getting up and stretching out her sore neck – the alastora all made noises of groaning complaint as she stiffly walked over to the old man’s cold cabinet and pulled out various shit that she could see and knew what to do with.

When he came upstairs, it must have been nearly ten – she didn’t know when she’d arrived, seven or eight o’clock.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said shortly as she stirred potatoes in his big cast iron pan.

“On the contrary, I appreciate it mightily,” he said. She didn’t turn around to look at him, but she heard him coo quietly to the alastora as they fell all over him.

“Is it— Is it… You did it?”

“She’s gone,” said Hamish, and Velma didn’t cry this time, just nodded her head and added some garlic into the pan.

He didn’t say anything, but put a record on – an Asbat Nur-Badr album, swinging songs from the seventies, Eartha Kitt covers and the like – and put away the blanket she’d been sleeping under.

She was fucking grateful when she drove back to her parents’ after dinner that night and everyone else had already gone to bed, so she could lie on the sofa, her face mashed into Snowdrop’s belly, and talk to nobody else at all.