The attic floor creaked. Her grandmother’s oak hope chest stood at the far end, lit by a spill of moonlight. She ran her fingers through the grooves of carved vines on its surface, recalling with a stab of melancholy the first time she’d opened it.
“Take whatever calls you,” her grandmother had said. YoungRowan’s hand traveled straight to a pendant: a chunk of quartz with three other stones embedded in its front—fire opal, aquamarine, and cat’s eye.
Her grandmother had snatched it from her hand, saying, “You are every bit my heir. With this, you won’t depend on anyone.” Then the old woman folded up the pendant and stowed it back away. “But you can’t have that till I’m gone.”
In the present, the pendant sat on top of the trunk’s contents, its rough-spun fiber cord stretched out as if someone had intentionally put it on display. It wasn’t what she had come for, but it had been waiting for her all the same, and so she pulled it out and slipped it over her head. The stone landed with a tingle atop her breastbone.
More items came into view, bringing with them a fresh wave of grief. She lingered on the glass Coke bottle that had always sat on her grandmother’s windowsill, a fresh flower or two stuck inside. It had come from her first date with Rowan’s grandfather, Samuel. Rowan hadn’t known him—he’d died in a forestry accident when she was a baby—but he’d lived on, larger than life, in her grandmother’s stories.
After another moment of shuffling things about, she found her grandmother’s grimoire, a thick leather book emblazoned with the Green Man. She’d never seen its contents. Her mother had forbidden it, insisting that Madeleine never teach mind-affecting spells to Rowan.
But though Grandmother Madeleine had respected the letter of Liliana’s law, that hadn’t stopped her from dropping hints, which altogether formed a trail of breadcrumbs for Rowan to follow to get a basic understanding of mental magic.
Rowan stuck to little spells. Tricks to affect her own mind. Nothing that affected anyone else. Nothing that crossed the line her mother held so dear. The truth spell, though, would definitely cross that line.
If the harm averted is less than the harm done, the Rede is satisfied.
Birdie’s arguments rang clear. Ignoring these spells when there was so much at stake would also do harm.
She opened the grimoire.
Its pages were filled with her grandmother’s messy handwriting and decorated with all manner of objects—pressed flowers, dried leaves, ticket stubs, invitations, newspaper clippings, and so very many photographs. Everything from black-and-white images surrounded with lacy borders to blurry, blown-out digital photos printed on a LaserJet.
She’d wondered why her mother hadn’t simply destroyed the grimoire if she found its contents so repulsive, but this was more than a book of spells—it was the record of a life. Rowan’s grandmother’s life. Liliana’s mother’s life. It was difficult to let go of a thing like that, even if you might’ve been better off for its absence.
“Where is it?” Rowan murmured, licking a finger to flip the pages.
The book opened to a page titledA Spell to Do as I Say.
Her stomach turned. This was the spell her grandmother had used on the man who’d threatened the coven. For all that Rowan could justify the truth spell to herself, she had to give it to her mother that this one was wrong. The idea of reaching in and overpowering someone’s will, turning them into her puppet, was twisted, and it made her feel a little sick to think her grandmother had done it with no hesitation.
She continued on, passing more spells that her grandmother and mother had fought over. Spells likeA Spell to Steal a Heart.
“The goddess will judge me” was all Grandmother Madeleine would say.
To which her mother replied, “Yes, she will.”
Rowan agreed with her mother on love spells. At least you might useA Spell to Do as I Sayas an act of self-defense, but therewas no just cause for forcing someone into a relationship that went against their own instincts.
She paused on a page titledA Spell for the Uninvited Guest,and she smiled. A series of strikethroughs and scribbles revealed the experimentation that had led her grandmother to the spell’s final shape. Madeleine had taped a ticket to a dance at the Elk Ridge community center on the opposite page. The story of the ticket had always been one of Rowan’s favorites.
“When I was young,” said Madeleine Midwinter, taking Rowan in her lap and coiling one of the girl’s curls around a finger, “we weren’t so welcome around town. In fact, it had been only a few decades since they’d hanged a Midwinter woman for witchcraft—my great-aunt. A blight got into the timber stock, and we were easy to blame.
“They’d stopped hanging us by the time I was a girl, but they didn’t invite us to community gatherings. There was a big dance happening for all the men home from the war, and I wanted a ticket. Samuel Cartwright, you see, was going to be there, and I had bought myself a snappy red dress and was determined to catch his eye.
“So I dreamed up a spell to get me an invitation, and it worked, and once I found my way onto his dance card, I never left. There was no other magic at work that night—nothing but the power of a red dress.”
The memory left Rowan smiling as she turned the pages to press on to what she was really looking for—something that would prevent certain individuals from lying if she asked what they had planned for her town. She already knew who she was going to interrogate.
There it was—A Spell for the Whole Truth.
She passed her finger along the instructions. It was a simple spell. No wonder her grandmother had cast it with such ease. As it was Rowan’s first time casting it, she would go through the full ritualto ensure it went off how she’d planned. She would need her athame, chunks of clear crystal, either a white or purple candle, and, most challengingly, a poppet doll that bore some bit of Hayleigh’s person.
But how to guarantee she ran into Hayleigh while under the effects of the spell? And if she did, how would she get the Goshen Group rep to stick around long enough to get all the information she needed? A truth spell would be useless if Hayleigh simply walked away—which she would, because they weren’t exactly buddies.
Rowan’s head ached in rebellion, reminding her how late it had gotten, but she couldn’t let herself go to sleep until she figured this out. Hayleigh was heading home tomorrow, and by the time the Goshen Group came back, it would be too late.
As the pressure mounted, the nausea she’d suppressed earlier roiled back up. This was a bad idea. It could go wrong in so many ways. There was a price to pay with magic like this, and she’d pay it whether or not the spell made any difference to the fate of Elk Ridge. The problem was too big, and she was too small.
