Juniper crosses her arms, runs her tongue over her teeth. “I know you know more than you’ve told me.”
“I—I—” Bella stutters, and Agnes marvels that she grew up in their daddy’s house without learning how to lie properly. “Yes. Alright. I found some . . . words, the day the tower appeared. I don’t know what came over me, but I spoke them aloud. And then . . .” She gestures upward, recalling the splitting seam of the sky and the dark tower.
Juniper stares hard for another second, then grins. “Yousnake. Iknewit was you. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Bella fumbles for an answer, but Agnes perfectly understands why a person might hesitate to give a vicious, vengeful girl the key to a mysterious and boundless power. There were stories in the old days about whole cities put to sleep, kingdoms frozen over in endless winter, armies reduced to rust and ash.
Juniper waves away Bella’s stutters. “Doesn’t matter now. The real question is: why haven’t you done it again?”
“Because it wasn’t a complete spell. It’s missing some of the words, and all of the ways.”
“Then find them! What exactly have you and your lady friend been up to, all those late nights in the library?”
A flush creeps up Bella’s neck. “She’s not my—Miss Quinn and I have been searching. We’ve collected some scraps, some possibilities, but we have nothing but theories, so far.”
“So let’s test them.” Bella looks doubtful and Juniper presses on, heedless. “Listen. Ever since the equinox the three of us have been bound together, haven’t we?”
Bellatsks, sliding her spectacles up her long nose. “An effect of an unfinished spell, I told you.”
“And how come the three of us were pulled into that spell in the first place? After seven years apart, what drew us together just when our oldest sister got stupid and read some words out loud?” Juniper’s voice lowers. “And before that—didn’t you feel something tugging you toward the square?”
Agnes remembers it: a line reeling her in, a finger prodding between her shoulder blades. She feels it still, an invisible hand chivying her toward her sisters despite her better judgment.
“Mags always said anything lost could be found. Remember that song she taught us?What is lost, that can’t be found?”
Bella blinks several times and murmurs, “I do, yes.”
“Well, I think maybe magicwantsto be found. And I think maybe we’re the ones who are supposed to find it.”
“What, likefate?” It’s the first thing Agnes has said since they stepped outside, and both her sisters flinch from the venom of it. “Likedestiny?” Fate is a story people tell themselves so they can believe everything happens for a reason, that the whole awful world is fitted together like some perfect machine, with blood for oil and bones for brass. That every child locked in her cellar or girl chained to her loom is in her right and proper place.
She doesn’t much care for fate.
Even Juniper looks a little cowed by whatever she sees in Agnes’s face. “Maybe not. Maybe it’s just luck that Bella found that spell. That the three of us wound up in St. George’s Square. On the equinox. A maiden”—she taps her own chest. “A mother”—she nods to Agnes. Bella casts her such a baffled, owlish look that Agnes suspects she didn’t notice the swell of her belly until this very second. Her mouth makes a small, perfect O.
“And a crone.” Juniper points at Bella, who makes a disgruntled sound. “Like the Last Three themselves.”
None of them speak for a moment. Juniper limps a little closer, until they stand in a tight circle of three, heads nearly touching. “Maybe Agnes is right, and that’s all horseshit. But what if it isn’t? What if we could make every woman in this city into a witch, just like that?” Juniper snaps her fingers. “No more reading witch-tales in books, Bell—you could write them yourself! And no more shit-work for shit-money, Ag. No more beingnothing.” Her voice thickens on the last word.
Juniper breathes hard through her nose and asks them a second time: “What do you say?”
“Alright.” Bella looks stunned by the sound of her own voice. “Yes.”
Juniper swivels to Agnes. “And you? Will you help us?” Her jaw is set, her eyes shining, and Agnes marvels at the contradiction of her: bright-eyed and black-hearted, vicious and vulnerable, a girl who knows so little of the world and far too much. A part of Agnes wants to say yes just so she can keep an eye on her.
Except she doesn’t get to choose for herself anymore. She smooths her blouse over her belly. “I can’t start any trouble. For her sake.”
Juniper looks down at her hand. “Oh, I think you’ve got to. For her sake.” She meets Agnes’s eyes, challenging. “Don’t you want to give her a better story than this one?”
Agnes does. Oh, how she does—to see her daughter grow free and fearless, walking tall through the dark woods of the world, armed and armored. To whisper in her ear each night:Don’t forget what you are.
Everything.
Agnes’s throat is too full-up with wanting to speak. Bella offers, tentatively, “You know the Mother herself started all sorts of trouble, in the stories. I wish . . .” Her voice lowers. “I think it might have been better for us if we’d had a more troublesome mother.”
Agnes looks between them, her wild sister and her wise sister.
She nods her head, once.
