“Morning.”
“Where’s that big black bird of yours, Bell? And how do I get one?”
Bella circles the table and resettles herself on the arm of Quinn’s chair. “Strix, you mean? He comes and goes as he pleases. Sometimes he vanishes altogether, back to the other side.”
“Huh. And where’s Agnes?” Juniper reaches for her without thinking, forgetting that the spell that bound them is done and over now. But the invisible line between them is still there. She can feel Agnes somewhere in the city, toiling away.
It takes Juniper far too long to realize that Bella has not answered her, that she’s even now shuffling a stack of pages on her desk rather than meeting Juniper’s eyes. “Agnes is . . . no longer an active member of the Sisters of Avalon. By her own volition.”
“What?”
“She got scared and quit,” Quinn clarifies.
Juniper feels a petulant heat in her throat. It was supposed to be the three of them together again, one for all and all for one. “But she was here. She called back the Lost Way with us. And you’re telling me she just split?”
Bella says, softly, “She’s got more than just her own neck to look out for, remember.” It’s the closest Juniper has heard Bella come to defending their sister. “And it’s more dangerous now. Look.” Bella unfolds a waxy-looking poster from a stack on her desk and hands it over.
Juniper meets her own eyes on the page: her face is sketched in charcoal, standing between her sisters. Juniper is drawn tangle-haired and snarling, like the kind of witch who lives in the woods and runs with wolves; Bella is sharp-boned and thin, like the witch who lives in a spun-sugar house and eats little children; Agnes is all curves and lips, more like the witch who lures men to her bed and leaves them cold and white in the morning. The caption reads: THE SISTERS EASTWOOD: WANTED FOR MURDER & MOST WICKED WITCHCRAFT, and offers a generous reward for information regarding their whereabouts.
Juniper looks down at their monstrous faces and feels a bitter twist in her gut. If it’s a villain they want, who is she to deny them?
Bella folds the poster away. “There are rumors, too, Quinn tells me. Hysterical theories about your escape and a black tower seen on the solstice. The square is still full of birds, apparently. A few churches have begun holding nightly vigils against the return of witching—they’re telling their congregations that the fever is a punishment sent by either God or the Devil, they can’t seem to agree which—oh, quit grinning like that, June, this is serious!”
“Jesus, Bell, lighten—”
“There have been nineteen arrests since the solstice.” Quinn speaks very slowly and clearly, as if she thinks Juniper might need things spelled out in one-syllable words. “Mostly harmless street-witches—an abortionist, a fortune-teller, a woman who claimed to speak with the dead. There have been raids, too, women beaten bloody for nothing but a few feathers in their pockets or a questionable spice-rack.”
Juniper is not grinning anymore. She hears Agnes asking her what comes after, what it costs. “Are the Sisters alright?”
Quinn makes a little yes-and-no bob of her head. “Four of them are still in the workhouse, as far as I know; I still haven’t found Jennie. A few others have had unpleasant encounters with the police. The Hull sisters were among the nineteen arrests.”
Juniper can’t think of anything to say, can hardly think around the queasy guilt crawling up her throat. Quinn isn’t finished. “There are calls for the mayor’s resignation. The City Council has formed a committee to investigate the rise of witchcraft, headed by Mr. Gideon Hill. Who has climbed rather dramatically in the polls.”
At the sound of Hill’s name Juniper stops feeling guilty or queasy or guilty; the only thing she feels is afraid. “He came to visit me in the Deeps,” she rasps.
“Who did?”
“Gideon Hill. And he’s not—he isn’t—” She swallows against the memory of those shadowy fingers pressing between her lips. “He’s a witch.”
Bella and Quinn are quiet as Juniper stutters through the story, but she can tell she isn’t getting it right. She tells them what happened—how he melted through the bars, how he pulled confessions from her, how he laughed—but she can’t seem to tell them how it was. How his eyes flicked, furtive and fearful, how a stranger stood behind his face. How the shadows slid like oil between her teeth.
“Well,” Bella said, adjusting her spectacles. “I suppose if men’s magic has proved somewhat efficacious for us, it stands to reason a man might master a little witchcraft.”
“It wasn’t a little witchcraft. He said every shadow was his, he said—”
“A bluff, surely. It would require an unthinkable degree of power to control a city full of shadows. And the ways would be ghastly, I imagine. We’d have heard about it if there were dozens of white lambs going missing, or piles of bones found in the City Council chambers, don’t you think?”
Juniper sets her jaw. “I know what I saw. We ought to figure out what the hell he is, at least. And send a message to Agnes and the other Sisters, warn them that he knows their names, probably where they live, where they work.”
Bella taps the folded-up poster again. “I suspect Agnes knows. She was already planning to leave South Sybil, I believe, and work under a different name. I recommended the ladies at Salem’s Sin, should she need to disguise herself.” There’s a gentleness to her tone, as if Juniper is a fretful horse that needs settling. “She could not be more cautious than she already is.”
Juniper looks away, around the wood-paneled room that shouldn’t exist. There’s a narrow, mullioned window on the east wall, and the light that shines through this one is wintry and pale, as if it looks out at the month of January rather than June.
“So. This is it.” Juniper makes ata-dagesture with her hands. “The Lost Way of Avalon. Is it—did we—” The question she wants to ask is a childish one, but she can’t help herself. “Are we witches now?”
Neither of them laugh at her, although Quinn’s mouth quirks again. Bella sweeps her hand grandly at the piled books and notes on the table. “We certainly have sufficient ways and words to become so, don’t we? An entire library of spells and hexes, curses and charms, poisons, potions, conjurings, recipes . . . Quinn and I are developing a system to catalog and translate them all.” Bella gives a small, contented sigh.
“Translate them?”
