Until she isn’t.
The air of the hospital skews sideways, a dizzy rushing, and afterward there are two hands pressed to the bloody circle on her bed-sheet. One of them is long and narrow, the fingertips stained with ink; the other is wide, sun-brown, marked with pale scars from thorns and thickets.
Her sisters.
Who were watching, who came when she called.
They stand above her like a matched pair of Old Testament angels, the kind with flaming swords and vengeful hearts. Stories spin through Agnes’s head again, except this time she isn’t thinking of the dead mothers or their lost daughters. She’s thinking about the witches—the women who dispensed the glass slippers and curses and poison apples, who wreaked their wills on the world and damned the consequences.
There is a moment of crystalline silence while the gathered men stare at the three women and the black owl. Then comes Bella’s voice, perfectly calm, and the sharp smell of herbs crushed between fingers. A wicked crack splits the air, very much like a small bone snapping.
The police officers fall sideways, clutching at their ribs and howling. The doctor lunges for Juniper, but she’s already holding the hospital push broom in her hands. The handle cracks across his face with an unpleasant crunch. Bella whispers again and a heavy drowsiness descends on the room. The pair of assistants crumple to the floor and the howling officers fall silent.
The ward is quiet except for the heavy drag of bodies being hauled across the floor. The doctor rouses once, voice rising in a high whine. There are a few more thuds of broom-handle on flesh and he falls quiet.
Bellatsks. “Honestly, Juniper. The sleeping spell would have done just as well.”
“Sure.” Agnes can hear Juniper’s shrug in her voice, followed by a final, satisfied thwack of the broomstick.
Bella chants over Agnes’s head—Soundly she sleeps beneath bright skies, Agnes Amaranth awake, arise!—and gives a sharp whistle.
The drug lifts from Agnes like a rising fog. She pants relief, limbs seizing against the chains. She cranes her neck upward and sees the sorry-eyed nurse holding open the narrow door of what looks like a supply closet while Juniper stuffs the limp bodies inside it. “Now go tell them the doctor doesn’t want any interruptions—or better yet, take this.” Juniper hands the nurse a small canvas sack. “You remember the words? Once you work it, hightail it home. With my thanks, Lacey.”
Agnes wants to ask how they know one another and if every damn woman in this city is a witch, but another roll of pain sends her elsewhere, inward-facing, blind.
When it passes, her sisters are hovering above her. Their hands are gentle on hers, unbending her blood-gummed fingers, and their eyes are so full of love and worry that Agnes feels the pain receding a little. An owl calls from somewhere, a soft crooning that makes Agnes think of full-moon nights back home.
“We’re here now.” Juniper’s voice is low and smoke-streaked, as soft as she can make it. “Bella’s spelled the door and Lacey’s sent half the hospital straight to sleep. It’ll be all right.”
“I shouldn’t have—I should have—” Agnes’s tongue is still slow, her speech slurred. “The doctor said the baby wasn’t coming, that she would have to beextracted.”
Bella tuts, setting glass jars in a neat line on the bedside table and clutching her black leather notebook. “I’m sure he did. But I remind you that he was merely a man. Whereas we”—she looks over her spectacles at Agnes and gives her a very small smile—“are witches.”
Bella opens a heavy tome titledObstetrix Magnaand smooths the pages with a slightly shaking hand, wishing she felt as certain as she sounded. “Juniper, can you take care of these?” She gestures to Agnes’s shackles, but Juniper is already chanting her rhyme,Bend and break, bend and break, and the chains are blushing red. The iron rusts and flakes, as if several decades of rain and weather have passed in a handful of seconds.
Juniper snaps the chains with vicious glee, the scar around her throat gleaming white.
Agnes pulls her arms inward, cradling her own belly. She doesn’t scream or moan, but a low, animal growl leaves her lips. Juniper looks a little wildly at Bella. “Can’t you do anything?”
Bella can. She claws through theObstetrix Magna, past alarming illustrations of wombs and veins and infants with small ivory horns or flames for hair. Her fingers find the pages she marked back in the tower, where there are spells to draw fevers from the womb and persuade blood to remain in the body, to ease the pains of labor and steady the heart of the unborn.
“Juniper.” Bella fumbles in her brown sack and finds a little tin of black-stained grease. “Draw a seven-pointed star around the bed, if you please.”
Juniper daubs the unsteady shape of a star while Bella circles, whispering and chanting. She tucks jasmine flower beneath her tongue and hyacinth in her hair. She rings a silver bell seven times and watches Agnes’s body unfurl a little further with each soft peal.
It’s a strong working. Bella can tell by the scorch of power in her veins and the hot smell of witching in the air. Juniper’s cheeks are flushed red from the effort of helping her, and Strix mantles on her shoulder.
Agnes sighs back down against the sheets, the trapped-animal terror receding from her face. Her gaze is unclouded, lucid for the first time since they arrived. “Thank you,” she breathes. “I didn’t know if you’d come.”
“Jesus, Ag.” Juniper shakes her head. “Have a little faith.”
“I used to. Until . . .” Agnes slants a bitter look at Bella.
Juniper says, “That was a long time ago,” just as Bella asks, “Until what?”
A contraction doubles Agnes around her belly, lips white, but her gaze stays clear and sharp as a bared blade. “Until—you—betrayedme,” she pants.
“Ibetrayedyou?”
