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The answer was in here…it had to be.

I shivered, thinking about Amy and Imogen and Marina, and what they must be going through, how scared they must be.

Failure wasn’t an option.

CHAPTER 14

Iris

There were four books, all leather-bound, and Gunther had stacked them in order of age—newest at the bottom.

I stood, slid on the white gloves, and took the first book from the top. The leather was thick and worn, rich brown in color. The hinges were iron, and it was seriously weighty. I lowered it to the table’s surface and undid the buckle, holding it closed.

I scanned the first page. Whoa. It was dated 1302, and I was no expert, but I was pretty sure some of it was written in Italian, or at least an early version of it? Which made sense since our ancestors originated from Italy. I worked my way through, but this was farther back than I needed.

The next book, again, was still too far back.

I opened the third book. Bingo. We were in the right century.

The leather of this book was black and velvety smooth, the pages thick. I carefully turned to the back, where the others had the family trees written, along with lists of births and deaths. I ran my finger down the list of births first. Selene’s name was on the second page, alongside her location and date of birth. The date had been entered twice, again right below. The name under Selene’s had been crossed out, though, a red line right through the middle. It wasn’t thick enough to conceal what was written, but the line through it was definitely blood.

A spell.

I snapped a picture and enlarged it on the screen to get a better look.

Charity.

What the hell? I’d never heard that name before, not once. Had Selene been a twin? That’s what this looked like. I turned to the family tree drawn on the inner back cover. Selene and Charity had both been added, but again, Charity’s name had been crossed out in blood.

I carefully flipped to the beginning of the book and started reading the scribes’ entries: recollections, our histories. Important events, births, deaths, marriages, along with funny little anecdotes, recipes, and, of course, spells, more or less of the latter two, depending on who had inherited the book over the years. Some provided more information than others.

The author had written about Beatrix Thornheart and her wedding to Giles Pickering. Beatrix was our great-great-great-aunt and one of the most powerful witches in the history of our family. She would have used Pickering as her surname, but only because that’s what the humans of the time would have expected. To her coven and other witches around her, she would have remained a Thornheart. We didn’t take our husband’s names, and our children didn’t either. That’s how it worked in a coven.

I skipped ahead. Beatrix had become pregnant soon after. The story of the birth was harrowing, though some of the thick, sloped writing was hard to decipher. From what I could read, Beatrix had almost died, but in the end, she and Giles were blessed with…twin daughters.

Selene and Charity.

I sat back.

Well, shit.

I read the rest of the book, but there wasn’t much mentioned about Selene and Charity again. I slid it aside and pulled the next book closer. The red leather was heavily tooled, the corners tipped with silver. I opened the book to the back like I had the others. It spanned a longer time frame. Being a newer book, the pages were thinner, so there were a lot more. Else and Gran’s births were there, Mom, her sisters, me, and my sisters, our cousins, right at the bottom of the list.

I flipped it carefully to the front again and started reading. The first entries were written by Selene. She must have inherited it at some point.

I ran my finger down each page, reading Selene’s words. When she married. The births of her daughters.

But no mention of Charity.

I reached almost the end of Selene’s section before it was handed to another to take over the task of scribe—then I saw it.

It was her handwriting, but it was also different, unsteady, darker, like she’d been pressing down hard on the pen.

Charity returned.

Her magic more powerful, her skills in the dark arts as great as her desire to cause harm. We were forced to do the unspeakable to protect our loved ones.

My sister is no more.