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The witch shrugged. “You’re assuming they only killed one baby…”

Chapter 21

Red

“So, you’re witches?” My gaze flitted between Grandma Josephine and Olivia. “Both of you?”

Xavier rolled his eyes but kept his lips firmly pressed together.

“Grandma is,” Olivia answered. “She taught me some of it, but I don’t really have the…what is it you say, Grandma?”

“Witch bones.”

“And this book?” I looked pointedly at the tome resting on the old woman’s lap. The thing was clearly ancient. It looked homemade, like a grimoire, its thick black covers and thick yellow pages both having once kept some animal’s insides from being on the outside. I could imagine a witch in a cottage, pre-electricity, pre-plumbing, scratching down her spells in it with a quill. “Can you use it?”

“It’s not like knitting patterns, young man.” Grandma Josephine frowned at the book. “Magic’s personal. It’s tailored to each person. Hard to teach.”

“So, what’s the point of writing it down then?”

“I said hard, not impossible.” She fixed me with those bright eyes of hers. “But most like, our witch was keeping notes for herself. Important details can slip away from anyone.”

Olivia nodded. “She’d have had a lot on her mind back in those days. Like not starving, and not getting caught.”

“They burned witches, didn’t they?” I shuddered violently. The idea that people did such awful things to each other, and not far away, but right here where I lived, had never felt real to me. But having touched a cover that was last held by hands that might have felt those fires made it all seem far closer than was comfortable. “Tortured them for confessions and then…”

“Not in 1712,” Olivia said. “Not officially, anyway. The last lawful English witch hanging was 1685—”

“Eighty-four,” her grandmother corrected. Clearly a topic of interest to both of them. “In England they hanged witches. The Scots were the ones keen on burning. The last accused Scottish witch was burned in 1727.” She set her withered fingers to the cover in her lap, and her jaw trembled. “There’ll be a time to read what’s written here, but we got the book out for your friend, Rose, didn’t we? So, let’s see what comes of that.”

She made sense, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. I had too much adrenaline running through me. Too much restless energy twitching in my fingertips.

“Can’t you cast a spell and find out where Sophie is?” And if so, I wanted to add, then why the hell didn’t you do it last night?

Olivia shook her head. “Not even Grandma could find someone she’s never met. It’s not like a bloodhound sniffing a shoe and following the trail. It’s more…” She waved her hand in a circle and looked to the old lady for support.

“Sympathetic,” she said. “Familiar.” Her eyes roamed the book-walled space as if following things that I couldn’t see. “It does help considerably to know the target of any spell. And there’s always a price to be paid.” She frowned, as if at the memory of pain, then continued. “I could not have found your sister last night, or this morning. But…” She looked pointedly at Olivia. “Can’t you feel it?”

Olivia frowned. “I can feel something.” She shivered. “What is it?”

“Power.” Grandma Josephine circled her hands in the air as if gathering yarn. “A potent curse was released here. A strength beyond my own. But perhaps I can ride it.” She looked at me. “Like a surfer rides a wave.” She grabbed my wrist.

“Ouch.” She held me tight enough for it to hurt, and a coldness spread up my arm. I half expected the old woman’s eyes to roll back into her skull, but beyond taking on an intensity that made their darkness burn, nothing changed at all.

“She’s not here.” Grandma Josephine sounded surprised.

“I can see that,” Xavier muttered.

“Shush, you. I mean she’s not anywhere close. Not in this town. Not in the fields neither. She’s gone.”

“Dead?” I whispered it.

“Gone,” Grandma Josephine repeated. “Ain’t here. Dead or alive. Not unless she’s hidden better than I can find.”

I reached for the book that Rose had used to speak with me and whose letters had fashioned themselves into a body for her. The witch’s book had sucked the ink off my fingers, and I didn’t want to touch it again and find out what else it might take. But I did need to speak with Rose to see what had been gained.

I touched the cover, and before I could even open it an idea seized me.

“I need to see my mother.”