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“Damian has been visiting me for three months. He’s the first Foxgrave man to reach me in forty years. I’ve taught him how to protect himself. How to protect you. But this isn’t work that can be done by him.”
I looked at her. “Work?”
“The work of undoing what has been done.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“I need you to destroy the Bridegroom,” she said. “With the help of your friends.”
I almost laughed. I definitely frowned. “Destroy him? Me?”
“I will give you everything you need, but this can only be done by the brides who were promised to him. It will be a divorce of sorts…your own divorce, and a divorce on behalf of every woman who was deceived into marrying him. It will be a divorce with a reckoning that he won’t survive, because no man can survive the combined fury of hundreds of years of angry women channeled through the spirit of my great-grandmother.”
I paused. Her words tugged at a memory.
“What’s mine is mine alone,” I murmured, remembering the freezing cold water of Moonstone Beach, waves pummeling me like fists as I spoke the three-fold refusal.
Branwen smiled. “Exactly.”
She glanced up, as if a star was twinkling right above her.
“The coven stole my baby from the hospital and forged the papers so I could never get her back,” she said, her hands gripping the mug like it was a piece of the story. “They brainwashed her beyond repair. Every one of those women got hollowed out as a girl by a woman above her, and they call it ‘initiation.’ They congratulate each other on their discipline. I’ve been waiting fifty years to destroy the thing that feeds them.”
I sat very still, listening to the crackle of the stove, asking myself if I’d heard her correctly.
“But how on earth would I do that?”
Branwen stood up and gestured to a framed black and white photograph on the wall. “This is Clemency. She was my great-grandmother. She was the first of us in this country. The photo was taken in 1897.”
I stood to look at it. A severe-looking woman in her late thirties stood on the porch of the house, wearing a long dark dress with a white collar. Her hair was pulled back in a bun. At either side of her was an enormous black dog, and they posed for the photograph in exactly the same way she did. Her eyes burned through more than a century to glare right at me, tired and clear and undefeated. She looked like she could curdle milk with a few harsh words and shame a fever into breaking.
“Clemency was an adept. She was recruited into the coven at nineteen but refused it at thirty. She was one of the few women strong enough to walk away with her soul and her body intact. She had inherited enough money to build this cottage, and she lived alone in it for forty years. She studied the esoteric traditions. She corresponded with other lineages. She even traveled to Europe and Mexico. By the time she refused the coven, she knew more about them and their working than they did.”
Branwen walked to a bookshelf. She pulled on the shelf, as if it were a door, and then I realized that’s exactly what it was. It revealed a hidden compartment. From there she pulled a small leather-bound journal, creased and darkened with age.
“This is her journal,” Branwen said, bringing it to the table.
We sat down again.
“It contains the original contract with the Bridegroom. And it contains the working that will sever it on terms that he will accept.”
Damian returned, toolbox in hand. “The screen door is fixed.”
“Thank you, dear. Sit down.”
He sat down next to me. His hand found mine under the table.
Branwen smiled. She didn’t miss anything.
“The journal,” I said. “What do I do with it?”
“You will summon Clemency.”
I nearly choked on a sip of tea. “Sorry, what?”
“She won’t be happy about it. She’s been at rest for a long time, after a difficult life. But if you earn her respect, she will help you.”
“You mean—”
