Vivian pulled down the driveway, her car’s headlights sweeping the old fence. I returned to the house, turned off the lights, and climbed the stairs to my husband.
“Did you lock the front door?” Matthew asked, putting down his book. He was stretched out on the bed, which was barely long enough to contain him.
“I couldn’t. It’s a dead bolt, and Sarah lost the key.” My eyes strayed to the key to our bedroom door, which the house had helpfully supplied on an earlier occasion. The memories of that night pushed my lips up into a smile.
“Dr. Bishop, are you feeling wanton?” Matthew’s tone was as seductive as a caress.
“We’re married.” I shucked off my shoes and reached for the top button on my seersucker shirt.
“It’s my wifely duty to have carnal desires where you’re concerned.”
“And it’s my husbandly obligation to satisfy them.” Matthew moved from the bed to the bureau at the speed of light. He gently replaced my fingers with his own and slid the button through its hole. Then he moved on to the next, and the next. Each inch of revealed flesh earned a kiss, a soft press of teeth.
Five buttons later I was shivering slightly in the humid summer air.
“How strange that you’re shivering,” he murmured, sliding his hands around to release the clasp on my bra. Matthew brushed his lips over the crescent-shaped scar near my heart. “You don’t feel cold.”
“It’s all relative, vampire.” I tightened my fingers in his hair, and he chuckled. “Now, are you going to love me, or do you just want to take my temperature?”
Later I held my hand up before me, turning it this way and that in the silver light. The middle and ring fingers on my left hand each bore a colored line, one the shade of a moonbeam and the other as gold as the sun. The vestiges of the other cords had faded slightly, though a pearly knot was still barely visible on the pale flesh of each wrist.
“What do you think it all means?” Matthew asked, his lips moving against my hair while his fingers traced figure eights and circles on my shoulders.
“That you’ve married the tattooed lady—or someone possessed by aliens.” Between the new lives rooting within me, Corra, and now my weaver’s cords, I was beginning to feel crowded inside my own skin.
“I was proud of you tonight. You thought of a way to save Grace so quickly.”
“I didn’t think at all. When Grace screamed, it flipped some switch in me. I was all instinct then.” I twisted in his arms. “Is that dragon thing still on my back?”
“Yes. And it’s darker than it was before.” Matthew’s hands slid around my waist, and he turned me back to face him. “Any theories as to why?”
“Not yet.” The answer was just out of my reach. I could feel it, waiting for me.
“Perhaps it has something to do with your power. It’s stronger now than it’s ever been.” Matthew carried my wrist to his mouth. He drank in my scent, then pressed his lips to my veins. “You still give off the scent of summer lightning, but now there’s also a note like dyn**ite when the lit fuse first touches the powder.”
“I have enough power. I don’t want any more,” I said, burrowing into Matthew.
But since we’d returned to Madison, a dark desire was stirring in my blood.
Liar, whispered a familiar voice.
My skin prickled as if a thousand witches were looking at me. But it was only one creature who watched me now: the goddess.
I stole a glance around the room, but there was no sign of her. If Matthew were to detect the goddess’s presence, he’d start asking questions I didn’t want to answer. And he might uncover one secret I was still hiding.
“Thank goodness,” I said under my breath.
“Did you say something?” Matthew asked.
“No,” I lied again, and crept closer to Matthew. “You must be hearing things.”
10
I stumbled downstairs the next morning, exhausted from my encounter with witchwater and the vivid dreams that had followed.
“The house was awfully quiet last night.” Sarah stood behind the old pulpit with her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, red hair wild around her face, and the Bishop grimoire open in front of her. The sight would have given Emily’s Puritan ancestor, Cotton Mather, fits.
“Really? I didn’t notice.” I yawned, trailing my fingers through the old wooden dough trough that held fresh-picked lavender. Soon the herbs would be hanging upside down to dry from the twine running between the rafters. A spider was adding to that serviceable web with a silken version of her own.
“You’ve certainly been busy this morning,” I said, changing the subject. The milk-thistle heads were in the sieve, ready to be shaken to free the seeds from their downy surround. Bunches of yellow-flowered rue and button-centered feverfew were tied with string and ready for hanging. Sarah had dragged out her heavy flower press, and there was a tray of long, aromatic leaves waiting to go into it.
Bouquets of newly harvested flowers and herbs sat on the counter, their purpose not yet clear.
“There’s lots of work to do,” Sarah said. “Someone’s been tending to the garden while we were gone, but they have their own plots to take care of, and the winter and spring seeds never got into the ground.”
Several anonymous “someones” must have been involved, given the size of the witch’s garden at the Bishop house. Thinking to help, I reached for a bunch of rue. The scent of it would always remind me of Satu and the horrors that I’d experienced after she took me from the garden at Sept-Tours to La Pierre. Sarah’s hand shot out and intercepted mine.
“Pregnant women don’t touch rue, Diana. If you want to help me, go to the garden and cut some moonwort. Use that.” She pointed to her white-handled knife. The last time I’d held it, I’d used it to open my own vein and save Matthew. Neither of us had forgotten it. Neither of us mentioned it either.
“Moonwort’s that plant with the pods on it, right?”
“Purple flowers. Long stalks. Papery-looking flat disks,” Sarah instructed with more patience than usual. “Cut the stems down to the base of the plant. We’ll separate the flowers from the rest before we hang them up to dry.”
Sarah’s garden was tucked into a far corner of the orchard where the apple trees thinned out and the cypresses and oaks of the forest didn’t yet overshadow the soil. It was surrounded by palisades of fencing made from metal posts, wire mesh, pickets, retooled pallets—if it could be used to keep out rabbits, voles, and skunks, Sarah had used it. For extra security the whole perimeter was smudged twice a year and warded with protection spells.
Inside the enclosure Sarah had re-created a bit of paradise. Some of the garden’s wide paths led to shady glens where ferns and other tender plants found shelter in the shadows of the taller trees. Others bisected the raised vegetable beds that were closest to the house, with their trellises and beanpoles.
Normally these would be covered with vegetation—sweet peas and snap peas and beans of every description—but they were skeletal this year.
I skirted Sarah’s small teaching garden where she instructed the coven’s children—and sometimes their parents—on the elemental associations of various flowers, plants, and herbs. Her young charges had put up their own fence, using paint stirrers, willow twigs, and Popsicle sticks to demarcate their sacred space from that of the larger garden. Easy-to-grow plants like elfwort and yarrow helped the children understand the seasonal cycle of birth, growth, decay, and fallowness that guided any witch’s work in the craft. A hollow stump served as a container for mint and other invasive plants.
Two apple trees marked the center of the garden, and a hammock spanned the distance between them. It was wide enough to hold both Sarah and Em, and it had been their favorite spot for dreaming and talking late into the warm summer nights.
Beyond the apple trees, I passed through a second gate into the garden of a professional witch.
Sarah’s garden served the same purpose as one of my libraries: It provided a source of inspiration and refuge, as well as information and the tools to do her job.
I found the three-foot-high stems topped with purple flowers that Sarah wanted. Mindful to leave enough to self-seed for next year, I filled the wicker basket and returned to the house.
There my aunt and I worked in companionable silence. She chopped off the moonwort flowers, which she would use to make a fragrant oil, and returned the stems to me so that I could tie a bit of twine around each one—no bunches here, for fear of damaging the pods—and hang them to dry.
“How will you use the pods?” I asked, knotting the string.
“Protection charms. When school starts in a few weeks, there will be a demand for them.
Moonwort pods are especially good for children, since they keep monsters and nightmares away.”
Corra, who was napping in the stillroom loft, cocked her eye in Sarah’s direction, and smoke billowed from her nose and mouth in a firedrake’s harrumph.
“I’ve got something else in mind for you, “ Sarah said, pointing her knife in the firedrake’s direction.
Unconcerned, Corra turned her back. Her tail flopped over the edge of the loft and hung like a pendulum, its spade-shaped tip moving gently to and fro. Ducking past it, I tied another moonwort stem to the rafters, careful not to shake loose any of the papery ovals that clung to it.
“How long will they hang before they’re dried?” I asked, returning to the table.
“A week,” Sarah said, looking up briefly. “By then we’ll be able to rub the skin from the pods.
Underneath is a silver disk.”
“Like the moon. Like a mirror,” I said, nodding in understanding. “Reflecting the nightmare back on itself, so that it won’t disturb the child.”
Sarah nodded, too, pleased by my insight.
“Some witches scry with moonwort pods,” Sarah continued after a few moments. “The witch in Hamilton who taught high-school chemistry told me that alchemists collected May dew on them to use as a base for the elixir of life.”
“That would require a lot of moonwort,” I said with a laugh, thinking of all the water Mary Sidney and I had used in our experiments. “I think we should stick to the protection charms.”
“Okay, then.” Sarah smiled. “For kids I put the charms in dream pillows. They’re not as spooky as a poppet or a pentacle made of blackberry canes. If you were going to make one, what ingredients would you use for the stuffing?”
I took a deep breath and focused on the question. Dream pillows didn’t have to be big, after all—the size of the palm of my hand would do.
The palm of my hand. Ordinarily I would have run my fingers through my weaver’s cords, waiting for inspiration—and guidance—to strike. But the cords were inside me now. When I turned my hands and splayed the fingers wide, shimmering knots appeared over the tracery of veins at my wrist and the thumb and pinkie on my right hand gleamed green and brown in the colors of the craft.
Sarah’s Mason jars glinted in the light from the windows. I moved toward them, running my little finger down the labels until I felt resistance.
“Agrimony.” I traveled along the shelf. “Mugwort.”
Using it like the pointer on a Ouija board, I tilted my pinkie backward. “Aniseed.” Down moved my finger. “Hops.” Up it swooped in a diagonal line to the opposite side. “Valerian.”
What was that going to smell like? Too pungent?
My thumb tingled.
“A bay leaf, a few pinches of rosemary, and some thyme,” I said.
But what if the child woke up anyway and grabbed at the pillow?
“And five dried beans.” It was an odd addition, but my weaver’s instinct told me they would make all the difference.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Sarah pushed her glasses onto her head. She looked at me in astonishment, then grinned. “It’s like an old charm your great-grandmother collected, except hers had mullein and vervain in it, too—and no beans.”
“I’d put the beans in the pillows first,” I said. “They should rattle against one another if you shake it. You can tell the kids the noise will help with the monsters.”
“Nice touch,” Sarah admitted. “And the moonwort pods—would you powder them or leave them whole?”
“Whole,” I replied, “sewn onto the front of the pillow.”
But herbs were only the first half of a protection charm. Words were needed to go along with them.
And if any other witch was going to be able to use it, those words had to be packed with potential. The London witches had taught me a great deal, but the spells I wrote tended to lie flat on the page, inert on anyone’s tongue but mine. Most spells were written in rhyme, which made them easier to remember as well as livelier. But I was no poet, like Matthew or his friends. I hesitated.
“Something wrong?” Sarah said.
“My gramarye sucks,” I confessed, lowering my voice.
“If I had the slightest idea what that was, I’d feel sorry for you,” Sarah said drily.
“Gramarye is how a weaver puts magic into words. I can construct spells and perform them myself, but without gramarye they won’t work for other witches.” I pointed to the Bishop grimoire. “Hundreds and hundreds of weavers came up with the words for those spells, and other witches passed them down through the ages. Even now the spells retain their power. I’m lucky if my spells remain potent for an hour.”
“What’s the problem?” Sarah asked.