Page 17 of A Time of Witches

Power gathered and vibrated within Jacinda, unlike anything Sybil had ever witnessed. Greater even than what Sybil drew with Kat and Edith. Jacinda veritably crackled with the energy that swirled around her, a vortex barely tethered and desperate to be unleashed.

What would such strength do?

As a child, Jacinda had been precocious, eager to absorb everything from Mother that Sybil had so readily ignored. Now as a teen, the girl brooded with sullen anger, begrudging her sheltered life. Not understanding the dangers.

Not realizing how readily women with strength were silenced. How often they were seen as a threat.

That had been Sybil’s fault.

In fact, so much of Jacinda’s hardships had been Sybil’s doing.

But in a chasm of regret, where was Sybil to begin in setting things right?

Especially now when the earth continued to warn Sybil that they were at risk.

How easily it would be for Jacinda to be discovered. Arrested. To dangle from the end of a rope.

Everything in Sybil flinched back in horror from the mental image.

“Now isn’t the time.” The protest was weak, but all she could offer.

“You are my sister, not my mother.” Jacinda’s eyes glinted with the fire of youth and naive ignorance. “Mother would never have handled me with such disregard.”

The room was suddenly too stuffy, the aroma of roasted chicken overpowering and unappealing. Sybil was desperate to be outside. To breathe. To let the wind speak to her, to guide her.

She mumbled an excuse and pushed back from the table, leaving Jacinda glowering after her, eyes boring into her back like burning embers.

The night embraced Sybil, cool and welcoming. Dampness hung in the air from an incoming storm, one dredged up by the mix of the roiling emotions between Jacinda and Sybil both.

Sybil closed her eyes and breathed in the rich scents of fertile earth and fragrant blooms and herbs. Eager to drink in the moon’s strength, she tilted her face upward.

But instead of fortitude, she was imbued with a sense of unease, as though her skin fit too tightly.

Her eyes flew open, staring into the sky. She staggered back, her knees soft with shock.

Staring down at her from between the churning clouds was not the beautiful full face of a silvery white moon, but one cast in a violent red hue.

A blood moon.

One that bespoke impending misfortune and doom.

Chapter Eight

Lilith

Rain pattered against the windows and the old wooden floors groaned beneath Lilith’s pacing from room to room.

The house embodied her past, handed down from mother to daughter since the nineteenth century. Mama had wanted to escape the legacy, always seeking something more before she was tethered by Lilith’s birth.

Was this what the fortune teller had meant when she said the answers to the past were always in the present? Was there really a clue in Mama’s unwanted inheritance?

Lilith drifted into the study, the room that reminded her most of Daddy. Books filled the mahogany shelves, legal texts long out of date. She’d just dusted the day before, but old houses weren’t airtight, and a thin layer of dust dulled the glossy surfaces. The lightest scent of sandalwood still clung to the room, a reminder that her father’s presence had once been there, the only warmth that house had ever known—at least in Lilith’s lifetime.

This was the only room that hadn’t been touched by her mother, the only one not smattered in an explosion of florals and ornate gold-painted frames and brass fixtures. Boutique buys did not equate to good taste. The gaudy decor hemmed her in as she continued her aimless pacing.

She stopped, pausing in front of the door she seldom entered, and her heart gave an involuntary lurch.

Hesitant, she settled her fingertips on the cool brass doorknob. Gritting her teeth, she opened the door.