Page 100 of The Book of Magic

Sally quickly scanned the entries which recorded that a woman named Hannah Owens had been tried as a witch then set free when the witch mania temporarily passed and those imprisoned were released for no reason, just as they were arrested without cause.

“That’s my home,” Ian told them. They waited for him to say more, but he remained silent, confused by the turn of events. He had not believed in the concept of fate, and yet here they were, with ties to the same county. He thought of himself as a boy of ten, standing at the edge of the fens, certain that if he only waited long enough he would know why he’d been fated to grow up in a place he despised.

Ian asked to look at the book, a genealogical record of his own hometown, Thornfield. He had a bone-rattling chill of recognition when he saw the name Lockland.

“Hannah Owens was involved with the Locklands in the mid-seventeenth century,” David Ward said. “As far as I can tell, the original ancestor saw to it that she was burned as a witch.”

Sally felt a shiver run through her. “Did you mention this to my daughter?”

“I suggested the Locklands might have retained documents. There was a reference to the last remaining member of the family, Tom Lockland.”

Bad Tom, Ian thought. That piece of shit. He’d heard Tom Lockland was stealing magic books from practitioners and historians in an attempt to access magic. A few months earlier, Tom had come slinking around Ian’s office, with the nerve to ask if Ian wanted to hire him as an assistant. The answer had been no, and ever since Ian had wondered what Tom had really wanted. Now he wondered if Tom Lockland was responsible for the disappearance of Rauðskinna and if the hex might have been an act of revenge for Ian dismissing him out of hand.

Ian had known Tom since Lockland had been a boy lurking around the town where they’d both grown up, seeking vengeance in whatever small way he could. Tom was twenty-five years younger than Ian, but he had a reputation in town by the time he was twelve. It was a bad age, set between being a child and being a man, and people often were lost during that year. Tom had been tossed out of school time and again, known as a fellow who set fires in the thickets in the forest and it was thought he might have a hand in a fire begun in the bins behind the local library, which thankfully was put out before the flames could leap to the building. After prison, Ian was trying to make amends, he’d imagined Tom was a kindred spirit who could use help in steadying himself. Ian’s wild youth had not defined him and he wanted to share that knowledge. He knew the rumors about the Locklands; the family that had gone downhill, from great wealth and near royal standing to ruin. Ian had imagined they had something in common, and had been arrogant to think of himself as a potential mentor, but Tom sneered at the friendship he’d offered, stalking away and telling Ian to piss off.

In the years that followed, he’d heard gossip that Tom often camped out at Lockland Manor, once for an entire year, flinging up a tent inside one of the derelict rooms, living there through a brutal winter, stealing boots and a coat from an old couple who phoned the police when they saw a teenager break into a run in the field, but who, when a detective came to question them, found they couldn’t speak to lay blame on Tom. There was madder root on their hands and feet and dusting their front hallway and they never did press charges. Tom knew about poison even then, Ian realized.

He remembered how Tom had set out glass around the perimeter of his tent, arranged in the shape of a pentagram to reverse any ill will. Tom was headed toward the left even then, happy to use the Crooked Path to get back at anyone and everyone. He didn’t care that the manor house was in shambles, too expensive for the county to keep up, little more than a relic, he thought of the estate as his even then. Magic didn’t come naturally to him, but he had some learned skill. Once when Ian was visiting his mother, taking a walk with her Labrador retriever, Jinx, the dog had rushed over to a barn on the Lockland estate, barking like mad. Because of the dog’s racket Ian had stopped to peer into the house. Tom was naked in front of a bonfire that spat out flame and smoke, fed by the fuel of books he’d found in the manor house. The act of burning a book was such a brutal and meaningless act Ian had shouted out, but Tom turned to him and jeered. “I’ll do whatever I want. You can’t stop me. Nobody can.”

Ian had told his mother what he’d seen, and Margaret Wright had shaken her head, though she hadn’t been surprised. She practiced the Nameless Art and therefore saw through people to their core. “If you knew the whole story, you’d know the reason. The past can take over if you let it. This town is not the reason he’s cursed, yet he blames each and every one of us. It’s what’s inside him that’s the problem. The neglect he suffered, that’s what ruined him. If you think you’re nothing, that’s what you become.”

Ian thought it would be faster if he ran home, considering London traffic at this hour, but Vincent insisted on getting them a taxi. The librarian had given Vincent his phone number, in case more research was necessary, something he’d never offered to Ian despite all the time the historian spent at the library. Vincent noticed he’d been given Ward’s personal number. “You could call to let me know how the girl is,” David said. “If you don’t mind.”

The rain that had previously eased had returned, pelting down upon the streets. The world was dim, and they were fortunate to get a taxi, or maybe it wasn’t luck. Maybe it was Vincent out there on the pavement beneath a streetlamp that flickered gray and then bright once more.

“Are you ready for this?” Vincent asked Sally as he opened the taxi door for her.

Sally had always avoided her talent, but now, she could feel herself opening to that side of herself. She could already see the inside stories of those around her, a trait of those who have the sight, whether they want it or not. There was the taxi driver’s remorse over an argument with his son, and the librarian’s suffering over the loss of a child, and the man beside her, leaning forward to give the driver his address, who believed he was immune to love. For twenty years he had thought of nothing but his book. Without it, he feared he could become his old self, drawn to the left for his own selfish reasons, forsaking love. His mother had always insisted that no one was immune to love. It was impossible, she vowed. On his last visit home, she’d grabbed his hands to see what his fate might be. As she read him, she breathed out an audible sigh of regret as she scrutinized the lines on his right hand, the fate he had been given, but then she’d stunned him by laughing out loud when she looked at his left hand. “Won’t you be surprised,” she had said.

“You can’t keep it from me if you know what’s to be,” Ian had insisted.

“Fate will make the best of you,” Margaret Wright scolded, using an old adage that many mothers told their children in their village. “If you don’t make the best of it. That’s what the witches say.”

Now in the taxi, he thought his mother would be amused to see how baffled he was whenever he was in Sally’s presence. He could barely bring himself to look at her. His first instinct was to leap out of the taxi at the next red light and run in the other direction, but he stayed where he was, already reproaching himself for being a fool.

“We’ll pick up the others, then take the train to Essex,” he told Sally. “We should get there as soon as possible. All right?”

She knew she would say yes even before Ian asked the question. Her world had already begun to change. If magic was what was needed, magic it would be. And so she said yes to the man who would lead her to the first Essex County, where the land was so marshy unwitting people sank into the fens if they weren’t careful, where the crows protected each other and Devotion Field was often the setting used to celebrate weddings, where it was possible to find what you’d lost, where there had been ashes rising on a day when a woman burned, when Maria Owens first decided that love was not a blessing but a curse.

PART FOUR The Book of Love

I.

As the train hurtled through the darkening evening, Gillian hunched back in her seat to observe the rising pink moon from the window. When she was young, people said she could bewitch men with a single glance, but the truth was she’d never had the power to do so. She’d veered onto the Crooked Path when she got involved with a man who was nothing but trouble, and she’d learned her lesson. Never love someone who cannot love you back, Jet had told her. That is the way to heartbreak and nothing more.

Gillian had been glad to sit by herself on the train so that she might have her own private thoughts uninterrupted. They were passing near the village of Canewdon, once called the village of witches, and Gillian gazed out, assuming she would spy only the sky and the countryside, but there was more. She leaned forward, rapt, as she did her best to make out the shape on the other side of the glass. No one else looked out. No one else noticed anything unusual.

Franny and Vincent were in seats next to one another, their heads close, chuckling as they spoke about the past. Sally and Ian had wound up together accidentally. As soon as Ian sat beside her Sally called out, “Oh, Gilly, come sit with me.” Ian had immediately risen to his feet, assuring them he would be happy to move, but Gillian had begged off, explaining that she was drained from the time change and wanted to sleep. Ian and Sally then exchanged glassy looks. “I don’t talk while traveling,” Sally had warned him, sounding haughtier than she meant to. Ian understood completely. What she’d meant was simply Leave me alone.

“Fine,” Ian had assured her as he’d retaken the seat beside her. He wished she didn’t have a heart-shaped face. He hadn’t even known there was such a thing, but there it was, scowling at him. “Don’t say a word. That will be a pleasure for me as well,” he said flatly. Distance, he told himself. And yet he couldn’t heed his own advice and edged closer to her. “We can never speak if that’s the way you’d like it to be.” Good lord, he thought, what was wrong with him?

Sally had started, indignant. “Are you trying to be rude?”

“I don’t have to try.” Why not be blunt? That had always been his method of navigating the world. “I was born that way, and I’m sure my mother, who you’ll meet before long, would agree.” When Ian saw the curious look on Sally’s face, he added, “If you don’t want me here, that’s your choice.” He sounded like a besotted lunatic, even to himself. “I can go sit in the loo.”

Sally laughed, charmed despite herself by the way he held forth, for at heart he was his mother’s son. You could judge a man by whether or not he got along with his mother, and beneath his bad-mannered façade, Ian was devoted to his. “Of course, I want you here. You owe me that. But you have my solemn promise, I will ignore you,” Sally assured him “It should be easy to do.”

Whatever was inside him flared, and he looked hurt.