Mark of the Witch (Boston Witches) (11 page)

“I have a few theories; maybe in one of her diaries, or some other written work that she may have done. Or possibly your family’s grimoire.”

“I’ve been looking in both her diary and the grimoire. There’s a ton of missing pages in her diary, and I haven’t found anything in the grimoire yet.”

William sat for a minute, thinking before speaking. “We have to figure out who would not want anyone to find out what happened back then. I’ve been thinking it’s maybe Mary, but I can’t say for sure. I would hate to think that she would do such a thing, but I honestly think it could have been her. She was so angry. She hated all of us then. I don’t know if she and Liza ever reconciled.”

“I’ve been thinking maybe Mary as well. Do you know if she had a diary, or maybe somewhere in the house where she kept things? It’s been hundreds of years, but maybe it hasn’t been found yet.” Jilly ran her fingers through her hair as she was speaking, combing it back and piling it on top of her head in a knot.

William watched her fingers move smoothly through her hair, with an odd expression on his face. Looking up, she found him staring at her, and smiled shyly. She had been so absorbed in telling him the dream that she had forgotten he wasn’t wearing a shirt; now that was all she could think about. She could almost feel the heat coming off of him, and she shifted a little on the bed. The look in his eyes was unmistakable now, and she got up quickly. She had stayed in his room far too long and he was wearing too little clothing for her comfort.

He got up as well and pulled her into his arms, kissing her so fiercely it took her breath away. Her head got a little foggy, and she was enjoying the feeling of his bare skin under her hands and the tiny jolts of electricity running all over her body. The voice in the back of her head telling her to get out was quickly being drowned out by the much louder voice shouting at her to stay.

As though he could hear her mental argument with herself, he pulled away and stepped back a few steps. “You should probably go,” he said in a husky voice. “If you don’t we’ll end up doing something we’ll both regret in the morning, and I don’t want us to end this before it’s even started.” He stepped closer, brushed his thumb across her swollen lips, and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning, Jilly. Sleep well.”

She hadn’t spoken at all; she just nodded her head to whatever he had been saying. She stumbled back to her room and collapsed back into bed, her body melting into the mattress as though all of her bones had gone missing. She slept like the dead until morning.

*

Jilly came downstairs at 8:45, dressed for the day, and started a pot of coffee for everyone. Getting out what she needed to make pancakes, she brought everything over to the stove mixed up the batter. By the time she had the first four on the griddle, the coffee pot beeped, telling her it was ready, and she grabbed a few mugs and creamer and brought them to the table along with the pot. Returning to flip the pancakes, she took a few sips of her coffee, enjoying the flavor on her tongue. She heard footsteps on the stairs and both Caroline and William appeared shortly after, looking refreshed.

“Coffee’s on the table and the first batch of pancakes is almost ready. If someone will get the butter and syrup and bring them to the table, I’ll bring over the first four.”

William retrieved what was needed, and Caroline poured them coffee. After the next few batches were done, they all sat down to eat.

“So, Car, what are your plans for today?” Jilly asked her sister.

Caroline shrugged. “Not much; just hanging around I guess. Did you need help with anything?”

“Actually, yes. William and I need to find a spell that Liza may have written down in a diary or a journal or something. Do you think you can help go through books in the den with us after breakfast?”

“Sure, what’s the spell?”

“It’s an imprisoning spell. We want to hedge our bets a little with Sabine.”

“Makes sense to me. I’ll help any way I can.”

William’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket. The message on the screen said to go out back. He looked out the window and saw Liam standing a little ways off from the house. The protective spells around the house were doing their job; he couldn’t come within fifty feet of the house.

“Are you going to go out there alone?” Jilly asked, concerned.

William laughed. “I’ve known Liam for a long time, Jill; he’s not going to hurt me. He just wants to talk.”

Grabbing his coat from the rack by the door, he quickly went outside and down the steps. He stopped about ten feet from Liam, while he was still within the protective circle; just because he didn’t think Liam would hurt him didn’t mean he was stupid.

“What do you want, Liam?”

“Sabine wishes to speak to your witch. You can be present, of course. It will happen in six days. You may choose when and where. She wishes to know within the hour.” With that, he turned and melted back into the forest.

*

Jilly was watching from the back window. After Liam left, William stood where he was for a while before returning to the house. When he got in, Jilly pounced on him like a tiger.

“What did he want?” She was clearly wary of what Liam had wanted.

“It’s like we thought, Sabine wants to speak with you, and she wants it to happen within six days. I’m going to call to set up the time and place.”

Her face had gone ghostly pale as all the blood drained from it. She was frightened for herself, and also for William. She didn’t think that Sabine was going to look on their alliance favorably. Especially after the fun little dreams she’d been sending.

William went upstairs to make the call, and she sank into the nearest chair.

Caroline, who had been sitting quietly observing all of this, came to her sister’s side. “It’s going to be ok, Jill. William will protect you. Liza said he was the key to your safety. Do you need me here? I was thinking of going up and getting started.”

“No, you go ahead, I’ll be ok.”

With a last look at her to see if she was telling the truth, Caroline bounded up the stairs to the den.

Fifteen minutes later, William came back down to the kitchen. “It took some doing, but I convinced them to meet in six days behind the house in the forest. That gives us all week to find what we need. Is Caroline already up there?”

Jilly nodded. “Yeah, she went up after you did.”

Seeing how pale she still was, William pulled her into a hug. “It will be fine, Jill. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I know. I just hate not knowing what she wants from me.” She pulled away and shrugged her shoulders. “I guess we should get going then.” They grabbed a few sodas and headed up to help Caroline.

*

Three hours later, they all were tired of looking through books and decided to take an hour break. Caroline went to lie down, and the other two sat back on the couch, talking.

“I was thinking about Mary. Maybe we should be looking for her diary too; this obviously affected her deeply, and she was bound to have written about it,” William said thoughtfully.

“I’ve never come across anything with her name on it in here; I still think that she may have had some sort of hiding place in the house somewhere. I’m thinking of trying a discovery spell to see if there are any hiding places in the house. It usually takes two witches, but I don’t think Caroline is quite there yet, so I think I might try it alone.”

William agreed that the spell was a good idea, so they went down to the kitchen so Jilly could prepare. On the way they stopped by to see if Caroline wanted to watch, and all three of them went down together.

Jilly grabbed the grimoire and handed it to her sister, opening it to the page she needed. “I need you to read me what I need to complete the spell,” she said as she went to the pantry. “William, can you ready the fire under the cauldron please?” she asked from inside. She heard the whoosh of the flames against the fireplace and the scraping sound of the cauldron being pulled into place.

“Ok, Jill, you’ll need sage, quicksilver, one blood orange, and three sprigs of mint. It’s funny how a lot of this sounds like recipes, aside from the quicksilver of course. Oh, and saltwater too.”

“Ok, come over and help bring this stuff to the counter by the fire please.”

The others came and grabbed what she asked, and she set about getting the saltwater from the basement. She had two large barrels of ocean water along with various other barrels of things she used in large quantities. She brought up a bucket and dumped it into the cauldron; it splattered over the sides with a hiss. She asked her sister to juice the blood orange and set the juice on the counter. She had to be careful with the quicksilver; it tended to meld onto any metal it came into contact with, and so she always wore gloves when handling it. Looking at the grimoire, she added four drops of quicksilver to the water and stirred until it was absorbed into the water. Then the juice, the sage, more stirring, and finally the mint. She watched as the mint dissolved into the mixture and stirred five more times before hanging up the spoon on the hook next to the fireplace.

“This needs to boil for thirty minutes so it will reduce down to a thick liquid. Who wants lunch?”

Everyone agreed they were hungry, so Caroline made grilled cheese and tomato soup for them. After lunch, they all sat drinking another cup of coffee while Jilly read through the rest of the spell.

“I’m going to need two small glass vials. I think I’ve got some in the pantry, and that’s it. We should be ready to rock and roll as soon as it’s ready.”

Glancing at the clock, she saw she had a few minutes left, so she went to the pantry to get the vials. After pouring the potion into the vials, she sat at the table with the grimoire in front of her. She held a vial in each hand and closed her eyes, repeating the words of the spell over and over. After a few minutes of this, the others noticed an illuminated light like footsteps leading the way upstairs.

Once the spell was complete, Jilly opened her eyes and saw the light. “I guess we should see where they go, right?”

They all got up quickly and followed the golden footsteps upstairs. They led toward the back of the house and stopped at what looked like a dead end. Jilly placed both hands on the wall and said a quick release spell, her hands flashing white against the wall. There was a soft click, and a door materialized where the wall had been. William opened the door, and they saw more footsteps leading back into the room. Both girls were surprised; they had never discovered this room before, and Jilly would wager no one since Mary had set foot in here; there was a layer of dust covering everything in the room.

They split up and began searching. There was a desk in the corner, and a bunch of trunks scattered around the room. William took the desk, and he sat in the rickety chair in front of it and began opening the drawers. The girls took trunks on opposite sides of the room and sat on the floor to dig through them. There were all sorts of old clothes, bits of ribbon, and semi precious stones in the one Caroline was looking through. William was faring a little better: the desk held books and old papers, but no journal or diary yet, nor the missing pages from Liza’s diary. Jilly’s trunk had a bunch of herbs in it. None of the jars were labeled, she held a few up to the lights to see if she could figure out their contents, but the light wasn’t strong enough to see through the cloudy glass. Moving on to the next trunk, she found that it was locked. She tried the quick release spell, but nothing happened. Mary must have put a protective spell on it so only the key would open it.

“Hey, guys, we need to look for the key to this chest; I’d bet whatever we’re looking for is in here.”

They all began to go through the rest of the trunks, piling the contents in the center of the room. Finally, Caroline held up a key. “Found it!”

Jilly tried it in the lock on the trunk. The lock creaked as she slowly turned the key, and finally, she heard the click of the release. Throwing open the lid, they all looked inside. There were a ton of papers. They all grabbed a pile and sat down to sort through them.

Twenty minutes later, William called Jilly over. He had found the missing pages of Liza’s diary. She glanced through them, but there weren’t any spells on them. Letting out a sigh of frustration, she went back to her own pile and continued to look.

Finally, after an hour of sorting, Jilly found a stack of spells that looked as though they had been torn out of a book. Flipping through them, she found the one they had been looking for. “You guys, I got it,” she yelled triumphantly. The others ran over to see. She held out the pages for them to look at and stood up.

“What do you think these pages were torn out of?” Caroline asked.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing. I’m thinking it’s from the grimoire. Each witch in the family writes down her life’s story, and I always wondered where Liza’s and Mary’s were. I guess one of them, I’m betting Mary, tore the pages out and it healed itself so no one knew they were missing. Mom always said the grimoire was more person than book. Maybe that’s what she meant by ‘at the beginning towards the end’. It was near the beginning of the grimoire, but towards the end of her life. I think we all need to get cleaned up and then we can meet back in the kitchen to plan our next step.”

They all agreed and filed out of the room, covered in layers of ancient dust and grime. Jilly’s mind raced at the possibilities the new spells might bring. She felt a sense of relief; they might all make it through this unscathed.

She stepped into the shower and washed away hundreds of years’ worth of grime.

*

An hour later, everyone met up in the kitchen and William started dinner while the girls looked over the spell.

“Can you do a spell like this alone?” Caroline asked, wondering if she could be more helpful than just a librarian or a janitor.

“No, it requires a lot more power then I have alone. I may have to bring in Emily. I hate to do it, but I’ll need an experienced witch to pull it off.”

“There’s no way I could help? I know I’m not trained, but you said yourself that I’ve been picking it up quickly.”