Steam (Legends Saga Book 3) (3 page)

Chapter 3

Preen

“Beware the night, there’s no use in fight …
ing
. Ugh!” Eleanora dropped her writing quill, a fat splotch of ink soiling her parchment. Grabbing a handful of hair in each hand, she slumped forward with her elbows on Preen’s knotty pine table. “What ailment rots my brain that I cannot form a simple rhyme? Children manage them in song and play every day!”

Preen paused from grinding poppy seed in her wooden bowl and wiped her work-chapped hands on her apron. “For one thing, you are much too hard on yourself. Tell me what it is you’re working on, and I will happily help you.”

Eleanora let her hands fall back to the table, her hair stabbing off her head in messy spikes. “There is a town south of here that contacted Tituba about a haunting they are suffering. She wants to bind the entity and left the wording for such a spell in
my
charge.”

Preen crossed the quaint cottage in three strides. Placing one delicate hand on Eleanora’s shoulder, she gave a quick squeeze of comfort. “Tituba believes in you, as do I.”

“You are both silly, silly girls,” Eleanora grumbled under her breath. Still, she patted Preen’s hand in appreciation.

Their moment was interrupted by an insistent pounding that shook the cottage door. The two women exchanged matching looks of fretful bewilderment. This far outside the boundaries of town, visitors were a rarity. People did
not
spontaneously pass by and pop in to sit a spell. If they found themselves on Preen’s doorstep, the cottage was their intended destination. Had it been any of their earth sisters, they would have knocked as a courtesy before pushing their way in.

“Miss Hester!
Miss Hester
!” The desperate voice calling out rang with familiarity, yet unfortunately Preen couldn’t quite place it.

Gulping back her unease, Preen ran a nervous hand over her braided hair and walked to the door with lead feet. The very instant she clicked the lock free the door was thrown open, knocking her back a pace. Goody Cromwell burst in, her cheeks flushed. Her polished onyx eyes swam with fat tears that threatened to spill. The second she saw Preen, she pounced—the chill of her firm, unyielding grip icing Preen’s arms to the bone. Preen responded with the frightened unease of a skittish young colt, pulling away in search of a free path to bolt.

“There you are, sweet child!” Goody panted as if she had sprinted to the cabin from Salem. “Your services are needed, all other options have been exhausted!”

Preen’s brow knit tight, her tongue flicking over her lower lip as she tried to find her place in a conversation that seemed to have sped ahead without her. “My … my services, ma’am? My herbs and apothecary skills are
all
I have to offer.”

“I pray that will be enough,” Goody mumbled almost to herself. Glancing back at the door still swinging on its hinges, she called out, “John, please join us. We must fill Miss Hester in, we haven’t a moment to lose.”

The minute he filled her doorway, Preen understood why sonnets were written. Her breath caught in her throat, escaping her parted lips in an intimate sigh. His navy blue shirt, with its sleeves rolled to his elbows, was tucked into a pair of slacks the color of freshly baled straw. The garments, while conservative, could not hide the muscular frame beneath of a man that knew well the perils of a hard day’s work. Waves of russet hair hung to his shoulders, a well-trimmed beard shadowing his strong jaw. He embodied strength and masculinity in a way that made Preen startlingly aware of her own femininity. Tingling warmth awoke in her core and cascaded through her.

“Preen Hester, may I introduce John Hathorne.” Goody released Preen with one hand to wave him in. “He is in
desperate
need of you.”

“Oh?” Preen gasped in a high-pitched octave she’d never heard herself achieve before.

“Yes, miss.” John dipped his head in a polite nod. Even so, his eyes—the bright hue of freshly sprouted moss—took her in with great interest. The heat of his gaze lingering over her face caused her cheeks to bloom like cherry blossoms. “My wife has been struck very ill. Mrs. Cromwell said you may be able to help.”

His wife
. Two simple words that could slaughter a dream before it had a moment to flourish.

“I am terribly sorry for her condition, sir.” Preen cast her gaze to the cracked and faded floorboards beneath her feet. Knowing his penetrating stare, in which she had been so tempted to lose herself, belonged to another brought on an immeasurable guilt she couldn’t bear. “Regrettably, though, I am not a physician. Someone with a more superior skill set would be of far more use to you.”

John ran a calloused hand over his face, his tone dragged low by equal parts desperation and exhaustion. “I cannot count how many physicians have poked and prodded at her. Not one could provide answers or aid. We even tried an exorcism—a horribly tortuous debacle that my sweet Rose may never forgive me for if she ever awakens. Even that was to no avail.”

“An
exorcism
?” Eleanora gasped. Rising from the table she strode to Preen’s side with a brisk stride, as if to herd her earth sister from the madness that had blown in.

“Please don’t let that frighten you away.” John’s hands rose in plea, only to close in tight, frustrated fists and drop to his sides. “She hurts no one, except herself.”

Leaning in, Goody whispered against Preen’s ear, “We fear the girl has been afflicted by a witch’s curse. If you have any tonics that could allow her rest, I beg of you to help grant her some element of peace.”

As if helping an innocent soul wasn’t motivation enough, Preen would have done almost anything to get away from Goody’s lingering touch. Every skin on skin contact with the reverend’s wife possessed winter’s bitter bite. Not wanting to offend, Preen fought the urge to wince away from her and focused her attentions on the matter at hand. She didn’t dare attempt any magic on Salem’s soil. However, she did have a few herbal remedies that could grant rest to a troubled girl—if her ailment allowed.

“Wait outside,” Preen instructed, her gaze already scouring her shelves for particular vials, “I will gather my supplies and we shall hurry on together.”

John Hathorne pressed his palms together as if in a prayer of thanks. His heavy boots thunked over the floorboards as he backed from the cottage. “Thank you, Miss Hester. You are truly an angel of mercy.”

“I
knew
I could count on you, my dear,” Goody said with a victorious smirk that made the hairs on the back of Preen’s neck rise—her body seeming to sense a threat she herself was oblivious to.

“I hope you know what you are doing,” Eleanora cautioned the minute the cottage door shut behind Goody. “I became your apothecary apprentice to get away from the lion’s den that Salem has become. Now you’re striding right into it.”

Preen pressed a palm tenderly to Eleanora’s cheek. “I go only to offer services, as I do for any of my patrons. You will not have to wait long for my return. In the meantime,” hitching one eyebrow, she cast a sideways glance at the parchment on the table, “perhaps you could start with ‘
Dark grows near, sense the fear’
?”

“
Isaiah!
I can’t hold her alone! Grab that cuff and help me!” John yelled to his house boy, sweat soaking through his shirt as he sprawled across his wife in an attempt to restrain her.

Preen covered her mouth with her hand, her body quaking at the horror they stumbled on when they pushed open Rose Hathorne’s bedroom door.

Blood soaked the mattress and splattered the walls. While the woman slept, the bones of her hand snapped and contorted to slip from her restraint. With a piece of wood she chipped from the bedframe, her idle hand plunged into the flesh over her breast bone and carved the same intricate pattern over and over. Skin and muscle shredded to strands of gore. Bone fragments cracked and splintered. All while the porcelain angel slept.

Goody draped an arm around Preen shoulders—its effect biting into Preen like a blanket of ice during a blizzard—and clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Goodness, I do hope this isn’t your first visit to Salem. What an atrocious first impression.”

The leather cuff securely back in place, John rose to his feet. Sweat dripped from his brow, his chest rising and falling with each heaving breath. “Her body has betrayed her like that countless times now,” John explained to Preen with an apologetic frown. “I am deeply sorry you had to witness that.”

Stepping forward, Preen gladly shrugged out from under Goody’s subzero embrace to reassure John. “There’s no need to apologize. Her poor, tortured soul is the
true
victim. If there is water nearby I will tend her wounds for you.”

Young Isaiah, with his copper-colored hair and face full of freckles, ducked his head in a timid nod and fetched the pitcher from the dresser nearby. Walking to the side of the bed, Preen accepted his offering with a gracious smile, then set it on the floor at her feet. Dropping to her knees, she dug into her satchel to retrieve the needed ingredients: a vial of tea tree oil, a wrapped burlap sack of fresh rose petals, and a chunk of raw honeycomb. Depositing all three ingredients into the water, she used her fingers to mix them together.

“I’ll fetch bandages.” John edged toward the door, his distressed gaze locked on his wife, as if afraid to leave her for even an instant.

“If you so desire, sir, I can position a chair right outside the door.” Isaiah clasped his hands behind his back, eager to prove his worth in the household. “I will be here for Miss Rose if she needs anything at all.”

John slapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder, his lips pressed in a thin line. “Thank you, Isaiah. That is much appreciated.”

With that praise radiating off him like glittering, golden sun on a still pond, Isaiah wordlessly carried out his task.

Linking her arm with his, Goody let John usher her from the room. “You must be so exhausted from caring for her. Let me go home and give word to the reverend. I will return this evening to sit with her through the night, so that you may rest without concern.”

“Madam, I couldn’t begin to make such a request of you,” John argued, his emotional and physical exhaustion audible in his raspy tone.

“And that is
precisely
why I will do it, because you are a good and noble man that would
never
make such demands of others,” Goody protested with a smile of pure sunshine. Raising her eyebrows, her head tilted in Preen’s direction. “Wouldn’t you agree with me, my dear? That Mr. Hathorne is well worth the tenderest of care?””

Preen kept her eyes on her task, wetting a sponge in her concoction, to distract from the hot blush that seeped up her neck to redden her face clear to her earlobes. “H-he seems as such, ma’am. However, I only just met him.”

“I have found first impressions are often the most accurate,” Goody practically purred, curling one shoulder in coquettishly. “And that is precisely how I know Preen will take good care of Rose long enough for you to go splash some water on your face and change from your soiled garments.”

Preen met John’s pleading gaze, internally envying the slumbering Mrs. Hathorne for the devotion she had earned from such a man. “I promise you, sir, I will take the best possible care of her. You have no need to rush right back.”