Chapter 22 #2
Now looking at the stacked shelves and objects lying all around her, Pru felt truly deprived.
And no, maybe as a kid she’d not been able to understand their value, but for a curious and precocious teen?
A young woman discovering her family’s heritage?
All of this was priceless. Why had her father hidden it?
And speaking of heritage. High on the shelves behind a massive desk were several immense tomes with inscriptions on their backs.
Most of them held the Fowler seal, but a few were not familiar to her.
She climbed the small library ladder and pulled the first one out.
To her surprise, it carried a crow on the heavy leather cover, and Pru’s breath caught.
Is this…? Could it be…?
She flipped it open, and as dust rose and settled in her hands, the name stood stark against the yellowing paper.
Crowhart.
Pru almost dropped the book. Was this the Crowhart Family Bible? She turned the first page and an arresting face looked at her with eyes of green tempest, their expression intense and all-seeing. The words under the portrait in sharp relief against the aging paper. Gwendolyn Abigail Crowhart.
Why did father have this?
Pru looked back up to the shelf, the tomes’ spines branded with other seals, some kinds of birds she couldn’t quite place.
What is this?
The sound of the front door got Pru to freeze. Her father had returned, the town hall meeting must’ve ended. Darn it, she lost track of time.
Tucking the Crowhart tome under her arm, Pru grabbed the biggest Fowler Bible and the one with the birds she couldn’t identify and made for the back door.
As she ran through the garden, her father’s voice caught her before the gate did, smacking her in the chest even as the wrought iron slammed her in the face, throwing her onto her back, the books falling on top of her like bricks of cement weighing down a drowning man.
She heard the steps behind her and scrambled up, her body acting mostly on autopilot, an entity possessed.
Get up, get the books, get the painting, get out.
And then… As never before, her thoughts materialized, the power in her hands emerging like wind, like a hurricane tearing the centuries-old lock to little bits. The iron of the hinges moaned under her magic, and she watched both fascinated and terrified as it slowly drew open.
“Prudence Ophelia!”
Her father’s voice was close now, and that note of recognition that Pru despised—because as always it made her feel seen in ways she didn’t want to contemplate—was back.
With her magic helping her, Pru threw her entire body into pushing the heavy garden gate, throwing it open, seeing the path into town gape in front of her, illuminated by the beam of the Dragon Eye lighthouse.
Heart in her throat, Pru ran, slamming the gate shut in her father’s face, her own on fire from the earlier hit. She turned to see if he was following her, only to watch him stand still behind the wrought iron and look at her with something she couldn’t decipher in his eyes.
That something haunted her till she reached town, the books getting progressively heavier. By the time she walked into Crow & Cat, Pru thought they had been cursed.
When she entered, her arms heavy and the painting clawing at her side, Victoria, Ceridwen, and Seren were on the first floor, arguing on speakerphone with Sheriff Redding.
“…clearly you have not paid any attention to me when I told you the woman is dangerous, Pete.”
Seren’s tone was exasperated. Next to her, Ceridwen was shooting daggers at the phone.
“Chief, I talked to this Lisa person as you asked weeks ago, instructed her to stay away from here, but she said she has never set foot inside. I can’t prove otherwise, and I have been keeping an eye out—”
“Clearly not enough, since she was not only back out there this morning but also in here when she planted the bloody photograph! It’s breaking and entering, Pete, and it’s harassment.”
“Don’t quote the criminal statutes to me, Chief. I know them. I still can’t prove any of this, and yelling at Rhiannon in the Square is not a crime. I checked and Nox did fire her yesterday, so—”
“It wasn’t Lisa.”
It was nearly comical to see the three heads turn simultaneously in her direction.
“I’ll get back you later, Pete. Something just came up.” Seren dropped the call, not waiting for a reply from the sputtering sheriff.
Lachlan bounded up from the basement carrying both Boleyn and Patches in his arms and skated to a halt by Christian, who poked his head out from the back room, wiping his hands a rag.
Her audience was almost complete.
“Prudence?” Victoria’s voice was tinged with concern.
She must look a sight, Pru thought, staggering on her feet, dropping the tomes on the counter where they landed in a heap, heavy as lead. Silence reigned. Victoria approached slowly, as if afraid of what she might see.
“This can’t be.” Her slim, arthritic fingers touched the leather reverently. “This cannot be.” The crow under her touch seemed to stand out more prominently against the dark cover.
“Who is it, Victoria?”
Rhiannon’s feet hit the last step on the stairs, and then Pru felt her breath being knocked out of her the second time.
Rhiannon’s gaze was electric, shocking in its strength, in the connection between them.
Pru felt her power surge, felt the entire building shake as Rhiannon was suddenly closer, holding her chin up, the fingertips warm and careful.
By contrast, the mouth was a thin line of anger, of rage that Pru had never seen before, and when Rhiannon spoke, Pru couldn’t recognize the voice either.
“Who did this to you?”
The cheekbone sang with vicious pain, and Pru recoiled as Rhiannon held tighter, her words sharp as razors.
“Prudence, who did this?”
Behind pale lips, white teeth bared in a scowl, and Pru felt her heart simply turn over. What a cliché moment. She was in so deep, this love would leave her utterly devastated and ruined.
She opened her mouth, I love you trembling on her lips, and…
Jedidiah Fowler kicked the front door open as all hell broke loose.
“Prudence Ophelia! How dare you! How dare any of you!”
Rhiannon was in his face in a blink of an eye.
“If you laid a hand on her, if you so much as breathed in her direction, if those marks are your handiwork—”
“You will what? Smite me?”
His mouth was contorted in a particularly disgusted grimace as he stood completely motionless in front of Rhiannon.
“I’m not afraid of your brouhaha. I still wear the scars from the last time you lost control over it.”
He touched his leg, and another chess piece took its place on the board in Pru’s mind. Rhiannon did this to him? Rhiannon maimed her father? He had known all along Rhiannon was a witch?
“They used to hang the likes of you for a reason. You’re dangerous.”
His voice, still deathly calm, was like a hammer, slamming into Pru’s consciousness again and again, leaving her weak and disoriented. Ceridwen moved closer to her, her hands balled, Pru seeing magic spilling from her fists slowly.
Victoria slapped her hand hard on the Fowler Bible, and her father recoiled.
“They? They used to hang witches? Ha, you coward. Mighty hypocritical of you to spout all this nonsense considering your own family history, Fowler.”
Another memory intruded, the line she had read from the Elizabeth Crowhart’s Compendium.
“The bird-catcher…”
Fowler… God dammit.
Fowler, the hunter of birds. The catcher.
“The Fowlers killed Gwendolyn Crowhart.”
She didn’t recognize her own voice. Her father flinched but stood his ground.
Victoria seemed unimpressed by the revelation. She pushed the Fowler Family Bible closer to the edge of the counter, and Pru finally saw what she had been pointing at. The very first branches of the family all had the symbol of the craft next to it, the same one the Crowhart Family Bible carried.
“You know, I expect to be let down by the world. After all, it’s a cruel and awful place. And the more I live, the more I get convinced of that. But what I never quite see coming is my own people becoming oppressors. Or, bar that, helping destroy us.”
Her father bared his teeth, but Victoria simply kept speaking.
“Still, as disappointing as this revelation is, it does explain Prudence and her powers—”
Fowler reached for the book, Victoria slapping it shut in his face. Seren winced at the noise but stood her ground by the door like a sentinel. Ceridwen’s magic was pulsing stronger now. Pru counted the heartbeats ringing in her ears.
Too loud, too loud.
“That branch of the family is dead. That shame is over. We have chosen the righteous path—” Her father bit off his words only to be interrupted by Rhiannon.
“Righteous? Murder is righteous? How dare you, you sanctimonious asshole!”
He threw her a look full of hate.
“You really shouldn’t be speaking of murder, Rhiannon Crowhart. Of all the people—”
“What do you mean, of all people?” Pru stepped between him and Rhiannon, laying a hand on her forearm, feeling the chill of the skin under her fingertips.
“Why do you care so much, Mayor Fowler?” Ceridwen’s quiet, somber words made everyone turn toward her. She stood silently by the open tome, her fingers splayed over its last page, magic spilling over it. An ornate piece of paper was pinned there.
Pru felt more than saw Rhiannon lean in, and then the already cold skin under her fingertips turned deathly frigid.
“Jedidiah Matthew Fowler to Margaux Belcourt. Paris. 1985.