Chapter 18
HARPER
My signs disappear by day. By night, they’re erratic.
Sometimes I make a mistake, following a shadow or waving tree for miles before realising it was simply nature doing its thing.
An arrow of birds that really was just a flock in flight.
A weathervane that spun crazily before settling, which must have been a passing gust of wind.
Other times, I simply miss whatever sign was sent, or I’ll stop for a bathroom break and lose the thread.
It’s a frustrating, tiring progress. By day, I park up in pullouts so I can catch some sleep without being bothered.
At night, my route takes me onto ever smaller roads, rural lanes and rutted tracks where the power of the Greenmagic is strong and I can drive slowly without causing a pile-up.
I’m moving away from towns and strip malls.
Drive-thrus have disappeared, so I stop at a gear store and buy a small camping stove and some astronaut food, a box of cereal bars and a five-gallon jug of drinking water.
The second night of this, I find I’m weirdly enjoying it, despite my impatience to find Lachlan.
I text Mom my twice-daily I’m safe, don’t worry!
message and set up the stove. As coffee brews in the long, dwindling twilight, the call of homing birds loud, the gas-bottle hissing and my tiny pan bubbling away, I set my back against a tyre and open Starcross in my lap.
Mom’s mother-in-the-craft was her Gramma Serafina. Mine, because of the choices I made, was this grimoire. I feel as though I’ll never exhaust the lessons it has for me. I could study every page for days. For months or years. Even the two toward the back that contain nothing at all.
I turn to them now. A printer’s error, Mom’s always said.
The ink ran dry on the press. Or that’s what Serafina told her.
Neither of them ever detected a magical signature off the empty pages.
They fascinated me, though. What should be written here?
Even if it’s only a charm for cleaning pots or shoeing horses, I’d like to know.
Could it really have been a printing error?
Or was something removed by one of my Fenn ancestors?
I stroke the pages, worn by time and stained by the use the rest of the grimoire has received.
A greasy thumbprint. A splash of potion.
Even a smear of blood at the corner of one page.
Dad will know what’s missing, I’m sure. In his research he will have seen multiple copies of Starcross.
I can’t wait to show this to him and ask.
Which is when Mom’s warning comes back to me. It’s not one more book for Lachlan to plunder for powerful magic.
Dad’s not a Starcross witch. His magic comes down his father’s Scandinavian lineage.
(I try not to think of the braid sacrifice rite Luka performed on the girl who died at Bittershore.
Nor of the equinox blood-offering in the grove that he attempted with Bea.) He won’t have a Starcross of his own.
Possession of a copy is illegal and ours is likely one of the very last in private hands.
Am I doing the right thing in taking it to him?
Especially given the forbidden Old Signs it contains, and what I know he’s already capable of.
Lachlan Frey is my father – but can I trust him not to take something of mine and misuse it? I close the volume with a bang that jolts the pan of now-tepid coffee. Birds startle from the tree overhead. As I’ve yet again lost myself in the grimoire, true night has fallen.
Shining my phone light all around, I pack away the stove. Gasp and flinch when the beam flares off a pair of luminous eyes. Beneath, sharp white teeth are bared as the creature chitters impatiently. I press a hand to my racing heart and laugh nervously.
‘It’s you tonight, is it?’ I ask the mink as it coils unpleasantly on small paws. ‘Give me a minute.’