Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
SALEM, PRESENT DAY
Clara was seething. That black mass that she had sent to find the spell book she’d heard about had failed to bring it back to her.
She knew by the spreading darkness in the sky surrounding those streets that it was somewhere along the wharf area, but there were a lot of apartments and houses down there, so she couldn’t exactly go knocking on all the doors.
She could ask Arnie to make some enquiries, but the cold hard truth was she didn’t want anyone else but her to know about the book’s existence.
Of course, there was the woman who had already come into possession of it, but there was no hard proof that she was using it the wrong way.
Clara paused, staring out of the window down at the Witch House, her arms folded across her chest. This was all the fault of those meddlesome English women.
They had uncloaked a mysterious bookstore in the forest, to retrieve the infamous, long-lost book of spells which had been given to Lucine in the sixteen hundreds, and in doing so, they had caused such a huge ripple in the equilibrium when they banished that pain in her ass George Corwin into the care of Hecate no less.
It made her sick to her stomach. How many times had she tried to summon the all-powerful witch, goddess of the night, to do her bidding, with no success?
Too many to remember. Then that Dora had managed to call Hecate to the cemetery as if she was working a simple love spell.
Which just proved how powerful those English women were.
She was nothing compared to them and oh how it irked her beyond belief.
Her family of bloodline witches was strong; they always had been, this she knew through the grimoires each female matriarch of the family had left behind.
They were her most treasured possessions, but not one of them possessed the kind of magical superpowers held by the English women, and even the most inexperienced of them all had managed to summon Hecate.
Stop it, Clara, focus on the present and getting hold of that book.
Clara wanted to be the most powerful witch in Salem.
No, strike that. She deserved to be the most powerful witch and she had to watch from the sidelines while Sephy English and her niece took that away from her.
She let out a long, drawn-out sigh. It wasn’t happening, she was going to find whoever had that book of spells and make it hers.
She knew how potent the magic was inside of that book.
She had heard the rumours about it being owned by the greatest of all warlocks ever to have lived.
It was said to have been passed down from matriarch to matriarch through the generations.
The book had been lost for so long and now it had been found and in the hands of an inexperienced witch to add insult to the injury she was feeling.
Turning away she stalked back into her office, staring at Sephy’s and Lenny’s photographs in disgust. Not only were they powerful they were stunningly beautiful and didn’t even know it, or if they did, they also didn’t care or flaunt it.
She stared at the bowl of witch balls, picked one up and rolled it around between her forefinger and thumb.
It was too tempting to throw one at the photos, too easy.
She was better than this, she needed to concentrate and find the book.
Maybe she could ask Brandon to ask around.
He was more discreet than Arnie who seemed as obsessed with the English women as she was.
Pulling on her coat she decided to walk down to the wharf, maybe grab a coffee from Jaho and just sit and people watch.
See if she could pick up on any vibes that were coming from the book, it wasn’t as if Salem was a huge place.
What she really needed was some kind of sign, wouldn’t a book that powerful give off some kind of vibes as to its whereabouts?
Clara strode past the crowd of tourists outside of the Witch House and crossed the road onto Essex Street, purposely not looking at Sephy’s apothecary although it would be closed by now unless she was out the back mixing up potions and spells that some of the locals swore by.
Clara continued past Witch City Wicks, down to Washington Street and crossed onto the pedestrianised part of Essex Street.
Striding past Ascend, she liked that little store, liked what they did with the aura photos.
Past the Witch City Mall, which was in dire need of an update, past the Peabody Essex Museum, she didn’t even turn her head as she passed Crow Haven Corner, the oldest witch shop in Salem.
The Hawthorne Hotel she gave a slight nod to, it was one of her favourite places to go for supper and a nightcap, not to mention where she held her secret council meetings.
She didn’t walk down Hawthorne Boulevard, instead she walked past Bella Verona, a lovely little Italian restaurant she approved of most wholeheartedly and turned onto Union, a little side street that was a far quieter way to get down to the wharf, tourists didn’t seem to like the little cut throughs which suited her just fine.
She was in no mood to stop and make polite conversation with women wearing gaudy, pointed witch hats or T-shirts that read ‘1692 they missed one’.
The cold reality was in 1692, with the exception of the English women, no witches were ever executed and even then, the English women had no idea of the power they held.
If they had, surely they would have used it to escape their fate, but they didn’t.
They went willingly or as willingly as you could with a noose around your neck.
That was the problem, they had died as martyrs when they didn’t have to, which just proved you could give someone all the power in the world and they still wouldn’t use it to their full advantage and that was her whole point.
As she reached the corner of Derby Street, a dark shadow flew above her head.
She looked up and saw that pesky crow that followed Lucine everywhere or it had until her most recent death.
It was dark, so there was a good chance it wasn’t Hades, there were other crows in Salem.
There were lots of crows in Salem, they were drawn to witches just as witches were drawn to crows but there was something familiar about it.
She paused on the corner, if she’d been here just two minutes earlier, she would have seen which direction it had come from.
Did this bird know about The Book of Black Magic, if not why was it down here poking its beak around?
Hm, this was an interesting development, maybe she could follow the crow next time it came this way, if it ever did.
There was a lot of false hope with this theory because it might not even have been him, but he was alone and usually where there was one crow another wasn’t far behind.
She scanned the sky above to see if there were any random crows perched on the rooftops, but there weren’t.
Most average crows would be tucked up in their nests for the night; it had to have been him.
Maybe she should find him and ask him where the book was, she’d heard that he talked more than a parrot on a good day, but she’d never witnessed it.
Clara crossed the road and went into the coffee shop, looking around at the customers.
After placing her order she sat underneath the pink neon sign, no idea that Morana, the woman she was looking for, had done the exact same thing less than an hour ago.