Chapter Nineteen #2
‘Holy shit,’ Bianca interrupted. ‘They’re all mythological witches.
Those are witch names. And one matches the symbol .
. .’ Bianca pulled out a small notebook where she’d copied the symbol from the door in Luke’s painting.
‘I’d seen it before, so I did some research last night.
It’s called Hecate’s Wheel, and it’s used to draw upon the power of the goddess Hecate for protection.
It’s a common protection talisman for witches. ’
‘Hecate,’ Blair said. ‘The name of one of the sisters.’
Bianca nodded. ‘Hecate is an ancient Greek goddess. Hecate Stormvale was likely named after her.’
‘And the symbol on the door was there to protect the witches who worked inside,’ Belinda said. ‘Maybe she’s back because the symbol is gone?’
‘That door was long gone before I even leased the space,’ Blair said. Instead, there were glass doors on either side of the building. One into the café, and one into the bakery.
‘Have you seen it anywhere else?’ Belinda asked. ‘In your back room? In Luke’s apartment?’
‘I’m sure she hasn’t seen anything in Luke’s apartment but Luke’s bare ass,’ Bianca deadpanned.
Blair rolled her eyes. ‘No. The painting is the first time I’ve seen the symbol. And I asked Luke if he’d ever seen it. He hasn’t.’
No one spoke for several moments. It was clear they’d found the witches from the prophecy. It was too much of a coincidence not to be them.
Finally, Belinda continued reading from the book. ‘They developed a reputation for being fair employers, especially to their primarily female and immigrant workforce. That’s all it says about the Stormvales.’
‘Honestly, kind of love these witches,’ Bianca said.
‘I don’t love them if one or all of them are our vengeful spirit,’ Blair said.
She couldn’t believe they’d found three witches, whose parents had both died, and who owned a business in the same building Blair’s café was in.
The parallels between the Stormvale sisters one hundred years ago and the Briarwood sisters today were too many to be coincidental.
‘Do you think the fire in the building happened while they were in it?’ Bianca asked. ‘And maybe it wasn’t an accident?’
Blair shuddered. Could witches have been killed in the building her café was in? ‘I hope not.’
‘What year were the paintings made?’
‘The vendor told me the 1950s. Long after the founding of Moonbeam Hollow. I wonder if the building was left empty after the fire because it belonged to witches?’
Belinda picked up her phone. ‘I can access the town archives here. Let’s see if there is anything about a fire in the Stormvale building.’ After a few moments, she shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
‘Yeah, because Moonbeam Hollow probably hid it,’ Bianca said. ‘Check nearby towns. Search Stormvale Fire.’
Blair looked back at the book while her sister searched.
The small paragraph about the Stormvale family and the painting was all the evidence they’d found that these people existed.
Blair had worked in their building for six years, and she’d never heard of the Stormvale family.
They died only a century ago, but they’d been pretty much erased from Moonbeam Hollow’s history.
Witches or not, that was a little sad. She remembered the prophecy: They want revenge on those who took their lives and legacy.
‘I found something,’ Belinda said. ‘It’s not a lot .
. . a small newspaper article from a Toronto paper.
Factory Fire, Blaze at Stormvale Textiles.
A textile mill in the Kawartha Lakes region was set ablaze last week, killing at least ten.
The fire was discovered in the early morning by an employee and was promptly extinguished by the fire brigade.
There was little damage to the brick exterior, but the timber interior was destroyed.
At least ten died of smoke inhalation, including the owners of the factory and their families. Two of the deceased were children.’
Blair felt a wave of nausea deep in her stomach. The Stormvale family . . . a witch family . . . died in her building. Children, too. It was devastating.
‘What’s the date on that?’ Bianca said, voice shaky. She was clearly affected by this news, too.
‘September 29th, 1926.’
‘Just a month or so before Moonbeam Hollow’s incorporation,’ Blair said. ‘Why did it say set ablaze? Was it arson?’
‘Also,’ Bianca added. ‘Why were the Stormvale sisters and their families inside the factory in the middle of the night?’
Belinda was still searching on her phone, but finally looked up, shaking her head. ‘I can’t find any other mention of this fire. At all. Maybe if we went into the city to look at the Ontario archives, we could find something, but there’s nothing online.’
‘Seems that protection talisman didn’t really work,’ Bianca said. ‘Now I remember where I’ve seen it before!’
‘Where?’ Blair asked.
‘It’s drawn in marker on one corner of my greenhouse and in our basement. I noticed it when I was cleaning the greenhouse after getting back into town, so searched the rest of the house. I think Mom drew it.’
Blair exhaled, feeling a wave of affection, and sadness, that their mother had drawn these symbols of protection in their home and in Bianca’s greenhouse.
Mom and Dad tried so hard to keep the sisters safe, not knowing they had settled in a place that was founded after the witches in the area had been killed.
Blair could not reconcile her adorable, quaint, accepting small town with the knowledge that they’d murdered three women and their families for being witches.
Of course, she knew of witch hunts. In many parts of the world, including where her family was from, people suspected of witchcraft faced great danger and often painful death.
But this was Moonbeam Hollow. This wasn’t supposed to happen here.
Bianca and Belinda were quiet too – no doubt also because of the weight of what they’d learned about their hometown.
‘What’s our next step?’ Belinda finally asked.
All three sisters looked at each other. In truth, none of them were equipped to solve this.
They had a vengeful spirit, or three of them, who may or may not be the Stormvale sisters, who might have been killed in a fire in their own factory.
And somehow, they had to put all this together to stop the spirits from destroying the festival and town?
Blair’s instinct again was to tell Belinda and Bianca not to worry about it and that Blair would figure it out herself. She had to protect her sisters above anything else. But they wanted her to treat them like equals.
‘We can try to summon the spirits,’ Belinda suggested. ‘We could find out if it’s really the Stormvale sisters. And we can find out what they want.’
Blair immediately shook her head. ‘Summoning spirits is dangerous.’
Bianca snorted. ‘You think everything is dangerous. I’ve summoned spirits loads of times.’
Blair’s eyes widened. ‘What? When? Where?’
Bianca waved her hand. ‘Don’t worry about it. I agree with Belinda. We need to go to the horse’s mouth, so to speak. We know their names now, so we should summon them. I say we do it tonight.’
Blair didn’t like this idea at all. Summoning spirits was not only dangerous because when a spirit is called to the mortal realm, there was no way of knowing what it would do.
But also, it was a very hard spell to cast. The three of them had never attempted it together as adults, but they had done it with their parents when they were kids, and even with five of them, it rarely worked.
But after their father had died, they no longer attempted advanced magic as a family.
But what choice did they have? The festival was at risk. And Blair had no other ideas. ‘Okay.’ Blair sighed. ‘Let’s go home.’