Chapter Ten
T he summer night was as warm and soft as silk velvet. I pushed open my bedroom window and tried to avert my eyes from Big House, but I couldn’t help but check to see if Sam’s SUV was there. It was. Yellow light escaped from the crack in his bedroom curtains. He was so close, yet so far.
A crow alit on the roof of the gable below me and sharpened his beak on the roof tiles.
Chills shivered through me as I turned away from the window. I had to get to the bottom of what hampered my magic. I had a handful of clues: Babe Hamilton; Ian’s disappearance; Lise.
A dark force sought to bind my magic by severing my connection to books.
Maybe that force was also responsible for my seeing Ian’s body.
I was forced to admit Sam had been right.
Ian couldn’t have made it into the library without his wheelchair, and there had been no sign of that.
Until now, the interfering magic had been relatively minor, but it seemed to be gathering force.
I had to figure out who and what was behind it.
Scrying was the best way I knew to piece them together.
In brief, scrying was using a reflective surface— a crystal ball, a mirror, a slab of polished obsidian, even a bowl of water—to see images.
Sometimes these images concerned the future, but foresight wasn’t my gift.
I simply wanted to know what was happening to me now.
I pulled a fresh beeswax taper from a drawer and lifted a heavy brass candlestick from its place on the end table.
I tucked Grimm’s Fairy Tales under my arm.
Since I was a child, I’d loved this book.
Because I’d put so much energy into these stories over the years, their words had fueled some of my most powerful spells.
I needed Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the powers of the rest of the library’s books to fuel my magic, if I could wrest it free.
Rodney trotted down the stairs behind me. The books, which would normally be stirring into a wave of sound, barely let out a buzz. The whispers I could make out sounded strained. I hoped I could rally enough magic to make scrying work at all.
I hesitated at the center of the atrium.
This was, after all, where I’d seen Ian’s body.
Here, in the dark, as tonight. However, what repulsed me from the memory was also why I wanted to scry here.
If someone else’s magic was involved, its residue might linger.
I lit the candle and set it in the atrium’s middle, where moonlight through the cupola’s stained glass splashed red, green, and blue light.
Rodney lay on his side, with a spill of green on his fur, and lazily blinked at me.
From the kitchen I brought a bowl of water and placed it near the candle so its flame would illuminate the water’s surface. Following my grandmother’s instructions, I cast a protective circle large enough to hold me and Rodney.
The library around me was oppressively quiet.
Oh, how I hoped the scrying would work. I could feel my senses dulling, as they’d been before the spell binding my magic had been released a few years earlier.
I couldn’t go back to that way of living.
Not now, when afternoon skies were so vivid, food tasted so good, the wind smelled of the earth, and I knew love.
“Books,” I whispered, half craving, half fearing their response. “Books, lend me your energy to see what stands between me and my magic.”
I felt as if I were inside a bubble with transparent yet viscous walls. Energy pushed against those walls, but it might have been outside the library altogether, its force was so weak.
“Books,” I pled, “please. Speak to me.”
Magic’s force continued muffled, faraway. Rodney stood suddenly and growled, looking into the darkness.
“Hush, baby. We’re safe here.”
I saw nothing, heard nothing. I picked up the bluebound volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales . I held the book to my chest and breathed deeply. Then I ruffled my fingers through its pages until a tingle told me here . I set the book in my lap and opened it where my fingers had landed. My heart fell.
To accompany the scrying, Grimm’s Fairy Tales had selected “The Old Witch,” a particularly gruesome tale. However, if this was the cost for gathering magic, I’d pay it. I read the story’s beginning:
There once was a little girl who was very obstinate and willful, and who never obeyed when her elders spoke to her; so how could she be happy?
The story was short, merely a page. I read on.
The story related how the stubborn girl insisted on visiting an evil old witch who could appear in many guises, but whose true face was “a creature with a fiery head.” The story ended with the witch changing the girl into a block of wood and tossing her on the fire.
Warning received. I closed Grimm’s Fairy Tales .
The water’s surface rippled on the bowl I’d set next to the candle. Slowly, I rested my hands on the book of fairy tales so not to disturb the magic I’d managed to squeeze from it. I softened my vision, and I stared at the bowl and let images unfurl.
When scrying, it wasn’t as if I watched a movie on the water’s surface. Instead, the ripples swirled and sparked pictures in my head. The first image was all ivory with pale brown spots, like a pony. No, it was skin. Lise Bloom’s freckled skin. But no Lise Bloom. That image faded to black.
Then a fresh ripple on the bowl’s surface brought to mind sheets hung outside to dry and flapping in the wind.
My chest tightened. Babe Hamilton. She sold linens and had told me how she laundered vintage cotton carefully and hung it outside to dry so the sun would bleach it and the scent of the grass freshen it.
I caught a glimpse of hands fastening a clothespin to the line.
The hand was soft and young. Babe was likely in her sixties now, with blue veins showing beneath her pale skin.
The last image quickly coalesced into a crow. Again, Rodney growled and leaned back, the fur on his tail puffing. First, I saw one crow, then another, then several, until the bowl was black with them. I stood suddenly. Grimm’s Fairy Tales dropped from my lap, knocking over the bowl.
I flattened a palm over my racing heart and forced my breathing to slow.
Babe Hamilton was involved with the trouble with my magic. I didn’t know exactly how, but I could certainly find out why.
I spent a restless night pondering the waning of my magic and feeling the nearness yet distance of Sam, barely a hundred feet from my bedroom window. Despite my lack of sleep, I rose from bed the next morning with purpose. Today I would be calling on a witch.
That is, maybe I’d be calling on a witch.
Babe had always been someone I could relax with, chat with as if she were a friend.
She shared my love of beautiful textiles, I thought, as I folded back the quilt on my bed.
It was a dizzying pattern of pieced vintage fabric, and sleep—usually—came easily under its soft warmth.
But wasn’t that how glamour was? The ability to appear however someone wanted you to appear? If, as my grandmother had warned, Beata was a master at glamour, even with most of her magic cut away, she might still wield enough to appear as Babe. I’d have to rely on my instincts to feel this one out.
A cup of coffee later, I was on my way to the Magnolia Rolling Estates with Rodney prancing ahead. Sam’s SUV was gone for the day. I’d heard his engine as I dressed, but it didn’t make passing his empty drive way any easier.
I’d tucked the Grimm’s Fairy Tales into my bag.
It might be more of a talisman than a source of power now, but its presence comforted me.
The whole library had been quiet this morning, and my world was beginning to dim.
I had to get my magic back before it vanished completely.
My plan was to confront Babe and to keep my senses alert for any magical tremor. I would use surprise to my advantage.
At the Magnolia Rolling Estates, most of the residents were still asleep.
Lalena would be in bed for at least a few more hours, and Ian’s trailer had the dead look of a home that hadn’t been lived in for a while.
I couldn’t hear the books as I passed. Darla’s trailer was lit, and Montgomery passed before the kitchen window.
Darla would have been up for hours and was almost certainly at the café now, brewing coffee and mixing pancake batter.
However, Babe was an early riser. She’d often told me how it gave her the advantage at the estate sales where she sourced vintage linens.
Her trailer’s curtains were drawn, but the kitchen window glowed through its voile covering.
She was awake. I looked down to tell Rodney to wait for me outside, but he’d disappeared. I was on my own.
I didn’t think too much—I simply knocked on Babe’s door, my knuckles sounding sharp against the metal.
Steps; another light coming on; the door opened. Babe’s face was pale through the screen. “Josie?” The screen door creaked as she opened it. In a bathrobe and without a face of makeup and her signature red lipstick, Babe looked older than I’d assumed. “Is everything okay?”
All at once, my resolve melted. What had I been thinking? The Grimm’s Fairy Tales in my bag let out a faint shiver and faded. I was here for a reason, I reminded myself. “May I come in? It’s early, but I figured you’d be up.”
“Of course.” She stepped aside to let me pass.
Roz had rented the trailer to Babe when she’d moved in with Lyndon, but few traces of her remained.
The plaid-upholstered sofa was Roz’s, but I hardly recognized it draped with antique kanthas.
Bits of hand-tatted lace covered the windows beneath Roz’s oatmeal-hued curtains.
A cheerful 1950s cotton tablecloth covered the kitchen table, with images of baskets bursting with plums, strawberries, and bananas.
A stack of linens sat on one of the chairs.
She must have been sorting them for the shop when I knocked.
This was not the home of a witch out to steal my power.
This was where a tired middle-aged woman lived who made her living rummaging through people’s castoffs and selling what she’d salvaged.
She was no femme fatale. Why had I come here, anyway?
I felt so tired. Maybe when I returned home, I could nap a few minutes before opening the library.
Without asking, I took an armchair. My tote bag fell to my side.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Babe asked.
“Yes, please. The cup I had seems to have worn off.”
Babe poured from a percolator and splashed cream into the mug. Both the percolator and mug must have come from estate sales—they looked lifted straight from a black-and-white TV sitcom.
Babe set my mug on the side table and lowered herself to the couch. “What’s wrong, honey?” She leaned forward, not in prurience, but in concern. “Does this have to do with Sam?”
The shiv of pain from thinking of Sam prompted me to speak. “Are you my Aunt Beata?”
Mouth agape, Babe fell back into the couch. “Your what ?”
From her puzzled expression, I knew I’d been mistaken.
What had I been thinking? Before me sat a normal woman, drained by the early hour and definitely free of magic’s sparkle.
How could I suspect her responsible for the waning of my magical abilities, not to mention the force behind the crows that followed me and the dozens of other strange occurrences?
Babe stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had.
I shook my head. “Sorry. I’ve been . . . I’ve been under a lot of strain lately.”
“I understand.” Her voice was soft. “Sometimes life can take odd turns. Not everyone is meant for us. Someday you’ll look back and understand why this happened.”
She was thinking of Sam. Like everyone else in town, she’d noticed our distance, and she was kind enough to take a motherly approach. My throat thickened.
“Who is this aunt . . . Aunt Beatrice?” she asked.
“Beata. Aunt Beata. My mother was telling me about her. She’s been on my mind, and I thought . . . I wondered….” I couldn’t think of a way to wrap up my thoughts. “Sorry for busting in on you like this.”
“Never mind. I’m glad you stopped by.” She stood. “I would have come up to the library today to see you, anyway. I found something you should have.”
Babe pulled a sheet from the stack of linens on the kitchen chair. She set it on my lap. Time had dimmed to ivory the sheet’s thick cotton-linen blend, and many washings had softened the fabric. “For me?”
“Yes. Look.” She pointed to the initials embroidered into its top edge surrounded by vines and smooth, deco-inspired dots in glossy cotton thread. J. W. My initials. “I thought of you right away.”
I ran my palm over the fabric. So beautiful. “I didn’t bring my purse.”
“Darling, please. It’s a gift.” She patted the sheet and stood. “Beauty is comfort. Get it where you can. Besides, you’ve been a good customer.”
“I can’t thank you enough, Babe.”
She pulled me into a motherly embrace. “Don’t worry about Sam. Things will turn out how they’re meant to.”
“It’s not just that.” As true as my words were, my voice was unconvincing.
“Don’t worry about Ian, either, honey. Now, have a good day, and we’ll talk soon.”
It wasn’t until I was almost all the way home that I wondered, How did she know about Ian?