Chapter Twenty-five
T he next day at the library, I hid in my office, halfheartedly doing admin work and pondering last night’s trustees’ meeting.
I couldn’t think about a strategy for the trustees’ meeting now—not while a potential arrest for murder hung over my head. If it wasn’t for Ian’s courage in contacting the sheriff’s office, I’d still be behind bars.
Once Roz closed the library for the day, I emerged from my office and waved goodbye to her, then circled the library, drawing curtains and snapping off lights. Thankfully, there were no meetings tonight. I’d have time to think. And plan.
First, I needed to get to the bottom of the identity of the body found in the woods. My working theory was that it was Tyrone Beaudrie. Was I right?
I picked up my phone and called the Wallingford Guest House. “Is Tyrone Beaudrie there?” I asked. “It’s Josie Way.” I winced as I identified myself. After a day of being a spectacle, I was full up.
“Hello, Josie. No, no Tyrone. If you’ll excuse me, Sheriff Wilfred is here.”
I hung up. Sam was at the guest house, and Tyrone was not. Sam was on the same trail I was. How long would it be before he arrested me for killing Tyrone? I had one more call to make.
“Hello, Patty?” If anyone was tapped into the Wil fred grapevine, it was Patty. “Have you seen Tyrone Beaudrie anywhere?”
“Not since yesterday.” Her voice was almost gleeful. “Word is he’s missing. Might even be the body they found in the woods. The sheriff just stopped by the guest house to try to track him down. On that note, how’s life on the outside? Some trustees’ meeting, huh?”
I made an excuse about how I was tired and couldn’t talk, and I dropped to the armchair in my apartment. Rodney leapt to my lap and, purring, circled to lie down.
People had seen me wandering town when I’d actually been home. I’d found Ian lying, dead, on the atrium’s floor—yet it hadn’t been him. Or anyone.
I’d burned Babe Hamilton’s charmed linens in the woods, and a body showed up in the same place a few days later. More than mere human interference was going on here. Bad magic was involved—I felt it. Aunt Beata was behind it. I was sure.
But that didn’t make sense, either. If she’d wanted me gone, why not simply do away with me?
According to my grandmother’s letter, Grandma had tied up the bulk of Beata’s power and banished her.
Beata clearly had enough magic left to block mine—at least temporarily.
She may have been feeding off the magic she’d suppressed in me, as well.
Given that her gift was glamour, she could use that siphoned magic to make people— including me—see what she wanted us to see. She could appear as anyone.
I remembered Lise Bloom on the forest path, looking at me with eyes that were oddly familiar.
Fatigue weighed on me, but every hour counted. If Aunt Beata was orchestrating my murder rap, as I believed, she would know I’d been freed from police custody, and she would be planning something to put me away again.
My grandmother thought Beata would come to me to break the spell binding her magic. If so, putting me behind bars wasn’t a smart move. I couldn’t figure it out.
There was only one way to get the answers I needed, and that was to go directly to Beata. I didn’t like it, but if I was going to clear my name and put a stop to the campaign to make me out as a murderer, I was going to have to do it.
Besides, I reminded myself, I was the more powerful witch. Less experienced, but with more raw magic— at least, I should be.
Rodney’s purring practically vibrated within me. Then it stopped. He gazed up as if trying to read my mind.
“It will be okay,” I told him. “I’m not afraid. You’ll see.”
He continued to stare.
“We have no choice.”
Rodney jumped off my lap and leapt to the window sill.
“I have to do it, kitten. It’s this or a conviction for murder.”
* * *
I slid the trunk of my grandmother’s letters from under the bed. Rodney jumped onto the cotton coverlet that had replaced the quilt Beata had charmed, and he tapped a paw near me.
“We’re going to do it, baby,” I told him.
He backed away and settled down.
I opened the trunk and thrust my hands into the letters. This time, they lay cold, but beneath them, my grandmother’s grimoire burned hot. As my fingers reached it, magical energy surged into my hands, causing me to inhale sharply and raising goosebumps up my arms.
For a moment, I let the energy metabolize, and I looked around my bedroom, hoping it wouldn’t be for the last time.
Here was the tall walnut headboard with its Victorian spindles and carvings.
There was my nightstand, bare but for a vase holding one glorious scarlet dahlia.
I knelt on a rag rug. Across the room was a window that looked across the garden to Big House, and Sam. My heart ached.
I lifted the grimoire onto the bed, and Rodney padded over to sniff its edges. The scent of fresh rosemary and verbena—impossible so many years later, but present nonetheless—wafted into the room. The smell of my grandmother.
I knew books. I loved books. In my years as a librarian—first at the Library of Congress, then at Wilfred— hundreds of thousands of books had passed through my hands, sharing everything from Victorian household hints and Chinese travelogues to histories of snake charmers and bluegrass song lyrics.
But this one, my grandmother’s book of spells, was like no other.
Every word, every sprig of dried thyme, every sketch of the moon’s phases was redolent of my grandmother and pulsed with magic.
I opened the grimoire. Its pages began to tremble on their own and flipped slowly forward, then back, then sighed and lay flat.
I lowered my fingers to the opened page and jerked them back at the heat, which rippled orange-yellow over the page’s surface.
Slowly, I lowered my hand again and let the energy surge into me.
Spell to Summon a Witch , the page was titled.
Voices— not just my grandmother’s, but several women’s voices— recited the spell together.
Words— sing, cast, moon, wind —swirled around me.
Were these the voices of my grandmother’s mother, and her mother, and hers?
Perhaps my voice would join theirs someday, as well. Not too soon, I hoped.
As the voices read the spell, Rodney’s eyes halfclosed, and his purr rose. Then he did something I’d never heard him do before: underneath his rolling purr, a growl edged in. I moved my hand away. I was at once exhilarated and terrified.
When the reading was complete, the grimoire closed on its own, green-gold energy flowing into it and vanishing. Now I knew what to do to draw Aunt Beata to me.
I couldn’t do it here, at the library. I couldn’t risk Beata’s magic souring the library—or worse. That said, the library’s books fueled my magic. Without them, I was still a witch, but I existed like a car without gas. Even a mighty jet engine is nothing without fuel.
The witch’s circle. I could go there. I was sure Beata had something to do with the body Sam had found there, and her energy would linger in the rocks and trees.
I’d be far enough from the library that she couldn’t infect my world.
As far as energy went, I would bring Grimm’s Fairy Tales , the most powerful book I possessed aside from the grimoire.
I would summon Beata, and she would appear. A foreboding shiver ran through me. I was the stronger witch, I reminded myself. As long as I didn’t do anything stupid, she couldn’t harm me.