Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I n every soul, there is a place reserved for Shadow.

Mine was safely hidden, tucked in a blind spot at the corners of my memory, under a hollow bruise that I thought had healed long ago.

Then the ravens came to New Haven, carrying an invitation that neither Shadow nor I could refuse.

—

It was a Friday in late May when the invitation arrived.

“Hey, Professor Bishop! I just put your last mail delivery through the slot!”

I’d been woolgathering on the familiar route home from my office at Yale, listening with half of my attention to Becca’s excited chatter while the rest of my mind drifted. I hadn’t noticed that we’d arrived at the ornate iron gate that guarded our house on Orange Street, or that our regular mail carrier, Brenda, was just leaving the property.

“Thanks, Brenda,” I said, giving her a limp smile. The heat was withering. It was always like this in New Haven around graduation time, which led to frazzled tempers, damp academic regalia, and long lines for iced lattes at the city’s many coffee shops.

“You must be excited about getting back to England, Becca,” Brenda said. She was already wearing her USPS bucket hat and shorts, prepared for New Haven’s warmer temperatures and sky-high humidity.

“I am.” Becca hopped from one foot to the next to prove it. “It’s Tamsy’s first trip and I get to show her everything. ”

Tamsy was a recent addition to the family: one of the historical dolls that were all the rage among the thirteen-and-under set. Marcus and his mate, Phoebe, had chosen the colonial era doll for Becca because of her fondness for Marcus’s house in Hadley, and her delight in the stories he told about growing up there in the 1760s and 1770s. Though she had been given a different name by the manufacturer, Becca had rebaptized her the moment she had seen the doll’s green eyes and red hair peeking out from the box’s clear, round window.

Since receiving the doll, Becca’s active imagination had been fully engaged with Tamsy and her world. She came with a variety of outfits and accessories that helped Becca bring her to life, including a horse named Penny. Tamsy was well supplied with home furnishings, too. Matthew added to them with a small replica of the Windsor chair at Marcus’s house that had once belonged to Grand-père Philippe and a Tamsy-sized version of a painted Hadley chest like the one Phoebe used to store household linens. It was fitted with a tiny lock, and Becca had already packed Tamsy’s clothes, her schoolbooks, her quill pen and ink pot, and her collection of hats for the journey to England.

Brenda gave Tamsy, who was hanging from Becca’s hand, a wave. She turned to me. “You must be excited to get back to your research, too.”

At the end of every school year, Matthew and I would take the children to England, where we spent the summer months at our house in Woodstock. It was only a few miles outside Oxford, which put me within easy reach of the Bodleian Library and made it possible for Matthew to work in his quiet Oxford University laboratory, with no colleagues or graduate students to interrupt him. Becca and her brother, Pip, had acres of land to roam, hundreds of trees to climb, and a house filled with curious treasures and books to occupy them during the inevitable summer downpours. There were trips to France to see Matthew’s mother, Ysabeau, over long, lazy weekends, and a chance to see more of Marcus and Phoebe, who would spend part of their summer in London.

I couldn’t wait to get on the plane and put Yale, New Haven, and the spring semester behind me. The prospect of a new research project focused on the wives and sisters of early Royal Society members beckoned, and I was eager to get my hands on rare books and manuscripts.

“I expect you have lots to do before tomorrow,” Brenda said.

She had no idea how much. We weren’t packed, the houseplants were still inside and not neatly arrayed on the back porch so the neighbors could water them, and I had at least three loads of laundry that needed doing before we could leave for the summer.

“I double-checked your mail hold. You’re ready for takeoff as far as the New Haven post office is concerned,” Brenda said, drawing our conversation to a close.

“Thank you,” I said, removing Tamsy from Becca’s grip and sticking her, legs first, in the top of my tote along with the campus mail.

“You and Pip have fun, Becca, and I’ll see you in August,” Brenda said, adjusting the thick strap of her mailbag.

“Bye!” Becca said, waving at Brenda’s retreating form.

I stroked her shiny hair, blue-black and iridescent as a crow’s wing. Becca resembled Matthew so closely—all long lines and contrasts, with pale skin and heavy brows. They were alike in temperament, too, with their confident reserve that could erupt into strong emotions in a heartbeat. It was Pip who resembled me. Comfortable with expressing his feelings, and quick to cry, he had my sturdy build, fair hair glinting with strands of copper, and smattering of freckles across his nose.

“We do have lots to do, peanut,” I said. “Starting with taking care of Ardwinna and Apollo and sorting all this mail.”

After that, the house would need to be put in apple-pie order—a daunting task. My little house on Court Street had been far too small to contain a vampire, a witch, two Bright Born children, a griffin, and a deerhound. Matthew’s son Marcus had offered us his palatial home on Orange Street instead. He’d bought it just before the Civil War, when he was first studying medicine at Yale and mahogany and formal entertaining were very much in fashion. Every surface in the house was polished, carved, or both. It was a nightmare to keep clean and the spacious rooms filled all too quickly with the clutter of modern living.

Despite its vast size and formal appearance, the house had proved to be surprisingly well suited to family living, with expansive covered porches that provided a place for the children to play in rainy weather; a private backyard where Philip’s griffin familiar, Apollo, and my Scottish deerhound, Ardwinna, could join in the twins’ games; and numerous downstairs rooms that had once been allocated to residents according to gender and function. At first, Marcus’s house seemed too grand for our small clutch of vampires and witches, but families have a way of expanding to fit the space allotted to them. What we thought would be a temporary stay had turned into years of permanent residence.

Becca, who was attuned to my changing moods, felt my anxiety rise.

“Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll help you.” Out of her hip pocket, Becca pulled a Yale-blue kazoo that she’d found in the office, hoping to rally my flagging spirits by piping us the last few feet home. The kazoo’s strange, bleating squawk disturbed the birds settled in the nearby trees. They took flight with an irritated flutter of wings, the murmuration of dark shapes and raucous cries protesting this interruption in their sleepy afternoon routine.

I shielded my eyes, mesmerized by the swirling, attenuated black cloud of birds that rose and fell on the damp currents of air. Becca was also rapt at the sight, her eyes wide and filled with wonder.

A single bird broke from the formation, its shadow falling over our clasped hands. The outline of the bird’s head and curved beak extended onto the walkway, pointing the way to the front door.

A sudden chill fell, and I shivered. Curious as to what had caused the drop in temperature, I looked up, expecting to see clouds blotting out the bright sun.

Instead, all the color had leached out of the world. The mellow stucco of the house, the green canopy of the trees, the splashes of blue from tall stalks of delphinium and bearded iris in the perennial borders—everything was reduced to gray scale like a washed-out photograph of foggy London taken in the 1940s. My perspective was altered, too, the house looking too tall and wide, and the trees too short. The clear tang of petrichor replaced the usual green scents of summer, along with a sulfurous note of brimstone. The usual sounds of the neighborhood—traffic, the call of the birds, the hum of lawn mowers—were all too loud, as was the drumming of my heart when a wave of the uncanny crashed overme.

Power, prickling and ominous, flooded my veins in response to the surge of magical energy that held us in its colorless shroud. I drew Becca toward me, sheltering her with my body.

The solitary bird that had been gliding overhead plummeted to the ground in front of us, wings outstretched and its head bent to the side at an angle that told me its neck had snapped on impact. Its curved, ebony beak and the ruffle of feathers at the neck told me this was a raven.

A rustle of birds’ wings filled my ears as the raven’s companions settled on the branches of the nearby tree, dark spots in the ghostly world that stood out in sharp relief like a string of silhouettes cut from black paper. There were not just a few ravens, but dozens.

Everything I knew about the significance of ravens—magical, mythical, and alchemical—raced through my mind. Messengers between the dead and the living, ravens often symbolized the first step in the alchemical transformation that led to the philosopher’s stone.

Some traditions linked ravens to the power of prophecy. What it meant to have one fall dead before you, I couldn’t imagine—but it couldn’t be a sign of good fortune.

A pool of blood, crimson and thick, spread out on the pavement underneath the raven’s body. With the release of the bird’s life force, the color bled slowly back into our surroundings. Becca’s denim shorts were blue once more. The floral sprigs on my blouse turned a rosy pink and bright yellow. The irises returned to their usual indigo.

“That bird is dead, isn’t it?” Becca peered out from my arms at the raven lying motionless before us, its eyes open and staring. Her nostrils flared at the scent of the raven’s blood and an expression of hunger passed over Becca’s face, making her look every inch a vampire. Becca had demanded blood as an infant, and though her avidity had waned over time, its coppery smell still roused her need forit.

“Yes.” The outpouring of blood confirmed it, and there was no point in avoiding the truth.

“When the bird died, why did the colors die, too?” Becca’s eyes were as wide as those of the dead bird. In their depths was a dark spark I had not seen before.

“What do you mean?” I asked carefully, not wanting to dilute her response with my own reactions to this afternoon’s events.

“Everything went gray, like the ashes in the fireplace,” Becca explained. “Didn’t you see it?”

I nodded, surprised that my daughter had noticed it, too. Becca’s powers of observation were second only to Matthew’s but, unlike Pip, she was not usually attuned to the magical forces that swirled around her.

“Was it magic?” Becca wondered. “It didn’t feel like your magic, Mommy.”

“Yes, sweetie, I think it was,” I replied.

Whatever magic had visited our New Haven neighborhood, it had retreated now. Even so, I wanted to be safely in the house, away from the dead bird and the dark shadow it had cast over me and my daughter.

Before I could move Becca in that direction, the unkindness of ravens perched in the trees started a mournful chorus. Their song was made up of screams of pain, gurgling croaks, throaty chuckles, and raspy cries. One particularly large raven took flight. The slow, heavy motion of its wings quieted the other birds. The raven opened its beak and out poured the sound of bells, high and chiming, to replace the previous cries of grief and despair.

The sizable raven landed safely on the pavement before us, light and sure-footed. The bird’s feathers shone deeply black with a hint of darkest blue that reminded me of Becca’s hair, and its neck swelled so that it looked as though the raven had donned a black ruff. With a snap of its formidable beak, the raven cocked its head.

Becca returned the gesture. Cautiously, she approached the bird.

“Careful,” I murmured, unsure of its intentions.

The ravens in the trees cried out with loud kra kras, indignant that anyone would think they would harm a child.

Becca crouched by the dead bird. Its lively companion took a few two-footed hops to narrow the distance between them, and strutted back and forth, emitting a bubbling stream of chatter. It picked something out of the dead raven’s beak and dropped it before her.

It didn’t clatter like metal, but the round hoop suggested it was a ring—albeit one that would have fit only a very slender finger.

“Don’t touch it!” I cried. My aunt Sarah Bishop had taught me never to touch an unidentified magical object, and for the most part I obeyed her rules.

Our daughter was made of more independent stuff.

“Thank you,” Becca told the raven, slipping the ring over her knuckles. It left streaks of the bird’s blood as it traveled down her finger.

The raven chirruped a reply and Becca listened attentively, nodding as though she understood what it was saying. Tamsy stared at the raven from my tote bag, blinking slowly every now and again like she was clearing the sleep from her eyes.

As Becca and the raven conversed, a prickling sensation in my left thumb and the pucker between my eyebrows told me that the strange magic had not retreated after all. It had simply shifted to something else that was equally unfamiliar. I tried to probe the nature of the magic, sending out inquisitive feelers in the hope of identifying it, but it was smoky and murky, without clear intentions or any discernible knotted structure. It had a strange scent, too: sea salt, pine, barberries, and brimstone all garbled together.

“I’m sorry your friend died,” Becca said, when the raven at last fell silent. “You must be sad.”

The raven’s head rose and fell in time with guttural chirps that sent its throat feathers sticking out even farther, like a porcupine’s quills.

“We’ll bury her in the backyard.” Becca crossed her heart just as Matthew had taught her to do. “I promise.”

Becca’s solemn oath was a large commitment for such a young person. Given the enchantment unfolding around us, the ravens had not come to Orange Street by accident.

Someone had sent them, and they had come bearing a gift for my daughter. I had learned the hard way that magical gifts always came with strings attached.

“Let’s go inside, and give the birds a moment with their friend,” I suggested gently, still wanting to be behind closed doors rather than outside and vulnerable to whatever complicated spell was unraveling. I held out my hand and Becca tookit.

“We can’t! We have to stay until her friends sing her on her last flight, Mommy,” Becca explained, rising.

On cue, the ravens sitting on the branches began another haunting dirge, this one rattling like bones against wood and full of grief and longing. It was a privilege to listen to the inner life of these magnificent birds. Emotion filled my throat as I, too, felt their loss.

Becca gripped my hand tighter as the birds sang. Heavy tears fell from her eyes, and though she tried to sniff them away, they mingled with the dead raven’s blood, forming clear, saline puddles in the darkening stain around the bird.

The ravens took flight, their song of grief turning to one of hope as the sound of bells once more filled the air. The birds soared and tumbled over their fallen sister, their feathers shimmering with otherworldly brilliance.

“Thanks for delivering her message,” Becca told the lone raven who remained. “I won’t forget.”

With a few powerful strokes of its wings, the raven joined the rest of his unkindness—though that seemed like a collective misnomer based on what I’d just witnessed. Together, the birds rose higher and higher until they were nothing more than black specks against the sky.

“What was the bird’s message, Becca?” I asked, eyeing the dead raven with concern.

“He told me it was time to come home and gave me this.” Becca held out her left index finger.

I examined the ring as closely as I could, given it was smeared with gore and had clumps of earth attached to it. The ring was blackened with age in places, but white as bone in others. Its surface was pierced, and coarse, dark fiber was woven through the holes.

“But we’re already home. It’s awfully sad that his friend died delivering a message that we didn’t need.” Becca’s tears resumed as she looked up at me. “Is it my fault she died?”

“Of course not.” I drew her close. “The raven just misjudged the distance to the ground.”

Becca sniffed.

“Come on,” I said firmly. “Inside.”

“But the bird—” Becca protested, putting all her weight into resistingme.

“Your father will take care of the raven,” I said.

The colors may have returned to the world, and the sounds and smells of a New Haven summer filled my nose instead of the strange resinous mix that had accompanied the ravens, but there was no mistaking that something had happened on Orange Street today. Something magical that was both uncanny and unfamiliar.

Once we’d gone inside the house’s cool entrance with its marble floors and high ceilings, I let out a quiet sigh and leaned against the closed door. My overflowing tote bag slipped from my shoulder, joining the mail at my feet that had been delivered through the brass-plated slot. Tamsy tumbled out of the bag, and Becca rushed to retrieve her.

Becca’s eyes bored into me. She was a watchful child, and little escaped her notice, whether it was a mouse out in the garden scrounging for food or the shifting emotions of the people around her.

“Do you need a cup of tea?” Becca asked.

Everyone in the family knew that the quickest way to soothe my ruffled feathers was to put a book in one of my hands and a cup of tea in the other.

“I most certainly do!” I laughed. “And you look like you could use a snack. Peanut butter and apple slices?”

It was Becca’s favorite treat, the crisp half-moons of apple providing the perfect dipper for the creamy, salty spread.

“Yes, please,” Becca said solemnly, her mood still affected by the raven’s death.

I scooped up the mail and tote bag and we made a beeline for the kitchen. This sunny room in the back of the house was my favorite space in Marcus’s otherwise wallpapered and well-upholstered home. Because the purpose of a vampire kitchen was comfort, rather than food preparation and consumption, it was often designed around aesthetic considerations instead of the practical needs of a cook. The kitchen felt more like a living space as a result, with ample seating and warm, inviting lighting. The cabinets were painted a cheerful duck-egg blue and retained the original glass-fronted upper doors to display crockery and a large selection of wineglasses that sparkled in the light.

Ardwinna and Apollo were fenced in the former sewing room just off the kitchen. Apollo was sporting the disguising spell I’d designed for him that made him look like a large yellow Labrador retriever.

They greeted us with their own chorus of barks and chortles.

“Why don’t you take the animals outside?” I suggested to Becca, who was still watching me like a hawk. My hands shook as I dropped the mail and my bag on the kitchen table. Now that the eerie moment with the birds had passed and the adrenaline was leaving my body, I was aware of the tension I’d been holding.

“Okay, Mommy.” Becca opened the door and led Ardwinna and Apollo into the backyard to stretch their legs and pick up any messages left by the neighborhood’s other beasts.

Musing over the raven’s gift and its strange message about going home, I took the kettle to the sink. I was so consumed trying to recall every detail of the mysterious magic that had settled around us that I forgot to remove its lid, and the water hit it with such force that it splattered all over me, the counters, and the window. I mopped up the mess, filled the kettle properly, and set it on the stove. Then I took down a small bowl for Becca’s snack and gathered a knife from the drawer. Still distracted, I narrowly avoided slicing the tip of my finger rather than the apple.

By the time the dog and the griffin had sniffed every plant and tree in the garden, I’d managed to safely slice the fruit, put some dollops of peanut butter into the bowl, and make myself a bracing cup of tea.

“Wash your hands before you sit down,” I reminded Becca as she came inside, not wanting the blood and grime of this afternoon to get into my daughter’s reactive bloodstream.

The five of us settled around the scarred but substantial piece of furniture that had been used as a chopping block when the house was built. Now, it was where we gathered for family meals rather than in the stuffy dining room. Tamsy was in her high chair, listing to one side with a bemused expression and a buckled shoe dangling from her foot. Ardwinna curled as close to Becca as possible in case a peanut butter–smeared finger or half-bitten piece of apple came her way, while Apollo positioned himself so that he could keep one tawny eye on the hallway, alert for Pip’s return.

My son and his griffin were tightly connected by the mysterious bond that developed between weavers—witches like Pip and me, capable of making new spells—and the magical companions who supported them on their magical journey. My familiar had been a firedrake, and I still felt pangs of loss whenever I thought of Corra, whom I’d freed from service after she helped me save Matthew’s life.

Becca did not have such a creature at her side. We weren’t sure when—or if—one would appear. Our daughter’s magic was not progressing by leaps and bounds like Pip’s was, and Matthew and I were fine with that. Becca’s vampire instincts were sharp, and her hunting skills excellent. Still, I needed to pay more attention to Becca’s development as a witch this summer. I’d been so preoccupied in the last few years with my responsibilities at Yale that I hadn’t been doing much magic at all.

As she sat, Becca took my emotional temperature and seemed to find it improved, since she tucked into her snack without mentioning Yale, Brenda, or the raven on the front pavement. I flipped through the mail delivered to Orange Street. It was mostly bills that needed to be paid before we left.

In between sorting items, I cast long looks at the ring on Becca’s finger. Now that it was free from dirt and blood, I could see its intricate carvings. It was made of bone, though what kind of bone I couldn’t tell. The black thread woven through the piercings gave both texture and color to the ring and reinforced the delicate tracery. Magic was woven through it, too, and I wanted a chance to explore it further.

“Can I see your ring?” I asked.

“Sure.” Becca tugged at it, but the ring didn’t budge. She put her finger in her mouth and sucked on it before I could stop her, then pulled on it again. “It’s stuck.”

“Let me try,” I said, beckoning her over. She extended her finger toward me. The tip sparkled and shone.

“Look, Mommy!” Becca hopped up and down with excitement. “My finger is on fire, just like yours is when you do magic!”

“So I see,” I replied calmly, though my heart had dropped into an ominous drumbeat. I touched the ring, hoping to learn its secrets, and the light at the tip of Becca’s finger dimmed. The magic was stuck inside the ring just as the ring was stuck on Becca’s finger.

“Can I wait for Daddy and Pip in the library?” Becca asked, impatient with my fussing. The colored paper, tubs of markers, pencils, and all the bits and bobs she used in her craft projects were stored there, and she would much rather play with them than stay in the kitchen withme.

“Of course you can,” I said, letting go of her finger. “Are you going to draw a picture of what you saw at Yale to show Daddy and Pip when they come home?”

Becca picked up Tamsy and shook her head. “I’m going to draw a picture of the raven—so I won’t forget her, or her message.” Becca was an exceptionally resilient child, but the raven’s death had made a deep impression on her.

“Okay, sweetie.” I kept my voice light. “I’ll join you soon.”

Becca skipped off to the library and I sipped my tea, staring into its depths as though it might tell me what to make of the unkindness of ravens, their strange behavior, Becca’s even odder reaction to it, and the unbudgeable ring.

Was Becca’s magic waking up at long last? Would I have two teenage weavers on my hands in a few years and not just one? Matthew was bound to have similar questions when he discovered the dead bird outside. For now, I had no answers for him—or myself.

I returned to the mail with a sigh. Bills. Sale flyers. More bills. I quickly pitched them onto an empty chair to be recycled. My hands stilled when they touched a thick, creamy envelope with Italian stamps.

This was not junk mail. It was a letter from the Congregation, the ruling council that oversaw creature affairs in an often-hostile human world.

Holding the thick envelope in my fingers, I was reminded of my office in Venice and the work I’d done to integrate daemons, witches, and vampires into the Congregation, disrupting the status quo and breaking the tradition that a member of Matthew’s extended family should preside over its proceedings. Today my friend Agatha Wilson led the nine-member council—a daemon who had brought many creative solutions to perennial Congregation problems. The occupant of the de Clermont chair after me had also broken with precedent. The vampire Fernando Gon?alves—the mate of the revered and long-dead Hugh de Clermont—represented the family, not Matthew or his older brother Baldwin.

I flipped the envelope over, expecting to see a swirl of black, silver, and orange wax impressed with the official Congregation seal of a flaming triangle with a sun, star, and moon held within it. This seal was all silver, however, with an unblinking eye in the center.

The all-seeing eye was the personal emblem of Sidonie Von Borcke, one of the Congregation’s three witches. She had been the bane of my existence even before Baldwin had appointed me the deClermont representative to the Congregation. While I was on the ruling council, Sidonie had made it her personal mission to thwart me at every turn.

Braced for bad news, I cracked the wax and opened the envelope. A whisper of rose and cedar escaped from the broken seal. I drew out the distinctive marble-edged paper, made by a maestro marmorizzatore at a shop where the Congregation had been purchasing their stationery since the 1860s. The letter began:

Dear Professor Bishop and Professor Clairmont,

As you know, we assess the talents and skills of all children who have a legacy of higher magic in their family. Because both of Professor Bishop’s parents came from such a lineage, we feel there is some urgency to proceed with your children’s evaluation as soon as possible.

Sidonie was wrong. My mother, Rebecca, had dabbled in higher, darker magic for a time in her teens and twenties. She’d first encountered my nemesis and her rival, Peter Knox, at some Congregation event for higher magic hopefuls. But my father, Stephen Proctor, had been notable for his lackluster magical talents. My father was a weaver, like me, unable to work other witches’ spells. Aunt Sarah had told me that Dad wasn’t interested in the craft, never mind its advanced practices. As for his lineage, the head of the Madison coven, Vivian Harrison, didn’t believe the Proctors had produced any witch of real talent for generations.

We will be in touch with you in August to arrange for an examination in the early autumn, before Rebecca Bishop-Clairmont and Philip Bishop-Clairmont turn seven in November.

Kind regards, Sidonie Von Borcke

I shivered despite the heat. The fractured memory of Peter Knox’s examination still had the power to unsettle me. He had come to Cambridge when I was seven and my parents—who had no doubt received a letter like the one I held—had spellbound me before he arrived, tying my power in knots and removing my memories of childish magic to guard me from the Congregation’s interest. It wasn’t until I found the Book of Life and met Matthew that my parents’ spellbinding loosened, and my memories of those dark days slowly started to return, along with my magic.

But Knox’s curiosity must have been roused despite my parents’ desperate measures and the Congregation alerted to something strange in our household, for a few weeks later my mom and dad went to Nigeria to conduct research on ritual magic, drawing their focus away from me. They both died there, under mysterious circumstances I still didn’t completely understand, although the role Peter Knox and his allies had played was evident. After their deaths, I’d had to figure out the contours of my own power without their support or guidance.

“No,” I said fiercely. “Absolutely not.”

The Congregation was not going to probe the twins’ magical abilities so they could make use of them, as Peter Knox had tried and failed to do with me. The witches in Venice would not be given access to knowledge of my children’s potential. I would go to the Congregation myself, and take this up with Sidonie and the other witches.

I turned my tote bag over, dumping my wallet and everything else I’d gathered from the office all over the kitchen table, scattering the freshly sorted house mail and undoing my earlier work. As usual, my phone had sifted to the bottom. It was now on top of the small mountain of campus mail that I had yet to go through.

Matthew was the first number on my speed dial. With more force than was necessary I pushed the button on the screen to connectus.

“Hello!” Matthew’s voice was warm, and I immediately felt supported in my determination to protect Becca and Pip from Sidonie and her Congregation cronies. “Are you home?”

“Yes. And I need you to come home, too,” I said. “They’re after the children.”

“Who is?” Matthew asked, his tone now blade-sharp.

“The Congregation. We got a letter,” I said. “They want to test the children’s magical talents. You’ll have to take Becca and Pip to the Old Lodge while I go to Venice and sort this out.”

“Slow down, Diana.” Matthew was trying to calm me, but the urgency of the situation had me in its grip and his words carried little weight.

“If we let Sidonie test the children, the Congregation’s witches are bound to discover that Pip’s a weaver,” I cried. “And they might be able to sense if the twins have blood rage, too.”

Blood rage was the scourge of vampires, an inherited genetic condition that resulted when daemon, human, and vampire blood mingled. It manifested in uncontrollable anger, violence, and bloodlust. Matthew was afflicted with it, as was his great-grandson, Jack. Matthew had refused to perform tests on the children to see if they, too, had inherited his genetic mutation.

“I can’t spellbind Becca and Pip,” I said, my heart breaking and my voice following suit. “I can’t, Matthew. I thought I could, if necessary, but now—”

“I’m on my way,” Matthew said, his keys jangling as he gathered his things at the lab.

The line went dead.

In the silence that followed the call, I was aware of the distance between Becca and me in the house. Needing to close it, I swept the contents of my tote into my arms. I could sort through my campus mail in the library just as easily as in the kitchen.

Marcus’s impressive, paneled library served as our family room, a quiet place tucked away from the street at the back of the house. It had windows that opened onto the garden, walls lined with books, a cozy fireplace, and a long table like those at Sterling Library.

Becca glanced up from her drawing and splayed protective hands over her work. “Don’t look, Mom. It’s not finished.”

“I won’t,” I said, dumping my possessions on the far end of the table. “Cross my heart.”

Though I was tempted to peek at Becca’s creation, I dove into the drifts of paper instead, looking for my planner so that I could begin to make the arrangements for Venice. Matthew had told me to wait, but there was no harm in looking at dates and imagining how we could adjust our summer calendar.

I located the slim diary and drew it from the pile. Sticking out from underneath it was a letter addressed to me at the Yale history department. The sender’s identity was embossed in navy on the upper left corner: Professor G. E. Proctor, Ravenswood, Ipswich, Massachusetts.

I stared at the return address, unable to believe what I was seeing. Professor? Proctor? Ravenswood? Ipswich? Sarah had assured me that all my nearest Proctor relatives were dead. But the postmark indicated that the note had been sent three days ago.

As far as I knew, ghosts did not have access to the U.S. Postal Service.

I took hold of the letter and slid my finger under the flap, ripping a clean tear across the top, releasing the scent of petrichor and brimstone I’d noticed outside with the ravens. The thick card inside bore a formal inscription: From the desk of G. E. Proctor. Below were three lines written in a sloping script no longer taught in American schools.

It’s time you came home, Diana.

Your great-aunt,

Gwyneth Proctor

It was the same message the raven had delivered to Becca.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that both messages had arrived from two different sources on the same day I’d received the ominous letter from the Congregation. Had this mysterious great-aunt of mine sent the ravens in case her invitation was lost in the mail? Could the invitation to Ipswich have something to do with the Congregation?

“Professor Gwyneth Proctor.” I traced her name with my finger. I knew almost nothing about my father’s family, and I was surprised to discover that there were academic women among them.

I looked to see if there was anything else in the envelope. I tipped it over and out slid a playing card. Someone had drawn a hexafoil on it, the most popular apotropaic mark used to protect humans from witches and magic. It resembled a simple six-petaled flower. You could still see the tiny hole where the point of a compass had rested.

I took up the card, and the weaver’s cords on my left hand flared in response. Usually, weavers had a clutch of colored cords that helped them make new spells tied to the corresponding powers woven into the universe. Mine had been absorbed into me like the mysterious Book of Life, becoming part of my body as well as my magic. They had been quiet for years, but today’s events had awoken them.

When I flipped the card over, I saw a woodcut of a man in dark clothing and stout buckled shoes walking along a dark path bordered by low grasses. Clouds gathered above his head, and one hand was outstretched as if pointing the way. The image had been cut from some broadside or book, and glued to the card.

Home, my witch’s sixth sense whispered, as I stared at the man’s outstretched hand.

Another piece of paper slid from the envelope and fluttered down into my lap. It was small and tissue thin, folded neatly in half. The crease in the paper was soft and worn, as though it had been opened and closed many times.

On it was a pencil drawing of two clasped hands with a raven’s shadow falling across them. One hand belonged to a child. The other was adult and wore an intricate ring.

My ring. It had been a gift from Philippe de Clermont to Matthew’s mother, Ysabeau. She, in turn, had given it to me and I’d worn it ever since. I looked down at my left hand and compared the rare jewel to the pencil drawing. The similarities between them were unmistakable, with the tiny hands holding a heart with a diamond embedded in the center of the ring. I searched the paper, looking for further clues about who had drawn it, and when. Rebecca and Diana was written on the back, along with a set of initials—MFP—and the date 1972.

It was impossible that a drawing made decades ago, before I was born, could depict something that had happened just this afternoon in such detail.

The weaver’s cords on my left hand stood out, trailing from my fingertips, over my palm, and down to my wrist in strands of white, gold, silver, and black. A round figure appeared around my pulse point, woven from the cords: an ouroboros, the snake with its tail in its mouth. It was the deClermont family symbol, as well as a representation of the tenth knot of creation and destruction that so few weavers had the power to tie. These were the colors of darker, higher magic. I looked to my right hand, where the colors of the craft—brown, yellow, blue, red, and green—normally appeared when my power was stirred.

There was no trace of them. The card and the drawing that Gwyneth Proctor had sent had only captured the attention of the cords of higher magic, which I had rarely used.

I drew Sidonie’s crumpled letter from my pocket and held it next to my great-aunt’s simple missive. In one hand I held the prospect of danger and a threat to my family. In the other, I sensed a thin lifeline of hope and possibility.

I glanced at the picture made in 1972 of my daughter’s hand inside my own, the shadow of a raven’s wings falling like a benediction where our bodies met. I felt a pang of intense desire for something I could not name, and a place I’d never heard of before, where a great-aunt named Gwyneth Proctor waited forme.

I flexed my fingers, and the ouroboros at my wrist appeared to move, shifting slightly underneath my skin while shimmering colors of higher magic brightened in the air aroundme.

I was not going to England or Venice. Not yet. First, I was going home. To Ravenswood.