Chapter 20

Chapter 20

A dark hole gaped in my chest, a wound shaped like a curtained window through which I could see an apple tree with a swing, white petals all around on the green grass.

I curled to protect my flayed torso, pulling the skin toward my sternum to make me less vulnerable. I cried out from pain and shock, even as I recognized that the window, the apple tree, the swing, and the petals that resembled a fine dusting of snow were all meant to be there.

I thought of the Crossroads, and the pale forest creatures with chasms instead of hearts, and limbs that only worked with mechanical assistance. Was I a shade now, trapped Elsewhere? I moved my arm to see what replaced my hand—a whisk? a pair of scissors?—and a wave of pain followed, along with persistent bites and pinches. Granny Dorcas’s fairies must have hitched a ride to Elsewhere withme.

“Lie still.” The voice was familiar, but it didn’t belong with the apple tree. It belonged to another place, where the trees were taller, thicker, darker, and ravens and owls took flight.

“I’ll fetch a broom.”

This voice, with its distinctive burr of Scotland, was from yet another place, a room of ancient stone with a round table. Gallowglass? But no, this was a woman’s voice, and I reached through my memories for the correct name.

“Janet?” I remained curled around the abyss in the center of my body. “Something terrible has happened.”

Where was Matthew? He was my anchor, my healing balm, the one person who might be able to fix what was broken.

A warm hand settled on my shoulder. “You’ve got a bad case of memorylash, Diana. Give yourself a minute to recover.”

In my mind’s eye I saw a marsh with the sea beyond and the shadow of a heron falling over the long grass of a meadow.

“Aunt Gwyneth?” I whispered, relieved.

“Right here, Diana.” A gnarled hand squeezed mine. “It feels worse than it is. You’re lying on some broken glass, and Sarah is going to help you sit up.”

Rough hands took my shoulders. The scent of henbane, mint, and cloves swept over me. Sarah. I’d know that scent, and the touch of her work-chapped hands, anywhere.

“Gently!” Aunt Gwyneth hissed.

I was still clutching at the edges of the skin on my chest when Sarah raised me to a seated position. I didn’t want anyone to see my wound, and I kept one shoulder curved around it in defense.

“Thank the goddess,” Janet said. “I didn’t fancy letting Matthew know that his wife was lying in a pool of broken glass.”

“The bottles.” I grasped at the memory flitting through my addled mind, but my hands filled with broken glass instead.

“Are beyond repair, I’m afraid,” Gwyneth said, prying open my fingers so that the shattered fragments fell to the floor, leaving my hands scraped and bleeding.

“How will we put my memories back?” I didn’t want to lose these precious glimpses of my childhood. The thought of abandoning them in the stillroom, where I would only be able to visit them occasionally, was sickening. I began to scrabble in their remains, trying to gather up the pieces.

“Your memories are back inside you now,” Gwyneth said gently, “where they belong.”

I remembered the horrifying void in Naomi and shrank from my aunt’s touch.

“I need stitches,” I mumbled.

“You’ve got a few superficial cuts, that’s all,” Sarah said. “We’ll clean them up and put my healing salve on them. You’re going to need a new T-shirt, though.”

I looked down, dreading what I would see. But my fingers were not gripping skin. They held folds of soft, cotton cloth. Confused, I pushed on my sternum, expecting my fingers to enter my chest cavity and touch the swing hanging from the apple tree. Instead, they met bone. There was no gaping hole in me as I’d thought.

“It can’t be good for you to lie on the floor among all that glass dust,” Janet clucked. “Can you stand?”

I nodded. Sarah grasped one hand and Janet the other, and they helped me rise. I stood on shaky legs. A piece of glass caught in my hair touched my cheek. I removed it carefully.

“I think we could all use some tea,” Gwyneth said, taking charge. “Sarah, would you do the honors? Janet, could you sweep up the mess? Sarah must have a broom somewhere. As for you, Diana, you are going to stay where you are until you stop shaking. The only antidote for a sprained memory is time and rest. The headache usually goes away in a few days, but the wobbly legs and strange dreams can last for weeks.”

Sarah, who had never had a meekly compliant day in her life, went to the kitchen without protest to gather supplies. Janet busied herself with a broom and a dustpan. I didn’t want a shred of my missing memories to go out in the recycling, so Janet agreed to put all the shards and glass dust in a red-and-yellow coffee can. She gathered up the cardboard squares that I’d remembered raining down from the loft. These turned out to be some more of Mom and Dad’s old record albums, which Janet stacked in a neat pile.

Sarah returned to the stillroom with a teapot and mugs. She switched on her coffee maker and plugged in the kettle. Sarah was a great believer in electricity. Gwyneth, who scorned innovation in favor of tradition, looked distressed at the thought of drinking anything made with the assistance of such a newfangled invention.

While Sarah busied herself at the stove, and Janet made another round with her broom, I studied the assortment of bottles and jars that remained on the cupboard shelves.

“Do you think those are all my memories?” I asked softly. The tender places around my heart, where the memories had flown, twinged in sympathy.

“Only the wee bottles and jars in the front,” Janet said. “The rest of them are too old and dusty. The wax hasn’t been renewed in ages. I wouldn’t be surprised if no memories remain.”

“Yours, however, were perfectly preserved, Diana. It’s a testament to your mother’s skill that she was able to capture those moments in such detail,” Gwyneth said. “Morgana used to jump down and fall up like you did as a child. It must be an inherited trait, like blue eyes.”

Janet’s eyes were misty. “Such a sweet, wee spell you worked, using what you had at your fingertips. Summersnow. ”

Sarah handed me a mug of tea. It was too weak for my taste, but she’d done her best. Janet joined Sarah in a cup of coffee, and Gwyneth decided on some cold water after seeing the tea bag’s paper tag. We sipped our drinks in silence, and by the time I’d drained the steaming mug, I almost felt like myself again.

Janet took her mug to the cabinet and made a visual inventory of the shelves.

“Do you see Grissel’s bottle?” I asked.

“None are labeled,” Janet replied.

“I’m not surprised,” Gwyneth said under her breath.

“Maybe their shape and size will help us find it.” Braced with tea, I attempted to get to my feet so that I could help Janet look for her mother’s memories. The room tilted this way and that as though I were on the Good Juju. I grabbed at the butcher block to steady myself.

“Given your current sense of balance, I think it’s best you not handle anything breakable.” Janet gathered the pile of albums. “Have a look at these instead.”

“They must have belonged to Mom,” I said, picking up the copy of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours that rested on top.

Sarah turned white. Thankfully, the enchanted clock radio was nowhere to be seen, so we would be spared an endless loop of Mom’s favorite songs.

I riffled through the albums, which included every Fleetwood Mac record released between the White Album and Mirage, as well as a sampling of earlier recordings from before Stevie Nicks—my mother’s idol—joined the group. There were a few other artists in the mix: Joni Mitchell, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Stevie Wonder, The Rolling Stones, Buffalo Springfield, and Simon and Garfunkel. I already had copies of a few of the albums, delivered by the house on a previous occasion.

“The greatest hits of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s,” I said, repeating a tagline used by the Hartford radio station that the staff were always playing in the department office.

I flipped Rumours over. While the front of the jacket had the familiar image of Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks engaged in a witchy ballet, the back had more casual black-and-white shots of the band horsing around during a photo shoot. I frowned as the cardboard wiggled.

“The record’s missing,” I said, peeking inside. I drew out the lyrics insert, which was covered with more candid shots of the band as well as the words to the well-known songs from their hit album.

Someone had underlined lines from the lyrics in different colors—black, red, blue, and green. The rest of the insert was covered in my mother’s tiniest writing.

For releasing memory bottles

To enhance visions

For dreamwalking

To predict the future

To release the grip of the past

A protection spell for entering Shadow

To strengthen a witch in any Shadow work

To balance Darkness and Light

Love magic—proven by me, Rebecca Bishop

A spell to recite before gathering Graveyard Dust

A charm to make any magical work more resilient under curses and hexes

Before making an offering to the goddess

Years ago, the house presented a book of shadows to me that was filled with Mom’s early spells and charms written out in round, childish letters. These were darker and far more sophisticated. She would have aced Gwyneth’s syllabus.

“I think I found Mom’s real book of shadows.” My voice was faint. The Proctors relied on geometry and Jacobean literature, and I used the poems of Emily Dickinson, but it was Fleetwood Mac who inspired my mother’s gramarye. There wasn’t much to distinguish between William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Stevie Nicks. They were all bards, after all, with magic in their pens.

I showed Gwyneth the annotated lyrics. “She hid it in plain sight—in the words of her favorite songs. This is what she used to refresh old spells and keep them sharp.”

Gwyneth gasped. “Rebecca used music ?”

“Apparently,” I replied, running my fingers across the underlining in “I Don’t Want to Know.” She’d written A powerful method for uncovering old secrets next to Finally baby / The truth has come down now.

“Mom borrowed from the songs and put the lyrics together in her own way,” I said, noticing her careful excisions, changes, and additions. “And Stevie Nicks’s lyrics were clearly her favorite.”

“This day has been bad enough without bringing Stevie Nicks into it.” Sarah tried to snatch the album insert from me, but my mother’s magic was not going to go the way of my memories: reduced to shreds and lying all over the floor.

“Not this time, Sarah.” I moved the album jacket and liner notes safely out of reach. “You were willing for me to have Mom’s dragon blood resin and her first book of shadows. You shouldn’t have a problem with me adding to them now.”

Sarah lunged for the rest of the albums. Janet, with her vampire blood, beat Sarah to them.

“If these do constitute Rebecca’s mature book of shadows, surely they belong to Diana,” Janet said with a sweet smile on her face and a sharp blade in her voice. “Your niece’s hexes might not be fit for purpose quite yet, Sarah, but mine are famously effective.”

Janet handed me the albums. None had vinyl in them—just liner notes and pieces of paper covered with Mom’s scribbles. Finding my mother’s book of shadows in her album collection was a little like discovering the Book of Life inside Ashmole 782—surprising and a bit overwhelming.

During my first days at Ravenswood, Gwyneth had mentioned how useful it would be to have insight into my mother’s magical thought process when I struggled with my gramarye. It would take time for me to come to terms with the trail of magical breadcrumbs my mother had left for me, but I was eager to begin.

“We’ll take these back to Ipswich.” I stacked the albums in a neat pile. “Let’s find Grissel Gowdie’s memories so we can go home.”

“You are home.” Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. Two bright red spots burned on her cheeks, and her mouth was set in a firm, stubborn line. “And you’re not taking anything out of this house—that includes your grandmother’s memory bottle collection.”

“You knew what these were when you showed me the cupboard the first time!” I cried. “All these years, you knew these bottles were here!”

“I should have thrown them away years ago!” Sarah grew more agitated, the color in her face deepening with guilt. “No one was allowed to touch them. That’s why Mother enchanted that damned cabinet—so Rebecca and I wouldn’t rummage through them when we were alone in the house.”

“You can’t just throw away family history,” I shouted at Sarah. “It belongs to me, and to the twins.”

“Too late!” Sarah crowed. “Mom destroyed some of them before she died, and the rest are probably empty by now.”

A malodorous scent filled the air. My grandmother and Bridget Bishop slipped through the old cupboard and the kitchen to join us in the stillroom.

“Joanna Bishop would never destroy a memory bottle,” Gwyneth said, pinching her nose shut to block out the scent of Sarah’s lie. “She was far too great a witch.”

“What are you afraid the memory bottles might reveal?” I demanded of Sarah.

“I’m not afraid of anything!” Sarah snapped. “Memory bottles can’t be trusted. Leave the past dead and buried, where it belongs.”

“The past isn’t dead, and it’s only buried by creatures who mistakenly believe it’s no longer relevant,” I retorted. “Past, present, future—they’re all mixed up together.”

Meg Skelling and the Ipswich coven had taught me that.

“I’m taking the memory bottles to Ravenswood, where they will have proper care so that Becca and Pip can know the Bishops who are gone,” I said, my tone final.

“Over my dead body,” Sarah replied through gritted teeth.

“Let’s focus on my mam’s bottle,” Janet said, trying to de-escalate the tension in the room. She removed an amber bottle from the cupboard, handling it like a grenade with the pin pulled out, and placed it gently in the wine box. “Still, we might as well get the rest of them put safely away while we’re at it.”

“Here.” Gwyneth handed Janet an orange tea towel with drink up witches printed on it in black, a Secret Sister gift Sarah received last Samhain. “Use that to pad the box.”

“That towel is mine, Gwyneth!” Sarah exclaimed. “As for you, Diana, you’re just as bad as Rebecca. You won’t be happy until you’ve taken everything you want and I’ve got nothing but leftovers.”

Sarah burst into tears.

This is what happens when you refuse to face Shadow, Bridget said sadly. Sarah’s sitting on a powder keg of secrets.

She was so afraid of losing Diana after Rebecca died, she wouldn’t let me tell Diana the truth, my grandmother said with a sigh, even though it would have made things easier in the end.

“What truth?” My witch’s sixth sense told me that I was close to finding the root cause of all the half-truths and outright lies that Sarah had piled up over the years.

“If you tell Diana now, I will never forgive you, Mother,” Sarah cried.

It’s out of my hands, Sarah, my grandmother said sadly. Rebecca’s spells and bindings are too complicated for any of us to unwind. We just have to let her magic run its course.

Rebecca saw the portents and read the signs, and knew what must be done. Bridget shook her head. A great witch, gone too soon.

“Perfect, precious, precocious, prophetic Rebecca!” A lifetime of resentment bubbled to Sarah’s tongue. “I’ve always been second-best.”

Darkness approached the house in a sudden storm, drawn to the windows of the Bishop House by Sarah’s volatile energy.

“Higher magic got her in the end, though,” Sarah said with a note of triumph. “Rebecca thought she was invincible. She was wrong.”

“Sarah!” The depth of her venom took my breath away.

“Stephen warned me Rebecca could go the way of Naomi.” Sarah’s tears increased.

Sarah had known about Naomi, too. My own anger rose, and Darkness filled the stillroom.

“What’s bred in the bone always outs in the flesh,” Sarah hissed.

“If that’s the case, why aren’t you on the Dark Path, too?” I shouted back. “We share the same blood!”

“Wrong.” Sarah’s mouth twisted into a chilling expression as Darkness swept through her.

My phone rang.

Matthew. I answered the call.

“Has something happened?” I asked, my heart thumping with dread. “Are Pip and Becca hurt?”

“No, mon coeur, ” Matthew said, his voice low and calm. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve been going over your previous DNA results.”

“And?” Surely this could wait.

“Are you somewhere you can talk privately?” Matthew sounded concerned.

“Hardly,” I said, my glance traveling from my irate aunt, past the ghosts, and on to Gwyneth and Janet.

“Is Sarah there?” Matthew asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“You’d better put me on speaker, then,” Matthew said, his voice taut.

“Go ahead,” I said, after pushing the button.

“As I was telling Diana, I reviewed her DNA findings. I wanted to compare them to Gwyneth’s preliminary results and some of the other samples we collected. I also compared them to the tests we ran on Sarah years ago. I wanted to confirm we were identifying the maternal and paternal markers correctly.”

Matthew hesitated.

“I’m sure this will come as a shock to you, Sarah,” Matthew said carefully, “but you and Rebecca didn’t share a father.”

“It’s no surprise to me,” Sarah retorted. “Rebecca told me so when I was fourteen and she wanted to get back at me because I borrowed her book of herbal cures. She was the bastard of goddess knows who. Some soldier my sainted mother had a fling with during the war.”

My mind reeled at the fact that I was not the granddaughter of Joe Green, the genial and beloved Madison chief of police.

Fear touched me with a cold hand. Had my grandmother had an affair with Tally Proctor, making me the product of an incestuous union?

His name was Thomas Lloyd, and it was not a fling, Sarah Estelle Bishop. My grandmother was brighter and more distinct than she had been before, anger fueling her spirit. I met him when I was eighteen and we had seven glorious years together when we were reunited after the war.

“You’re a dark horse, Joanna,” Gwyneth said, impressed.

“Goddess bless us,” Janet murmured, eyeing me warily. She recognized the name Thomas Lloyd.

A sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone told me that Matthew had, too. Both of my grandfathers had gone to Ysabeau in a fruitless attempt to save Philippe, who had himself been captured by the Nazis while attempting to liberate Ravensbrück.

I was holding on to the tag end of a weaving that was bigger than the Congregation’s interest in me, or the twins, or even bloodcraft. The fuzziness in my head receded, and in its place was a crisp, white surface on which brilliantly colored pieces shimmered as they changed positions. I couldn’t understand the pattern—yet. The cards reminded me that they were available for consultation, stirring in my pocket, but I patted them to indicate their revelations would have to wait for later.

I considered the options, but there was only one path to take.

“I think you had better call Baldwin,” I told Matthew.

The intricacy of the weaving coming into focus terrified me—and the Bishops, the Proctors, and the de Clermonts were all tied up in it. It was vital we figured out how. Baldwin was the sire of the de Clermont clan. He needed to know what I’d discovered today.

My answer may have been unwelcome, but it was not unexpected.

“I’ll call him now,” Matthew assured me. “When are you coming back?”

“Tomorrow,” I said, deciding to save the story of my own memory bottles and my mother’s book of shadows until we were together.

The ensuing silence suggested that Matthew was disappointed.

“A lot has happened, and we all need a good night’s sleep before we drive to Ravenswood,” I explained.

And I had a few things I’d like to clear up with my grandmother. The Box from the black bird oracle deck swam before my eyes. My curiosity had brought chaos into our world, just as the card warned it might.

“Maybe going to Ravenswood was a bad idea after all,” I said, lowering my voice.

“Everything we’re facing—your higher magic, your grandfather’s true identity, the twins’ talents—was bound to come to the surface. Now it has,” Matthew replied. “Nothing has changed, mon coeur. This has always been the truth, even if we weren’t aware of it. Now we face it, together.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. I dashed them away.

“I hope you still feel that way tomorrow,” I said with a shaky laugh.

“I will.” Matthew’s voice was unwavering. “Can you take me off speaker?”

I did, sniffling into my sleeve. When Matthew spoke again, it was for my ears only.

“I’ve never liked or loved you more than I do in this moment, Diana.” Matthew’s voice rang with truth.

The shifting dynamic between us had threatened to bring the world crashing around our ears, and had drawn every skeleton out of the family closets, but still Matthew’s love for me was inviolable.

After Matthew disconnected our call, ragged breaths filled the stillroom. The Darkness outside the windows boiled and churned.

“I do hope you feel better, Sarah, after vomiting up these morsels of ancient history,” Janet said bitterly. “I don’t like to question a sister’s trustworthiness, but you’ve given me no choice. After your display of bile, I simply must have my mother’s memories back.”

Janet returned to the cupboard and systematically sorted through the contents. She examined each bottle in turn before placing them into the box at her feet, making prognostications about their contents based on their shape and age.

“Baby food. That belongs to Diana,” Janet murmured. “Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound to ‘cure female weaknesses.’ That predates Joanna’s time, and the memory must have been bottled at the end of the nineteenth century.”

She reached into the back of the shelf for another bottle and froze.

“What?” Sarah said, suspicious. “What have you found?”

Janet drew a milky-green glass vial from the depths of the cupboard. It was small enough to fit into her palm, with a long, narrow neck and a bulbous base so thin it looked as though a breeze could smash the vial to bits.

“That’s an old bottle,” Gwyneth remarked.

“I’ve never seen it before,” Sarah said, frowning.

“It’s from the seventeenth century,” Janet said. “Granny Janet had a wee jewel box filled with them. They held Granny Isobel’s memories and were her greatest treasure.”

Janet cupped the bottle between her hands as though she were gauging the memories inside.

“This has the feel of Mam. It’s heavy with fear and fury,” Janet said. “She used a strong spell to close the bottle, one that has held through the years.”

“Now what?” Sarah asked after a pause in the conversation, while we all considered our next step. “Aren’t you going to open it? Isn’t that why you came?”

“No,” I said. “We aren’t opening it here.”

Too much had happened. Too many secrets still hung in the air. I hadn’t yet fully recovered from seeing my own memories and feared I couldn’t absorb anyone else’s so soon—especially not if they featured my executed ancestor.

“We should open the bottle at Ravenswood, with Matthew present,” Janet decided. “Mam was his kin, too, and her memories belong to him as well as to me.”

“Is it safe to transport it?” Gwyneth asked. “I don’t like the look of that cork, and there’s hardly any wax left on the seal.”

“Let me see.” Janet crooned to the bottle in Gaelic. She nodded. “We can get it to Ravenswood, and open it, but we’ll never get the memories back into the bottle. They may need to be rehomed. Is that something you can manage, Gwyneth? I’ve never been any good at it.”

My great-aunt and Matthew’s great-great-granddaughter were speaking a language that neither Sarah nor I knew. Bridget and Grandma seemed to share it, though, and both nodded their approval of this plan.

“Of course I can,” Gwyneth said, adding, “though I might need the coven historian’s help.”

“Let’s get the rest of the memory bottles packed in case the cupboard decides to hide itself again. Janet will watch over them in the keeping room,” I said. “Gwyneth can use the guest room to rest, and I’ll sleep in Mom and Dad’s room.”

“What about me?” Sarah demanded, her eyes red and cheeks swollen from crying.

“Honestly, Sarah?” I shook my head, weary. “I no longer know.”

—

When I finally climbed the stairs to my parents’ room, I left the memory bottles wedged between two needlepoint pillows on the keeping room’s uncomfortable settee next to Janet’s overflowing bag of needles and wool. Sarah was locked into her bedroom with a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of bourbon, smoking like a chimney and occasionally breaking into floods of tears. Gwyneth snored gently in the guest room, a picture of my mom and dad on their wedding day clutched to her heart.

I sat on the edge of the bed and trembled from head to foot, delayed shock and exhaustion hitting me in waves. Tears might relieve some of the emotional pressure I was under, but I found myself too bewildered to cry. All I could do was hug myself and rock back and forth on the edge of the mattress, hoping to comfort myself so I could face the choices that would have to be made in the coming days.

Though it was late, I was sorely in need of guidance. I reached into my pocket for the black bird oracle.

Who was my maternal grandfather? I wondered, moving the cards between my hands. Who was this mysterious British officer, Thomas Lloyd?

The oracle sprang to attention, releasing a flurry of cards onto the white eyelet bedspread.

The Unicorn. The Box. The Bottle. The Labyrinth. The Raven Prince. The Owl Queen. The Mirror. The Key. The Sun.

Concise meanings for the cards immediately came to mind, evidence that I’d been doing my homework.

Me. Chaos. Memory bottles. The Labyrinth. The Raven Prince—was that Thomas Lloyd? My mom. Prophecy. The answer to a dilemma. Enlightenment.

I collected the cards and posed another question. How were the de Clermonts involved in my family’s witchy business?

The Unicorn. The Labyrinth. The Sun. The Raven Prince. The Key. The Bottle.

Me. The Labyrinth. Could The Sun be Philippe? Thomas Lloyd. The answer to a dilemma. A memory bottle.

I gathered the cards again, curious as to why the deck kept presenting me with the same cards though I was asking different questions. What was I supposed to do next?

The Unicorn. The Labyrinth. The Owl Queen. The Bottle.

Me. The Labyrinth. Mom. A memory bottle.

What bottle? I wondered. One of the hoard we’d found in the stillroom cupboard? If so, which one?

Restless, I roamed around my parents’ room. I picked up another picture of them as a young couple to search it for clues. It was sitting on the bureau, along with my grandmother’s silver-backed brush and hand mirror.

I gazed into the mirror but found nothing there except my own reflection.

A bottle of Mom’s favorite Diorissimo perfume was on a tray, along with the powder box that I’d seen in the memory bottle Mom had gathered.

If only she’d left the memories where they were, we might not be in this predicament now.

Maybe you wouldn’t have met Matthew, my intuition whispered.

I sighed, newly aware that not all my memories had returned when my mother’s spellbinding loosened. Some remained fresh, though, like my mother’s delicate scent of lily of the valley touched with bergamot and lilac.

There was only a sticky trace of perfume in the elegant, amphora-shaped bottle, and a splash of eau de toilette in the black-and-white-gingham–trimmed bottle. But I knew that the scent, no matter how faint or faded it might be after all these years, would conjure up my mother’s memory.

I pulled the stopper from the perfume bottle, expecting it to contain the strongest, truest impression of Diorissimo .

What I didn’t expect were the memories that tumbled out of the bottle with it.