“If you read the new city ordinances closely, you will find they specifically revoke the parental rights of known witches or witchsympathizers,” he observes.
“She’s mine. She belongs to me.” Every ruby-red curl of her hair, every soft fingernail. Agnes feels the absence of her weight like a spreading bruise on her arms.
Hill’s eyes are still watchful, calculating, as if he is prodding a caged creature to see what it might do. “She belongs to the city of New Salem, Miss Eastwood. She will be—”
Agnes snaps the match in her pocket and hisses the words August taught her months before, when the city still hummed with springtime and she still thought spells and sisterhood could alter the cruel workings of the world.
She doesn’t need to borrow her sisters’ will this time, does not even need the familiar perched like a red-eyed gargoyle on her shoulder; her own will might level cities.
The room shatters. Bright shards zing through the air as every pane of glass in Hill’s office fractures and bursts.
In the silence that follows, the September breeze sings through the jagged holes of the windows, tossing glittering specks of glass-dust into the air. Ink spreads from the cracked inkwell and pools like black blood over his desk.
Agnes feels a damp trickle down her jaw, a stinging line across her cheekbone. Hill appears entirely untouched.
He brushes a splinter of glass from his shirtsleeve and continues speaking, perfectly even. “—taken in by the New Salem Home for Lost Angels until such time as a more fit mother may be found. Or”—and in the sliver of space following that word she feels the jaws of his trap closing around her—“until I grant you a pardon for your past crimes and restore her legal custody to you.”
Agnes goes very still. Pan’s talons curl into her shoulder.
Hill’s smile is a marionette’s cheery lie, red and white painted over dead wood. “But first, tell me: do you and your sisters still visit the tower?”
“Do we—why would we?”
“Well, Miss Eastwood, I’ve been looking for the three of you for weeks now.”
“You and everybody else in this damn city.” A summer with Juniper has put a little bit of Crow County back in her voice. She almost wishes Juniper were here now, half-full of horseshit and brave as brass, before remembering she wants her to remain far away.
“When I look for a thing I find it.” Hill flicks his chin and the shadows in the room roil, sprouting wriggling fingers and reaching hands. “But I didn’t find you. I caught glimpses—Miss James running about, a few houses warded better than they ought to be—but nothing certain. If the child hadn’t fallen ill, if your messenger hadn’t flown into my hands . . . who knows?” The mockingbird pants on the desk, open-beaked. “I wondered if perhaps you’d called their tower back again and hidden your binding better this time.”
Agnes almost laughs at him. It isn’t some ancient witchcraft that’s kept them hidden—it’s merely the ordinary women of New Salem, the laundresses and maids and housewives who opened their doors despite the risk.
“Well, we haven’t.” And why would he care if they had? What is it to him if they crouch in the burnt ruins of a tower that was once a library?
“I wonder if you are telling me the truth.” His marionette-smile has worn thin; rotted wood is showing through the paint. “The three of you have become very adept at witching, very quickly.” His eyes flick to Pan and away. “Did you, perhaps, receive instruction?”
“No.” Their teachers were desperate need and decades of rage; the hoarded words of their mothers and grandmothers; one another.
“Don’t lie to me.” Agnes hears the lick of fear in his voice and sweat pricks her palms. Her daddy was never more dangerous than when he was afraid, and he was always afraid: that they might wriggle out of his grasp, that he was weak, that someone somewhere was laughing at him.
“If you love your daughter, you will tell me now: have you spoken to them?” There’s something broken about him, Juniper told them. Something sick. It’s only now that Agnes can see it, the terror and madness seeping through the cracks. “Are they still there? Still hiding from me?”
His shadow lengthens behind him, creeping up the wood-paneled wall. It boils with heads and limbs, arms extending at warped, unnatural angles. On the desk the mockingbird writhes and flutters more desperately, wingtips drawing mad patterns through spilled ink, fragile ribs flattening as a shadow-hand presses downward. The dog whines, high and mournful.
“Stop! I don’t know what you mean, I swear I don’t.”
There’s a terrible crunch, like china crushed beneath a boot, then silence. The mockingbird is very still.
Hill watches her face for another pressing second before his shoulders unwind. His shadow shrinks back to more plausible dimensions; he stitches the split seams of his mask.
“Very good. Of course I didn’t really think—but one never knows. Now, Miss Eastwood.” He prods the mockingbird into a wastebasket with a jagged shard of glass and lays the glass neatly back on the desk, like a man arranging his pens. “I called you here to make an offer. I am willing to pardon your crimes and grant you custody of Miss”—he refers to a typewritten page—“Eve Everlasting Eastwood—my, what a mouthful—if you are willing to assist me in locating and apprehending your sisters. This witch-hunt has gone on long enough, I think. People will grow discontented soon, perhaps doubtful, if I don’t produce the witches.”
Of course this is the choice. It’s always this choice, in the end—sacrifice someone else, trade one heart for another, buy your survival at the price of someone else’s. Save yourself but leave your sister behind. Don’t leave me.
Agnes feels cold water pooling around her ankles, rising fast. “And what . . . what will happen to my sisters?”
“That’s for the courts to decide.”
The water is belly-deep now. “And what happens if I say no?”
“Then your daughter remains deathly ill, in the dubious care of the Lost Angels. You will wait in the Deeps until I catch your sisters—which I will, sooner or later—and they will burn just the same. Except you will burn beside them.”
The water laps at her neck, icy and black. Hadn’t they drowned witches sometimes, in the way-back days? “What if—what if I convinced them to leave the city, instead? We’ll disappear. You’ll never hear our names again. We won’t work another spell as long as we live.”
His smile reminds her of Mr. Malton’s when he told them their shifts were cut or their pay was docked, soothing and false. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t satisfy my constituents. I’m sure you understand.” His tone turns musing. “It’s just the way people work. You tell them a story, and they require an ending. Would anyone know Snow White’s name if her Mother never wore hot iron shoes? Or Gretel’s, if her Crone never climbed in the oven?”
Hill’s smile now is sincere. “The witches always burn, in the end. You see?”
Agnes does. The cold water closes high above her head.
“Please.” She hates the taste of the word in her mouth, but she says it anyway. Sometimes begging was enough to turn her daddy’s fist into an open palm, a slap into a shout. “Please just give her back. She’s sick.” Tears gather and fall.