But determined, we walked inside.
I felt defeated already. This looked like any small-town library. There were rows of books scattered throughout the building. There was a stairway that went up to a second floor. The building really wasn’t that big, and I wondered if it had even been a home at some point, because it wasn’t any larger than any of the houses around it.
I could tell everyone felt the same way I did as we all broke off in different directions. Their heads hung low, shoulders slumped.
I ended up in the children’s section. As I looked at the spines, I could tell that most of the titles were recent. If I had to guess, I would have said most had been published in the last twenty years. Considering Mare McGregor was killed in 1693, I wasn’t hopeful.
But still, I ran my pencil along the spines, one by one, being thorough and dutiful.
One shelf. Two. I reached the end of the children’s section, and then moved on to the teenage section.
Shelf after shelf, I checked books, running my pencil along.
I nearly leapt out of my skin, when my pencil glowed blue.
My heart was in my throat and I sucked in a wary breath. With shaking hands, I reached forward, and plucked the volume from the shelf.
I opened the book to the middle and I watched as the words shifted and rearranged themselves. This glamouring was different from the telekinesis book. Just the movement was different. Shimmering and rippling, it was like water. But one moment it looked like a typed, ordinary book, and the next, handwritten words filled the pages.
My eyes scanned down the page, and my heart started beating faster and faster.
It was told from the perspective of a young woman who met a charming young man back in Scotland. They married, and after the birth of their three children, made plans to move to America. And at the bottom of what I realized was a journal entry, it was signed Mare McGregor.
Tears instantly pooled in my eyes and I clutched Mare’s journal to my chest. I’d heard history and stories about my ancestor for my entire life. We had the journal account of her son, Tavin. But to read Mare’s own words… to hear it in her own voice—hand? Goosebumps washed over my arms instantly.
Out of curiosity, I opened the front cover of the journal.
There was an envelope pocket glued there, as well as a check out card. But it hadn’t been stamped even once.
Either they had just barely gotten this book, or it was somehow glamoured in a way that no one ever noticed it.
My bet was on the latter.
I smiled and pulled my wand out again and finished making my way through these titles.
There wasn’t another mage book in this section. But as I walked out into the hall, Borden walked down the stairs, holding a book.
“You found something?” I asked in a breath.
He nodded, a hopeful smile pulling in the corner of his mouth. “Looks like it’s a journal.”
“Mine too,” I said excitedly. “From Mare McGregor, my ancestor.”
Borden actually smiled, something he so rarely did. But he didn’t get a chance to say anything else, because just then, Nathaniel stepped up, looking disappointed. Until Borden and I held up the journals we’d discovered.
We collected Mary-Beth, who didn’t find anything. We checked out the journals, with no intention to ever return them.
This time as we walked outside, we each felt a little lighter.
“Guess we should have had a little more faith in Salem,” I said, holding the book tight to my chest.
“Mare’s actual journal,” Nathaniel said in disbelief. “I can’t… That’s… This is incredible.”
“Yes, yes,” Mary-Beth said. “We’re all very impressed. Come on. I wasn’t kidding about that site.”
So down streets we walked. We wound our way around streets with homes, and then down a trail, until we popped out onto a ledge.
We were surrounded by houses and trees. Through them, since they were still bare in the winter, we could see out across town.
Goosebumps rose up on my arms and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Nineteen people died here. Over two hundred people in this town were accused of being witches, but in the end, nineteen people lost their lives.
Two of them were exactly what they were accused of being.
I think of Mare and hug her journal closer to my chest. She wasn’t much older than I was when she was hanged. Just a few years older, she should have had so much more life ahead of her.
Just then, I wished I could talk to her. To learn what she knew. I wished I could warn her, tell her to get out of Salem. To warn her to be more careful with her magic, to not expose herself.
But I couldn’t do that. And it made me all the more grateful to be holding her journal in my hands, like a thread from the past stretching between me and her.
“It feels different here,” Mary-Beth said. “Some places just have a feeling, you know? This place…it feels dark.”
I nodded, because I could feel it, too. Kind of like a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I felt uncomfortable. Really, I didn’t want to stay here long.
“We need to be careful,” Nathaniel said. His eyes were narrowed as he looked around. Not just at the site and the trees, but the entire town. “The last known practicing mages were killed right here. Let’s not end up like them.”
We each nodded in agreement.
“Okay,” Mary-Beth said, taking in a big breath. “Let’s see if there’s anything special about this place.”
She took up a wadded tissue from her pocket and laid it down in the dirt with some withered leaves. She took a moment, calming and gathering herself with her eyes closed.
I prayed that this would work. I knew how badly she wanted this to work.
Her eyes opened. She rubbed her hands together, far longer than the three of us needed to.
She snapped her fingers, her eyes fixed on the tissue and the leaves.
Something prickled along the back of my neck.
I could feel magic here.
I could feel pain here.
I could feel fear here.
But as Mary-Beth stared at the tissue and the leaves, nothing happened. They didn’t start on fire.
She looked up with a vacant expression on her face. I could only imagine how she felt, the hollowness in her stomach. The sick bile in her throat.
But she didn’t cry. She didn’t get angry.
I reached out a hand and touched her shoulder, trying to give what little support I could in her moment of frustration.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, offering me a thin-lipped smile. She reached out, grabbing a tree to hold her steady as she stepped over another fallen one.
And suddenly I was blind.
One moment I could see the trees, and the next, it was dark. I blinked, over and over, trying to clear my vision.
And then it was all there. The hillside. The grove of trees.
But the houses in the distance were different. There were fewer of them. There was smoke filling the air. Heavy clouds covered the sky.
A row of people stood in front of me, wearing old clothes and solemn expressions.
A chill went down my back. Fear spiked in my blood.
I turned to look at what they were staring so intently at.
There were bodies hanging. I couldn’t make out their faces, but I saw them hanging lifelessly.
And there among them, in the very center, I felt her.
I had no logical reason why I knew it was her. But I did. Mare McGregor hanged before me, her eyes staring blankly at the ground, a noose around her neck.