Gillian shook her head. “It was a girl. I think it’s good luck. There was a crow with her.”

  In their family, crows signified good fortune. Sally squeezed her sister’s hand, wanting to believe. They really weren’t so different anymore. When Gillian shifted back in her seat, Sally noticed Ian’s gaze. “Did you want something?”

  “I always want something. Right now, I want to go to sleep.” He was a good liar, but Sally didn’t believe him for a minute. She felt his gaze on her still.

  They were quiet for a while, then Sally said, “Are there ghosts out there?”

  “Time is out there. Everything that ever happened is still happening. For instance, if I took your hand in mine.” Which he did as he was speaking. “It would be happening for hundreds of years.”

  “Would it?” Sally said.

  “That’s what people say.”

  She slipped her hand from his. His touch had burned. This was not going to happen. It most certainly was not what she was looking for.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said when she withdrew from him. “It’s still happening.” When she frowned, Ian shrugged. “I’m only repeating local lore.”

  “Magic,” Sally said disdainfully.

  “It’s not the thing that ruins you,” Ian assured her.

  “Isn’t it?” She looked at him deeply. Despite her cool demeanor, she found him curious and intriguing.

  “I know from experience. People ruin themselves.”

  * * *

  At last they came to the town where Ian had grown up, called Thornfield, the place he had found so intolerable that he’d spent his entire youth plotting his escape. The village had arisen around a grand manor house, which was now derelict, having been abandoned when the family who owned it fled in shame.

  When they arrived, Ian whistled for the taxi, driven by a fellow named Matthew Poole, with whom Ian had gone to school. Matt Poole helped fit their luggage into his large blue van, clearly in need of repair, but the only taxi based in Thornfield.

  “Looks like you’ve brought a crowd to see your mum,” Matt said as he dealt with the suitcases, tossing them into the rear of the van. “How will they all fit into her house?”

  It was well known that Margaret Wright did not care for comforts, let alone luxuries. She believed in a simple way of life, one that didn’t differ very much from the lives of her grandmother and great grandmother, and she still used a pump for her water and an outbuilding for her toilet. These were among the reasons Ian had despised his home when he was young. Back then, he thought what he wanted most in the world was a fast car and a flat in London.

  “They’ll be at the Hedges,” Ian told Matt. “I called ahead.” He turned to Sally then. “I’ll come by for you in the morning and we’ll find her.”

  “You’re not staying there with us?”

  Ian looked at her. His pulse was too fast. This cannot be it. A man such as himself should have as little to do with a witch as possible.

  “Is there something you need him for?” Franny asked, amused when she overheard Sally’s question. The historian was such a good-looking man, after all, and they’d seen every bit of him.

  “We all need him to look for Kylie,” Sally replied. She turned to Ian then, though she did her best not to look at him directly. “I thought we would start the search as early in the morning as possible. That was the only reason I thought you would be staying at the inn.”

  “If I didn’t go visit my mother, she’d have my head,” Ian explained to Sally. And I wouldn’t trust myself being under the same roof as you, and I have no idea what I’m doing here in the dark in the town that I couldn’t wait to leave, nor do I understand why I don’t want to move on from the place where I’m standing right now.

  “Of course,” Sally deferred. “You must go.”

  Ian said his good nights and headed off down the High Street, turning onto Littlefields Road, which led toward the fens. His mother lived on the far side of town, down a rutted dirt lane. She’d never had a car and preferred her bicycle. When she’d gone to see Ian in prison, she’d taken the bus, and she hadn’t traveled since. Anyway, it would do him good to walk and clear his head, although once he’d set off he realized it was the season of the toads, and there they were, littering the road, calling to one another in the green heat of their mating season, the males puffed up and glowing faintly, paying no heed to the fact that they were sending out their mating call on the road, so that if a car passed by many of them would be squashed.

  “Go on,” he said to the toads as he made his way.

  They continued to ignore him, and in the end he was the one who had to watch where he walked, stepping carefully over them, for it was bad luck to kill a toad. Ian decided it was easier to walk through the woods where the worst he would tread on were ivy and weeds. If there was anyone in this town who knew magic, it was his mother. He could study all his life, he could write the definitive History of Magic, but Margaret Wright knew the Nameless Art inside out, and that was why he needed to see her.

  * * *

  Gillian heard the calling of the toads, an urgent chirping sound. Here, in the first Essex County, she felt as though she were an entirely different person, or maybe it was simply that after all this time, she finally knew who she was.

  “Do you ever see anything strange when you’re walking in the marsh?” Gillian asked their driver, Matt, as he loaded their luggage into the taxi.

  “We call it the fens. You’ll find water, miss, there among the weeds. It’s a place where you need to be careful, otherwise you may drown and join the others who have. You’ll find toads out there as well, especially at this time of the year. That’s what you’re hearing now. They used to be hunted by those wishing to protect themselves from evil. They say there’s a witchbone in every toad. Folks called the Toadmen delved into magic, and my great-grandfather was one of them.” Matt took out a tin cough-drop box and shook it. Gillian could hear something inside rattling around. The taxi driver lowered his voice.

  “I’ve got my own witchbone. You cut it out of a toad and dry it in the sun and you make sure to keep it close to your heart for protection and courage. I wouldn’t walk through the woods without it. It protects against evil and gives you power, especially over horses and women.”

  Gillian glared at him. When she spoke her tone was dark. “You think women and horses are in the same category?”

  “Not at all. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying that men are fools who need all the help they can get no matter what or who they’re dealing with. Every traveler used to carry a toad bone if they were lucky enough to be given one. Even ladies such as yourself.”

  Matt continued to talk, but Gillian was no longer listening to him. Perhaps the girl in the fens had been holding up a white sliver of a toad bone, one used to keep a person safe from all the evils of the world. Perhaps it was a message for Gillian. Be who you can be, not who others think you are.

  Gillian was the last to get in the taxi. She took her time and breathed in the cool, fresh air. Ever since she’d spied the girl in the fens she could see spirits drifting through the canopy of the trees. The scent all around was the green perfume of the watery fens where a woman could get lost, where she might drown if she wasn’t careful, if her bloodline didn’t protect her so that she was too buoyant to go underwater. Gillian had no need of any charms such as boiled milk thistle that would allow her to see shades. She glimpsed one right now. A woman walking down the street who’d been let out of jail to find her home ransacked by those who thought her to be a witch. The woman stopped and turned to stare at Gillian, a slaughtered tabby cat in her arms. The rustic cottage she had left abandoned when she fled into the woods was currently the town library, called Cat’s Library, for reasons no one in Thornfield could recall, and this shade had walked down this lane every night for three hundred years in a loop of time Gillian had stumbled across. Gillian wanted to go closer, but how could she justify running into the street? Instead, she held one hand over her heart as a greeting, and in return the woman nodded before she disappeared.

  Gillian scrambled into the back seat beside Sally. She’d always thought that Sally was the sister with power, but perhaps she’d been wrong. It appeared Gillian had skills she hadn’t imagined, and being here had woken what was inside of her. Everything that had been done could not be undone, but what was to come was unknown. Fate could make the best of you or you could make the best of fate, that was what Jet always said. “We’ll find Kylie,” Gillian told her sister.

  “We will,” Sally said, her voice shaky.

  * * *

  The sisters held hands as the van headed toward the Three Hedges Inn. It was a ramshackle place thought to be charming by Londoners who came for the weekend to look for antiques or hike in the forest where masses of wildflowers could be seen each spring. There were tales of how forbidding these woods once were, there had been robbers and horse thieves and men who thought of murder as sport, but people tended to laugh at such stories now, even the ones about women who were drowned and burned and who had cursed those who had done them wrong. All the same, it was a tradition for hikers to take a black stone and leave a white one in its place, to appease any magical forces, just in case danger still existed, perhaps in the form of a root one might trip over, or a child separated from a class on a school trip, or a woman stung by a bee.

  The road was a bumpy, single lane that was dark and overgrown, but by the light of the fat pink moon, they soon saw the inn before them, a squat whitewashed building with a thatched roof. There was a pub and a function room where the town council had monthly meetings and wedding and engagement parties were held. The inn itself had six rooms to let, and three of those were said to be haunted and weren’t usually rented out. Tonight, however, they would be, for Americans would likely not notice the tapping in the walls or the chill in the corners of the rooms. Visitors from the States tended to keep their headphones on and ignore what was going on around them, and frankly they made the best guests as French and German tourists were inclined to complain about the shabbiness of the decor. Furniture was frayed and rugs were threadbare, but wasn’t that all part of the lure of the place? Sally and Gillian and Franny were given the haunted rooms. They happened to be the biggest and most well furnished, even if most people refused to stay the night.

  “If you see any figures, throw salt in their direction,” said Jesse Wilkie, the manager of the pub who had taken a break from her duties as a waitress in order to help them with their luggage. She was in her mid-twenties and the youngest of the staff, except for a boy called George who came to help on weekends, putting out the trash and carrying in the boxes of groceries. “If the salt doesn’t work, then say Begone three times. My granny told me so when I was a girl. That should do the trick.”

  Franny rolled her eyes. The advice was total nonsense, although it might work if a bat managed to get inside, after you threw a blanket over it, pulled on a pair of leather gloves, and brought it out to the garden.

  “Do you have ghosts out in the fens?” Gillian wanted to know.

  “Oh, we have them everywhere,” Jesse said cheerfully. “My granny said there was once a lady she knew in town who had relations with one. Or maybe she just said that so no one would ask who the father of her child was.”

  “I’m happy to take one of the haunted rooms,” Vincent said. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “We’re fine,” Franny told Jesse. “Don’t worry about us.”

  Vincent wished he did believe. He’d waited for William to return to him in some form for weeks after his death. He had avoided sleep. Come back to me, he’d whispered. Love of my life. Love eternal. One night, he’d heard a scratching and had run outside, only to find that the vines had twisted around the window ledge. Vincent had collapsed in the sandy earth, exhausted, remembering what their aunt Isabelle had told them, what comes back from the dead comes back as dark and unnatural if forced to return, brought back by necromancy and spells. All the same, Vincent was made to use magic and when he’d arrived in Paris to stay at Agnes’s, he’d brought along a pure white candle to William’s grave when he went to the cemetery at night. He would light it and wait till it burned down to a pool of wax, the dog Dodger at his side. And still, the night remained empty and dark. He could not call up the dead; he didn’t even think it was possible.

  “See you in the morning,” he told his granddaughters now that they were parting for the night, giving them a peck of a kiss, which to his joy, they didn’t reject. “If you need me, holler,” he told Franny.

  “And the same to you,” Franny, his childhood protector, teased him. “I’ll come running and beat them off with my umbrella.”

  “He’s a handsome old man,” Jesse said as she led the others down the corridor to their rooms. “I’ll bet he was quite the romancer in his day.”

  “He was a musician,” Gillian informed her.

  “That explains it,” Jesse said brightly. “Always beware of a man who can make music. He’ll steal your heart.” She noticed all three women wore boots, though there was fine weather, with the old woman donning a surprising pair in red leather that Jesse thought very trendy for someone her age. “I adore those,” she said.

  “You should get yourself a pair,” Franny suggested to the young woman who was helping them get settled in.

  “I might just do that,” Jesse said, already sensing that once she slipped on a pair of red shoes, she would be certain to go a bit wild.

  Jesse first led Sally and Gillian to their rooms and stood back as they embraced and said good night; the old woman kissed both of the younger ones, though it was clear she was a bit fierce and something of a cold fish if she didn’t care for you. Jesse felt honored to find the old woman appeared to enjoy her company.

  Jesse opened the door to Franny’s room. It really was the nicest one, overlooking the front garden. She thought if anyone would complain it would be this lady, so it made sense to give her what they called the Harpwell Room—since two or three guests had sworn they had heard a harp being played in the middle of the night, complete balderdash in Jesse’s opinion. It was more likely the jukebox down in the pub, a fixture there since the fifties; perhaps rock and roll sounded angelic when it came up through the floorboards. “There’s been a glut of Americans in our village,” Jesse told Franny. “I can’t imagine what they think when our pub closes at eleven.”

  Franny felt her heart hit against her rib cage when she heard about other Americans in town. “You’ve had other Americans recently?”

  “We always do. They come from as far away as California,” Jesse said dreamily.

  “But this week? Any Americans?”

  “A girl.” Jesse shrugged. “Wouldn’t listen to a word I said.” Jesse had carried Franny’s bag into her room and set it on the rickety baggage stand. When she turned Franny was right behind her. “You scared me now.” Jesse laughed. “People say there used to be witches here and they could do with you as they pleased.”

  “What did you tell her?” Franny wanted to know. When Jesse looked blank, Franny clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, sounding like the clack of a crow. “The American girl!”

  “To stay away from the fellow she was with. He’s a bad sort, and she seemed innocent.”

  Franny instantly softened to Jesse Wilkie. “That was good of you,” she said. “We should all watch out for other women.”

  “I try,” Jesse responded proudly before she left Franny to get her rest.

  They would do more than that, Franny thought as she sat on the bed, which, with its old saggy mattress, would do her no good at all when it came to a night of sleep. They would bring Kylie back home, and quickly, for the longer she was lost, the more the left would claim her. In the morning they would go after her, but tonight Franny would stay awake and read through the Grimoire, paying special attention to everything that had been written by Maria Owens, first in her childish scrawl, then later in her small, well-formed script. There were enchantments jotted down in red ink composed of hibiscus and the brown ink of hazelnuts and gallnuts, in which a wasp lays its eggs, used before the larva could burrow out, with deep crimson blood, with the black bark of hawthorn branches or the soot of lamps, some of these inks indelible, others invisible, some laced with vinegar or rainwater, written in English and Latin and runic.

  She thought about the house on Magnolia Street, and how Aunt Isabelle had called to her on the day before her death. She had chosen Franny, whom she’d seen as the strongest, to carry on as the caretaker of the book. “If it isn’t written down, it will likely be forgotten,” Isabelle had told her. That was why women had been illiterate for so long; reading and writing gave power, and power was what had been so often denied to women. Franny had always been conflicted about who to leave the book to when it was time to do so. Sally was the stronger of the sisters, but she had no interest in magic. And Gillian, would she even want the responsibility? Perhaps it would be best to leave the book to whoever lived in the house and was willing to take it on. That individual would likely leave the light on the porch turned on and open the door to any woman in need. The book was a burden and a blessing. Franny thought it was likely it would choose its own caretaker.

  She unpacked, setting the Grimoire on an old walnut desk. Franny handled it with affection, and with respect. She hoped to find a reference to The Book of the Raven and perhaps a method for finding daughters who went astray. She knew that each hour that a woman was missing equaled a day in which all could go wrong, and every day was as good as a year. There was no time to waste, for daughters might disappear for one reason, and remain unaccounted for for completely different reasons. A misstep, an accident, an error, a man.

  Franny went to the window to take in the measure of this land of her ancestors, where women were both drowned and saved. What had been inside those women was inside of her now, blood and bones, courage and fear. She wished Jet was beside her, for Franny had the distinct impression that she had come home and she would have loved to share this moment with her sister. There were glowworms in the trees and the world was a marvelous thing to behold. How must it have been to gaze out over this village three hundred years ago when the stars shone so much more brightly and a book was worth a woman’s life? There was the pink moon and a familiar scent that was puzzling to Franny. For some reason she felt a surge of hope. They were not going to lose another woman here in Essex. She opened the window and breathed more of the fragrance, then realized what it was. The lilacs in the garden down below were in their last bloom, a pale purple gleaming in the dark. Franny was reminded of something Jet had told her every year as they worked in the garden together.