“Your tender spots,” Pip replied.

  This was a topic of frequent conversation between Chris and the twins—that vulnerability was a superpower, not a sign of weakness.

  “Like this one?” Chris tickled Pip under the arms. Pip squirmed and giggled. “And this one?” Chris reached for the back of Pip’s knees but my son’s vampire blood kicked in, and he eluded Chris’s attempts to catch him by running out of the barn. Chris leaped up, hot on his heels.

  When Chris finally succeeded in catching Pip, he slung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He returned across the meadow with Pip flapping his arms and kicking his legs and Apollo imitating him.

  Tike, who was carrying the oars for the Bad Juju, passed the pair of them with an indulgent grin. Julie was behind him with hats, life jackets, and of course her lightship basket.

  “This is Chris!” Pip shouted. “Say hi, Tike. He’s really cool. Like your dad.”

  “My goodness, another vampire!” Julie said, glancing at Miriam. “Do you want something to drink? Not blood, obviously, but we have wine and coffee.”

  “I’m good, thanks,” Miriam said. “Do you need a hand with all that?”

  “Please,” Julie said, slinging the life jackets over Miriam’s shoulders. “I’m Julie. You must be a friend of Matthew’s.”

  “I’m Miriam. The one making an idiot of himself is Chris,” Miriam said. “We work with Matthew at Yale.”

  “Oh, good,” Julie said. “Maybe you can give him something to do. If he fixes one more thing on this farm, we’re going to have to sell it. Gwyneth isn’t used to all the machines working at the same time.”

  A familiar van pulled into the Old Place and trundled down the hill.

  “Your father’s here!” Julie called to Tike.

  My cousin emerged from the van wearing a camouflage cap emblazoned with the letter H. Chris took one look at him and his jaw dropped.

  “Mather?” Chris said, setting Pip down on his feet.

  “Roberts?” Ike called. “Is that you?”

  After a bloodcurdling howl and a rapid drumming of feet, the two men ran at each other, locking horns like two charging rhinoceroses before embracing.

  “What was that?” I asked Miriam.

  “Male-bonding ritual,” she explained wearily. “I’ve seen a thousand versions of it. They’re unmistakable.”

  Matthew’s idea of male bonding consisted of drinking too much wine, debating philosophy, and playing games of chess and verbal one-upmanship, but perhaps he was unusual.

  “My God, you haven’t changed!” Ike said, swatting Chris with his cap. “Same scrappy seventeen-year-old I met at football camp at Harvard in the summer of ’92. How do you know Diana?”

  “Colleagues at Yale.” Chris ran his hands over his head in his typical gesture of sheepishness. “You?”

  “Cousins,” Ike said, giving him another swat. “Wait until Put-Put finds out you’re here.”

  “Your grandfather is still alive?” Chris looked at Ike in amazement. “He was ancient when I left Harvard.”

  “Goes to every home football game,” Ike said proudly. “My mom’s still with us, too.”

  “Good genes,” Miriam said, thoughtful.

  “This is Miriam,” Chris said, putting his arm around her. Even draped in life jackets, her shoulders were narrow enough to fit easily inside his embrace. “I can’t live without her.”

  Intrigued by this comment, Ike studied the vampire. Miriam gave him a wicked smile, and Ike laughed in return.

  “Come on, Uncle Chris.” Pip tugged at his hand. “I want you to see the tree house. And then I want to take Aunt Miriam into the woods. And then—”

  “Whoa, tiger,” Chris said. “Give me a minute to unpack and get Miriam a snack, okay?”

  “Can I have a snack, too?” Becca asked, her stomach giving an audible gurgle.

  “Do you mind if Chris and Miriam stay with us tonight, Aunt Gwyneth?” I asked, aware of the chaos associated with having two more houseguests around the place.

  “Not at all,” Gwyneth said thoughtfully, her eyes pinned on Matthew. “They’re family, too.”

  Chapter 18

  Chris and Miriam were getting ready to leave for New Haven the next morning, in the midst of the first day of magic camp chaos.

  Matthew, who had been occupying the role of chef, bottle washer, and housekeeper, was under pressure from Miriam to focus solely on family research. The collection and analysis of the Proctor DNA was priority number one as far as she was concerned.

  “I promised Gwyneth I’d fix her kitchen sink,” Matthew protested.

  “Julie told me the sink has been slow to drain since 1982. It’s time to call a plumber,” Miriam said severely. “I want the Proctor lineage updated on a regular basis. And please use the tag system I set up, rather than each witch’s own characterization of their abilities. We need to keep the categories consistent.”

  As a historian, I took immediate exception.

  “But it’s important to preserve the traditional names,” I protested. “Think of the Book of Life. You can’t just update everything to modern nomenclature. You’ll lose all the subtlety!”

  “I’m with Diana.” Chris glanced up from his cereal bowl. “Sorry, babe.”

  “Me, too.” Matthew was weary from hours of negotiation with his lab manager. “We can categorize later. For now, let’s just collect the information.”

  Miriam sighed.

  “Apollo doesn’t want to wear his dog costume to camp, Mommy. He’s hiding in the closet and won’t come out,” Pip said, stomping with frustration.

  I put down my cup of tea. “I’ll see to Apollo while Daddy gets you breakfast.”

  “We gotta run, squirt. We’re going to see Put-Put and Lucy before we head home,” Chris said, digging once more into his marshmallow-studded breakfast.

  “Hurry up, Mom!” Pip cried. “I want Uncle Chris to see them raise the camp flags!”

  Despite Apollo’s reluctance and several other small hiccups, we made it to the Eastey house just in time. As we drove in, we spotted the old flags and banners gathered from every barn in Ipswich rising above the treetops, their lofty height made possible by a barrage of levitation spells and some careful wind control on the part of the Susies. The secluded meadow behind the old house soon looked like Camelot, with call flags, ensigns, pennants, burgees, and jacks fluttering in the breeze to signal that magic camp was starting.

  When the Range Rover came to a complete stop, Becca and Pip ran off with their milk pails filled with lunch and their rain slickers in case the heavens opened. They didn’t cast a single look back at us.

  “They didn’t say goodbye,” Chris said, glum. “Our babies are growing up.”

  Matthew and I stood with the other parents, worrying about how the day would go and whether there would be tears and upset tummies later. After we convinced each other that our children were in good hands, we said farewell to our friends and returned to Ravenswood.

  Julie was waiting for us there.

  “My big toe is howling, and all the dragonflies have left the meadow,” Julie said, pushing a wheelbarrow laden with tools and a tub of fertilizer labeled shoots for the moon toward the barn. “More rain’s coming. If someone doesn’t take charge, the wood is going to turn into a jungle.”

  “I have had one or two things on my mind, Julie.” My aunt, unused to the hurly-burly of life with two six-year-olds, was showing signs of cumulative exhaustion. She had no business pruning shrubs. Before I could say so, Julie revealed her plan.

  “That’s why Diana and I will take care of everything,” Julie said, straightening her hat. “It will be just like old times. Remember when Stephen, Naomi, and I went into the Ravens’ Wood to look for toads? We wanted to kiss them and see if they would turn into princes and princesses.”

  Gwyneth hesitated, clearly torn, then shook her head. “No, Julie. Diana needs to stay here and work on her hexes.”

  I’d tried to hex a pail of water and had only succeeded in knocking it over.

  “Diana will learn plenty about higher magic in the moon garden,” Julie insisted. “I’ll teach her how to pick a ripe baneberry without them spurting sap all over her, and where the pincushion moss hides. Diana needs fresh air and exercise, too.”

  My twenty-minute yoga routines in the front parlor weren’t enough to satisfy my body’s yearning for meditative movement, and my temper and stamina were suffering as a result.

  “I’ve been looking for a secondhand Alden scull for Diana’s birthday,” Matthew said sheepishly.

  I smiled at my husband, touched by his sensitivity.

  “If Diana starts rowing, Matthew will want to fix up the old boathouse,” Julie warned. “It will take six witches, a lot of lumber, and a vat of white vinegar to bring it back to life.”

  “Why don’t we visit Gladys?” Matthew said, offering a lifeline to my aunt. “I’m sure she’ll be more comfortable talking about her warts with you than with a stranger.”

  According to Gwyneth, Gladys Proctor shared the same bumpy skin affliction that had plagued all her female forebears. She could also levitate trucks and turn ordinary boats into hovercraft, but she was solely concerned with her dermatological distress.

  Gwyneth agreed after eliciting promises that I wouldn’t let the fire go out under her skullcap tincture or forget to stir the pot of chili cooking in the embers of the keeping room fireplace. She also scribbled out a list of plants and herbs she’d depleted at Midsummer and wanted to restock.

  Gwyneth requested mistletoe, meadowsweet, and milkweed as well as bee balm, foxglove, vervain, and mugwort. My aunt had also asked for marigolds, roses, every rose hip left on the bushes (she had underlined this twice), rosemary, and sage. She scribbled Rowan, Elder, Hazel across the side margin. We’d be lucky to fulfill her order by sunset.

  “Our work is cut out for us,” Julie said as we approached the moon garden I’d seen on my way to the Crossroads. A seemingly solid wall of blackberry and baneberry surrounded Gwyneth’s magical herb and flower patch. “What a mess. It’s going to take us the rest of the morning just to hack through the baneberry.”

  Squeaks of protest erupted from the hedge and the white berries bobbed on their red stalks, a thousand disapproving eyeballs trained in our direction. The blackberry canes writhed in distress.

  “You’ll survive,” Julie told the berries, her voice severe. “This is what happens if you let your witch’s garden get the upper hand, Diana. Maintain a regular schedule, and you’ll never have to argue with a hedge.”

  Julie passed me a set of trimmers with gleaming blades. I held them gingerly. Pops of alarm and bursting berries told me that the hedge wasn’t pleased.

  “Diana’s going to give you a good trim, and I’ll follow up with a styling,” Julie said, clacking her secateurs reassuringly. “She’ll be quick and merciful, I promise. One sharp cut, Diana, then another. No hesitant hacking around in the branches, or the sap will spray everywhere and the garden will look like a crime scene. Cut everything you see down by two feet. With conviction.”

  I closed and opened my hedge trimmers in what I hoped was a gesture of readiness.

  “Charge!” Julie cried, secateurs held high.

  I lopped off my first baneberry branch, and blood-red liquid dripped from the severed stalk. I made another cut, then another, until I lost count. After I was whipped on the thighs by a vicious thorned blackberry cane, Julie muttered soothing spells to keep the hedge compliant. Ninety minutes of hard work later, our efforts revealed the entrance to Gwyneth’s secret garden. Julie lowered the intricate wards on the picket fence, and I swung open the gate so that we could pass into a place of carefully cultivated enchantment.

  The garden expanded and contracted around me as I took my first few steps.

  In, in, in, the leaves whispered as I absorbed the scents and smells.

  Out, out, out, the boughs sighed as the rare essence of a witch’s moonlight garden returned to me in the form of renewed magical energy.

  Julie bent over to yank at a plant with a rosette of shiny leaves and a few faded violet flowers. It was growing at the base of one of the gateposts, and as the plant’s thick roots came free of the earth, I saw that they resembled a human body.

  Mandrake—the most famous specimen in any witch’s garden.

  Julie continued to pull, until the thick, twisted root turned into long, delicate fibers. At the end of the fibers was a baby carrot topped with a leafy sprout.

  “Gwyneth’s going to have a good crop this moon,” Julie said, examining the roots.

  “Of mandrake?” I asked.

  “Mandrake and carrots both,” Julie replied. “Gwyneth’s moon garden draws energy from the sun that is absorbed by the vegetable patch in the meadow, and vice versa.”

  The garden had a rechargeable magic grow light. How typically Proctor to be witchy and practical in equal measure.

  “Remember to gently sever the roots when you harvest vegetables at the farm,” Julie warned. “It’s one thing to draw a carrot into the Ravens’ Wood, but another thing to pull a mandrake into sunlight. They make a terrible racket.”

  Julie giggled. “I remember when Naomi and Stephen used to compete to see who could make the most noise pulling enchanted plants out of the wood and into the meadow, but Tally put an end to their games. Let’s get back to work. I’ll gather the rowan, elder, and hazel. You start on the plants.”

  I took a grooved slab of foam from the wheelbarrow, the furrows created by the knees of all the other Proctors who’d labored here, and grabbed the second pair of secateurs.

  Though I’d only been able to identify the most common magical plants when I arrived in Ipswich, I could now recognize dozens more by sight and scent. Gwyneth always had a botanical text and a book of shadows open on our shared worktable. Over the course of the day, she would offer me a mason jar of herbs to sniff, or a crock of salve to test on a bug bite or a patch of sunburn. It was another example of how the family wove higher magic into every day of their lives.

  After Julie and I checked off all the items on my aunt’s list, my cousin gathered supplies for her own magical needs. They were far darker than those Gwyneth required for her post-Midsummer concoctions. Julie moved among the beds with a fine pair of Japanese pruning scissors, collecting crocus and adder’s-tongue, blackthorn and sea buckthorn, moonwort and enchanter’s nightshade, and the long fronds of Solomon’s seal. These were powerful substances, and Julie kept them separate from the more common herbs and flowers for safety’s sake.

  By the early afternoon, physical activity had worked its magic on my general outlook. My muscles had the heaviness that followed good exercise and the whirlwind in my mind had quieted. Julie was right; as long as I could garden, I didn’t need a seaworthy Alden scull. And if Matthew picked up so much as a tape measure to fix this mysterious boathouse, Miriam would be back from Yale and out for blood.

  We tucked into the lunch Julie had packed to sustain us. Juicy strawberries, deviled egg and cress sandwiches, and a paper bag filled with Tracy’s delicate madeleines scented with orange and lemon were all perfect sources of fuel, and canteens of fresh, cold water rehydrated our bodies.

  Our work revealed the structure of the garden, and Julie and I took the last madeleines with us as we strolled through its beds and pathways. There were thirteen separate sections divided by gravel paths. All were arranged around a central round bed covered in moss and low-growing herbs. There, a small apple tree decked with white blossoms and ripening fruit sent twisted limbs toward the sky.

  I felt a prickle of someone watching us, and I looked around to see who it might be. Sitting in a witch hazel, her weight bowing a spindly branch covered in yellow blooms, was Cailleach.

  The enormous gray owl was silent, her only movement the blinking of her brilliant golden eyes. The white crossroads between them stood out as a flash of brightness in the cool wood.

  “Goddess and her train,” Julie said, amazed. “That’s no ordinary owl.”

  My cousin wasn’t talking about the bird’s size—which was immense—but the waves of power that streamed from her body, making the air around her sparkle and the breeze sing.

  “That’s Cailleach,” I said. “We met at the Crossroads.”

  Julie, who knew the coven rules, tamped down her natural curiosity and didn’t ask for more particulars.

  “Ka-lyahc.” Julie’s pronunciation wasn’t perfect, but the owl didn’t protest. She only swiveled her head toward my cousin, and back again to me.

  “I’m supposed to call on her if I need help,” I told Julie, careful not to reveal too much.

  “Ah. Cailleach is your higher magic guide,” Julie said. “Everyone who finds their path at the Crossroads has one. They’re not like Stephen’s heron, Bennu, or your firedrake, Corra, or Apollo—a creature who comes unbidden to teach knotters their skills. You must summon your guide if you want her help.”

  “I didn’t call her, and I don’t need help now,” I pointed out, “but there she is.”

  “Maybe you do and haven’t noticed yet.” Julie was more familiar with spiritual guides and guardians than I. “There’s an Owl Queen and Owl Prince in the black bird oracle deck. Maybe Cailleach wants you to read the cards.”

  I had consulted the black bird oracle when I woke up, and there was not a hint of a distress call in its response—just a lot of alchemy, which seemed appropriate given how much time I was spending in Gwyneth’s laboratory these days.

  Cailleach pushed off her perch and flew low and fast across the garden. She passed by in a whisper of magic and motion that left me dizzy and Julie starry-eyed, flashes of silver illuminating her brilliant aquamarine eyes.

  The owl lowered her talons and grabbed the mandrake root, complete with trailing carrot, from the wheelbarrow. Cailleach circled and dropped her burden before me. Tangled in the roots was a stem with long, toothed leaves and a single lavender flower that gave off a sweet scent. Her work done, Cailleach soared off into the branches of a nearby oak.