of hair from its braid, more blood dripping over her wrist. She snipped the end and clipped the lock into the smallest pieces she could, letting them fall into the saucer.
“Now heat it,” Harriet said.
Annis did just as Harriet had done. She held the saucer over the candle flame, tipping it this way and that, until it began to bubble and thicken. “Now?” she said, glancing up at Harriet.
Harriet’s eyes had narrowed, and she held the manikin with a brutal grip. “Yes,” she answered, in a grating voice. “The brush. I’ll hold the thing, you paint the slurry onto its head and feet. I can’t let go.”
Annis dipped the brush into the gluey mixture and spread it across the head of the manikin. It made her skin crawl to see it cover the face of the thing, even though it wasn’t much of a face. The dark mixture blinded the pebble eyes, smothered the wood-chip mouth. She smeared the last of the slurry onto its feet.
“There’s no more, Aunt Harriet,” she whispered.
“Very well.” Harriet held up the manikin and drew breath.
Annis said, “Wait! Wait just a moment.” Hurriedly she unclasped her pearl choker, with the moonstone in its center, and set it beside Harriet’s amulet. “There.”
“Excellent,” Harriet said. She drew a long, noisy breath and expelled it. “Come stand beside me.” Annis did, and Harriet held up the manikin again. This time she chanted in a louder voice, one Annis feared might carry up the lawn to any open window:
We command you in this hour
Bow before our greater power.
Witches two to witch just one
Order your spell to be undone.
Annis gasped at the sensations that gripped her. These were different from the ones Frances had caused. Her body began to ache, belly and bones and skin. Her eyes burned, and her blood seemed to run hotter. It was painful, but it was also exhilarating, a rush of power and energy that excited her mind and made her wish it would never end.
She had to force herself to focus on joining her intention to Harriet’s. Their rite must succeed. It had to succeed, for James’s sake. She watched the ametrine and her own moonstone and chanted with Harriet when she repeated the cantrip. Her soul thrilled to the currents of magic flowing through the folly and out, all the way up the lawn to Frances.
We command you in this hour
Bow before our greater power.
Witches two to witch just one
Order your spell to be undone.
She thought perhaps, when the ametrine began to glow and the moonstone to shimmer, that they were finished.
“Not yet,” Harriet said. And when they had repeated it, she said, “Again. Until the manikin is still.”
32
Frances
Frances woke feeling as if someone had placed a pillow over her face. She struggled to sit up in bed, and she clawed at an obstacle that wasn’t there. Gasping, sucking in desperate breaths, she threw off her coverlet and put her bare feet on the floor. She tried to stand, but her feet had gone numb. They wouldn’t hold her. She crumpled to the rug beside the bed, dragging the coverlet with her.
She had left her window open for the fresh sea air, and she saw that it was nearly dawn. She tried to crawl to the window but collapsed before she reached it, her legs at an awkward angle. She struggled to push herself up on her hands, choking, unable to force a single good breath into her lungs. What was happening to her?
On hands and knees she dragged herself to her dressing table. She pulled herself up onto the stool, where she slumped, nearly nerveless, her body refusing to obey her will. She peered into the mirror with half-blind eyes. What should she do? Was she ill? Should she ring for someone to wake Antoinette, and—
She caught sight of the two manikins still propped against the mirror, next to the cushion bristling with hat pins. Suddenly she knew exactly what was wrong with her.
It was Harriet. Harriet, who swore she would never use the maleficia, who pretended to be too pure, too high-minded, to ever create a manikin and work a spell with it. Harriet was attacking her, and Annis was helping. Frances didn’t need to go down the corridor to Annis’s room to check. She sensed the two working together, aligned against her.
Of course she knew what they wanted, but she wouldn’t give it to them. Why should she?
Her temper began to rise, that suppressed fountain of rage that never truly