We got into a fight, and I hurt one of them pretty bad. When I was brought before Mother Morevna, I expected her to punish me, but instead, she asked if there had been birds on my house when I was born. I said yes. Blackbirds.”
Blackbirds, I thought. My blackbird blessing. So it had meant something after all.
“Then she told me to touch her hand. I did, and I felt… magic… flowing into my mind. Then she said to say ‘light’ in Spanish, ‘luz,’ so I did and… I made light.” Olivia smiled at the recollection, a pained, quiet sort of smile. “I was a witch, she explained. With a talent for copying others’ magic. She said that I was different, that that’s why I didn’t fit in, why I was so angry. I told her she didn’t know the half of it. My mother was dying then, and we’d just moved to that house with that…”
Olivia paused, decided not to mention Mr. Robertson.
“She said for me to come to her when I was angry. She said she could teach me about being a witch, a brujita. That one day I could even be her Successor, someone she could pass her knowledge to. And so I went to see her once a week, and learned what I could, using her power. And every day, she gave me lessons so that one day, when she was dead, I could take over for her. Funny how things work out, huh?”
Every day, I thought, my heart sinking. I could barely get Mother Morevna to look at me back in Elysium, and she had worked—really worked—with Olivia once a week? I shook myself mentally before I could allow myself to feel even worse.
“She loaned me this book,” Olivia said. “This little book… I wish I’d brought it with me. I left it on the bookshelf in the room I used to practice in, in the very back, behind some hymnals.”
My heart gave a weird little twist in my chest. I remembered how I had found The Complete Booke of Witchcraft behind all the Cokesbury hymnals. That book, the book that I had taught myself from, was Olivia’s. The writing in the margins had been hers. The room itself, the one I had stayed up every night in, teaching myself magic when Mother Morevna couldn’t be bothered… that had been hers too, I realized now. All of it, my entire position as Successor was just a thin, sad follow-up to Olivia. I was just the placeholder put there by a reluctant leader—and then, only because Mr. Jameson had forced her. Of course, I thought. Of course that wasn’t real either.
“Here,” I said, pulling The Complete Booke of Witchcraft from my pocket. “I found this when I moved into the church.” I held it up so the gold lettering caught the dim light.
“?El libro completo de brujería!” Olivia cried. She looked at the book the same way I’d seen my mother look at toys she’d had in her youth. “Can I see it?”
“Of course,” I said. “It’s yours, after all.” I handed it to her, my heart heavy and numb. She thumbed through it, her fingers touching her scribbles in the margins.
“Yes… this is the book,” she said, her voice the sad one now. “But it’s not mine anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
She closed the book and put it in my hands. “It can only be read by who’s meant to have it at the time. It appears as gibberish to anyone else who tries to read it. And my time has passed. It’s yours now. It chose you, so treat it well.”
I remembered how Judith had flipped through it, saying that it was printed in Russian or some other language. It had chosen me. A silly kind of relief flooded through me as I tried not to show how much better this made me feel.
“But Mother Morevna chose you,” I said. “She only chose me because Mr. Jameson pressured her into doing it.”
“Don’t take it personally,” said Olivia. “After what happened with me, I bet she never wanted to choose a Successor ever again.”
Images rose to my mind: Mother Morevna as a smiling, patient teacher, Olivia as a young pupil. Then, jarringly, Mr. Robertson, dead and bloody in front of the church.
“What happened?” I asked. “How did you end up out here? Really?”
Olivia’s expression changed. Something like regret passed over her face.
“I used to admire her, you know,” Olivia said. “A white lady who seemed to