a scythe. The edges on the rose secateurs were now so keen you could slice a tomato with them. I was reminded of all the wars that had been fought using common household implements and wondered if Fernando were quietly arming us for combat.
Sarah, for her part, grumbled at the new regime but went along with it. When she got cranky— which was often—she took it out on the house. It was still not fully awake, but periodic rumblings of activity reminded us that its self-imposed hibernation was drawing to a close. Most of its energy was directed at Sarah. One morning we woke to find that all the liquor in the house had been dumped down the sink and a makeshift mobile of empty bottles and silverware was attached to the kitchen light fixture.
Matthew and I laughed, but as far as Sarah was concerned, this was war. From that moment my aunt and the house were in an all-out battle for supremacy.
The house was winning, thanks to its chief weapon: Fleetwood Mac. Sarah had bashed Mom’s old radio to bits two days after we found it during a never-ending concert of “The Chain.” The house retaliated by removing all the toilet-paper rolls from the bathroom cabinets and replacing them with a variety of electronic gadgets capable of playing music. It made for a rousing morning alarm.
Nothing deterred the house from playing selections from the band’s first two albums—not even Sarah’s defenestration of three record players, an eight-track tape machine, and an ancient Dictaphone.
The house simply diverted the music through the furnace, the bass notes reverberating in the ductwork while the treble wafted from the heating vents.
With all her ire directed at the house, Sarah was surprisingly patient and gentle with me. We had turned the stillroom inside out looking for Mom’s spell book, going so far as to remove all the drawers and shelves from the cabinet. We’d found some surprisingly graphic love letters from the 1820s hidden beneath one drawer’s false bottom and a macabre collection of rodent skulls tacked in orderly rows behind a sliding panel at the back of the shelving, but no spell book. The house would present it when it was ready.
When the music and memories of Emily and my parents became too overwhelming, Sarah and I escaped to the garden or the woods. Today my aunt had offered to show me where baneful plants could be found. The moon would be full dark tonight, the beginning of a new cycle of growth. It would be a propitious time for gathering up the materials for higher magic. Matthew followed us like a shadow as we wended our way through the vegetable patch and the teaching garden. When we reached her witch’s garden, Sarah kept walking. A giant moonflower vine marked the boundary between the garden and the woods. It sprawled in every direction, obscuring the fence and the gate underneath.
“Allow me, Sarah.” Matthew stepped forward to spring the latch. Until now he’d been sauntering behind us, seemingly interested in the flowers. But I knew that bringing up the rear placed him in the perfect defensive position. He stepped through the gate, made sure nothing dangerous lurked there, and pulled the vine away so Sarah and I could pass through into another world.
There were many magical places on the Bishop homestead—oak groves dedicated to the goddess, long avenues between yew trees that were once old roads and still showed the deep ruts of wagons laden with wood and produce for the markets, even the old Bishop graveyard. But this little grove between the garden and the forest was my favorite.
Dappled sunlight broke through its center, moving through the cypress that surrounded the place. In ages past, it might have been called a fairy ring, because the ground was thick with toadstools and mushrooms. As a child I’d been forbidden to pick anything that grew there. Now I understood why:
Every plant here was either baneful or associated with the darker aspects of the craft. Two paths intersected in the middle of the grove.
“A crossroads.” I froze.
“The crossroads have been here longer than the house. Some say these pathways were made by the Oneida before the English settled here.” Sarah beckoned me forward. “Come and look at this plant. Is it deadly nightshade or black nightshade?”
Instead of listening, I was completely mesmerized by the X in the middle of the grove.
There was power there. Knowledge, too. I felt the familiar push and pull of desire and fear