The Once and Future Witches - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,113
they disappear so thoroughly that neither the police nor the angry mobs—nor those eerie, unnatural shadows—can find them. They look at Juniper and Bella with shining eyes, waiting for the next trick, the next miracle, the next proof that witching has returned.
For tonight’s miracle, Juniper requires help.
She strides down a dark street, leaning on the slender cane that is the piss-poor replacement for her cedar staff, and two women walk beside her: a young nurse named Lacey Rawlins who works at St. Charity Hospital, and Miss Jennie Lind.
Jennie had turned up at the Sisters’ last meeting, looking—different. Her skirts were fancier and frothier than Juniper remembered, and she wore a chestnut wig instead of her own cornsilk-colored hair, but mostly it was her eyes that struck Juniper. They were colder and harder, like twice-beaten iron.
“Where the hell have you been?” Juniper asked, thumping her so hard on the back that Jennie coughed a little.
“They sent me to a . . . different workhouse, then released me into the custody of my family. Took me a while to get away.” She looked over Juniper’s shoulder and smiled at Inez. “Inez gave me a place to stay, and all this.” Jennie gestured at her fine skirts.
Juniper hadn’t said anything then, but she’d had herself a little think about it later. Why would Jennie be sent someplace different than all the other girls? And why would she be released without trial?
Before the Sisters left that evening she pulled Jennie aside. “Are you, by chance, the daughter of some fabulously wealthy member of New Salem society? Who pulled strings to spring you the second you got caught? And who you have now broken ties with?”
Jennie blinked at her once, then murmured, “Oh, we broke ties a long time ago.” She fingered her crooked nose.
“Huh. Well, next time you’re home steal a couple of candlesticks for us. We could use the cash.”
A genuine smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
Now Jennie follows behind Lacey as they creep through the doubled iron doors of St. Charity Hospital.
It looks nice enough inside—halls of green tile and white plaster, rows of doors with neat-painted numbers—except there don’t seem to be any windows. The smell turns Juniper’s stomach: lye and lesions, stained sheets and stale air.
Lacey pauses before a door at the end of the hall. Juniper tries not to look very closely at the smears of rust and yellow on its surface. She can almost feel the heat of fevered bodies behind it. “Ready?” Lacey asks, and they are.
They work three spells that night.
The first is for sleep, requiring crushed lavender and an old prayer. Now I lay thee down to sleep. Only when the rustling of bodies falls still do they creep through the door and into the sick ward.
The second spell is for driving down a fever, requiring a red thread tied around fingers slack with sleep. Juniper and the others move from bed to bed to bed, endless doubled lines of them, occupied by women and children and ruddy-cheeked men. This strikes Juniper as strange—surely any natural illness ought to fall hardest on the youngest and oldest.
The third spell is for healing, requiring willowbark and silkweed and knocked knuckles. This one proves more difficult than the others. Juniper hisses the words, veins hot with witching, and feels them vanish into the air, as if swallowed down some cold, invisible throat.
A chill creeps up Juniper’s spine. She looks at the dark twist of shadows and wonders if somehow Gideon is watching her even now, if he’s working against this small act of mercy.
Juniper had asked around about Gideon Hill and found his life bafflingly ordinary. As a boy he went by his first name—Whitt or Wart or something equally unfortunate—and spent his time reading novels and daydreaming. Then his favorite uncle passed away, leaving him a considerable sum of money and a pitiful black dog, and Hill had sobered considerably. There was no missing interlude of years when he might have disappeared to study ancient magics in the libraries of Old Cairo, no wicked grandmother who might have passed on her witching; no indication at all that Hill was anything but a balding, middle-aged gentleman who wanted to be mayor.
Now Juniper grits her teeth and speaks the spell again. She bends her will against whatever-it-is that opposes them, joining hands with Jennie and Lacey, and the magic burns reluctantly into the room. Lungs clear around her, bruises fade from beneath tired eyes, pulses steady.