The Once and Future Witches - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,26

fingertips when she sees the name C. P. QUINN printed in small capitals. She wonders what the P stands for, and if colored women have mother’s-names.

Beatrice is assigned to the circulation desk that afternoon. She helps a white-bearded monk with his biography of Geoffrey Hawthorn (G. Hawthorn: The Scourge of Old Salem) and lights lamps for a cluster of haggard students who look as if they would rather change their names and flee into the countryside than finish their spring term. By afternoon she’s at the desk, supposedly processing recent arrivals—a new edition of Seeley’s Expansion of England, an account of the East India Company’s campaign against the thuggee witches of India; a bound version of Jackson Turner’s The Witch in American History, which argues that the threat and subsequent destruction of Old Salem defined America’s virtuous spirit—but is really watching the whale-belly sky through the mullioned windows, feeling her eyelids hinge shut.

She wakes to an amused voice saying, “Pardon me?”

She unpeels her face from The Witch in American History and snaps upright, adjusting her spectacles with mounting horror.

Today Miss Cleopatra (P.) Quinn has her derby hat tucked politely beneath one arm. Her gentleman’s coat has been replaced by a double-buttoned vest and her hair is swept into a braided crown. It must be raining, because water pearls over her bare skin, catching the light in a way that Beatrice has no name for (luminous).

Beatrice manages a strangled “What are you doing here?”

Miss Quinn adopts an arch, censorious expression, although a certain irreverence glitters in her eyes. “I was under the impression that libraries were public institutions.”

“Oh, yes. That is—I thought—” You came to see me. Beatrice closes her eyes very briefly in mortification. She tries again. “Welcome to the Salem College collections. How may I help you?”

“Much better.” The irreverence has escaped her eyes and now curls at the corners of her mouth. “I’m looking for information on the tower last seen at St. George’s Square, and the Last Three Witches of the West.” Her voice is far too loud.

Beatrice makes an abortive movement as if she might launch herself across the desk and press her palm over Miss Quinn’s lips. “Saints, woman! Anyone could overhear you!”

“So take me someplace more private.” She gives Beatrice another of those highly inappropriate looks and Beatrice swallows, feeling like a harried pawn on a chessboard.

Mr. Blackwell agrees to cover the circulation desk and watches the pair of them retreat to Beatrice’s office with a doubtful expression. He comes from broad-minded Quaker stock, but there are rules about people like Miss Quinn lingering too long in the Salem College Library. The rules aren’t written down anywhere, but the important rules rarely are.

Beatrice clicks her door closed and turns around to find Miss Quinn reading the spines of stacked books and peering at the black leather notebook that lies open on the table. Beatrice snaps it shut.

“As I told you on a previous occasion, I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the events at the square, or the Last Three. You are of course welcome to search our collections.”

“Oh, but I was hoping for a guided tour. From someone with more . . . intimate information.” Her tone is over-warm, over-familiar, over-everything. She’s doing what Mama Mags called laying it on thick.

Why? What does she know about three circles woven together, three lost witches and their not-so-Lost Way? Beatrice puts frost in her voice. “What do you want?”

“Only what every woman wants.”

“And what’s that?”

Miss Quinn’s smile hardens, and Beatrice thinks this must be her true smile, beneath the dazzle and shine of whatever act she’s putting on. “What belongs to her,” she hisses. “What was stolen.” There’s a different kind of wanting in her tone now, one that Beatrice believes because hasn’t she felt it, too?

She hesitates.

Miss Quinn plants her palms on Beatrice’s desk and leans across it. “You and I are both women of words, I surmise. We share an interest in truth-seeking, storytelling. Surely we might share those stories with one another? I am capable of great discretion, I assure you.” Her voice is all honey again, oozing sincerity. “Whatever you tell me I will keep just between the two of us. I promise.”

Beatrice manages a breathless laugh, dizzy with the clove-and-ink scent of her skin. “Are you a journalist or a detective, Miss Quinn?”

“Oh, every good journalist is a detective.” She leans away, straightening her sleeves. “What are you?”

“Nothing,” Beatrice says, because it’s true. She was born nobody and taught to