The Once and Future Witches - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,30

late afternoon light their shadows are black and long, larger than their owners. As Juniper watches she sees Mr. Hill’s shadow ripple strangely, as if it isn’t quite under its master’s command.

Fear slicks down her spine. She recalls that, by the evidence of the black tower, there is at least one unknown witch in the city working toward ends of her own. But why would she bewitch a sniveling city councilor? Rather than, say, quietly poisoning him in his sleep?

She hears raised voices behind her, catches stray words. Unfair! Unjust! And then: Nothing we can do.

Someone objects, almost certainly Electa. “Nothing legal we can do, you mean!”

Someone else gives a little gasp. Juniper thinks it must be that Susan Bee woman, a mummified Victorian type who wears an honest-to-Eve monocle and treats Juniper like a cleaning girl. “We aren’t criminals, Miss Gage!”

Electa starts to reply but Miss Stone cuts across her. “Nor can we afford to become so, Electa.” There’s no heat to it; she merely sounds old, and very tired. “Ladies, do we have a quorum present? Let us discuss our response.” She shepherds her flock into the back offices again.

Only Jennie lingers. “June?”

“Mm?” Juniper is watching Hill’s shadow disappear around a corner, trying to decide if it seems darker than other shadows, denser.

“They’re calling a meeting. Don’t you think we ought to join?”

“No.” Juniper turns away from the window. “I don’t. I think we ought to march at the Centennial Fair.”

To her considerable credit, Jennie doesn’t gasp or squeal. She looks straight back at Juniper, level and hard, and Juniper sees a fierce spark in her eyes. She wonders for the first time how Jennie’s nose got broken, and if she was ever anything other than a part-time secretary with cornsilk hair.

“Miss Stone won’t like it,” she observes.

“No.” Juniper likes Miss Stone, but she’s gotten too used to hearing the word no. “It’ll do her good to see a woman take that no and shove it back down somebody’s throat.”

“The police’ll never let us in.”

“So we disguise ourselves until the very last second, and disappear before they show up. I know the words and ways.” Juniper can tell by Jennie’s flinch that she knows what kinds of words and ways Juniper means. And she can tell by the sly shine of her eyes that she doesn’t mind it, that she’s tired of no too.

Juniper smiles, all teeth. “I think you’ve already got the will.”

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

Yours to mine and mine to yours.

A spell to bind, requiring a tight stitch & a steady hand

On the last night of April, Beatrice Belladonna is curled in the round window of her attic room, reading Charlotte Perrault’s Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals by witch-light. She ought to use a candle or an oil lamp like a respectable woman should, but she’s grown used to the honeyed glow of Juniper’s pitch pine wand in the evenings. Last week she came home to find a thin strip of holly and a note in Juniper’s uncertain hand: YOU OTTA KNOW THE WORDS BY NOW.

Beatrice does. When she works the spell the wand-light is silvery and cool, nothing like Juniper’s midsummer blaze. She finds it restful.

It’s late. The moon is a pearl over the neat rows of north-side rooftops, and Bethlehem Heights looks like a cuckoo clock running along hidden rails, each piece in its place. Beatrice is thinking of abandoning Perrault, who seems to have no secret rhymes or riddles to offer, when she hears the thump-thump-clack of her sister’s steps on the stairs.

Beatrice remains curled in the window. “Evening.”

Juniper grunts in response, leaving her staff at the door and tossing her half-cloak over the back of a chair, apparently not noticing the bread and broth Beatrice set out hours ago. It’s gone cold, the surface skinned with fat.

Juniper shuffles over to the window, scowls out at the pearl moon. She holds a ladies’ hat in her hands, fashionable and frothy, purest white. Beatrice can’t imagine an article of clothing less likely to be worn by her youngest sister.

“Fair opens tomorrow,” Juniper says.

“Yes.”

“We’re marching at five. After Worthington’s speech.”

“I thought you said your permit was revoked?”

Juniper gives her a careless shrug, a crow ruffling its feathers.

“I thought that Stone woman was opposed to . . . illegal activities.”

Another shrug. “She is.”

“. . . I see.”

Juniper waits, spinning the white hat in her hands. “So. Will you be joining us?”

“Joining what?” It takes Beatrice a second to understand that Juniper