casting worried looks at the genteel bustle of the street: mothers with their hats just so and children with their clothes starched stiff, maids with baskets of fresh white laundry and gentlemen checking their pocket-watches. It strikes Agnes suddenly how ludicrous it is that they should be plotting the second age of witching in the middle of a sunny, orderly street on the north end, surrounded by clerks and investors and clean limestone. Surely it calls for a haunted moor or a misted cemetery.
Bella says, low and urgent, “Juniper, I don’t know what you know or think you know about that tower, but I assure you I don’t have the secret recipe for Avalon stuffed in my socks.”
Juniper crosses her arms, runs her tongue over her teeth. “I know you know more than you’ve told me.”
“I—I—” Bella stutters, and Agnes marvels that she grew up in their daddy’s house without learning how to lie properly. “Yes. Alright. I found some . . . words, the day the tower appeared. I don’t know what came over me, but I spoke them aloud. And then . . .” She gestures upward, recalling the splitting seam of the sky and the dark tower.
Juniper stares hard for another second, then grins. “You snake. I knew it was you. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Bella fumbles for an answer, but Agnes perfectly understands why a person might hesitate to give a vicious, vengeful girl the key to a mysterious and boundless power. There were stories in the old days about whole cities put to sleep, kingdoms frozen over in endless winter, armies reduced to rust and ash.
Juniper waves away Bella’s stutters. “Doesn’t matter now. The real question is: why haven’t you done it again?”
“Because it wasn’t a complete spell. It’s missing some of the words, and all of the ways.”
“Then find them! What exactly have you and your lady friend been up to, all those late nights in the library?”
A flush creeps up Bella’s neck. “She’s not my—Miss Quinn and I have been searching. We’ve collected some scraps, some possibilities, but we have nothing but theories, so far.”
“So let’s test them.” Bella looks doubtful and Juniper presses on, heedless. “Listen. Ever since the equinox the three of us have been bound together, haven’t we?”
Bella tsks, sliding her spectacles up her long nose. “An effect of an unfinished spell, I told you.”
“And how come the three of us were pulled into that spell in the first place? After seven years apart, what drew us together just when our oldest sister got stupid and read some words out loud?” Juniper’s voice lowers. “And before that—didn’t you feel something tugging you toward the square?”
Agnes remembers it: a line reeling her in, a finger prodding between her shoulder blades. She feels it still, an invisible hand chivying her toward her sisters despite her better judgment.
“Mags always said anything lost could be found. Remember that song she taught us? What is lost, that can’t be found?”
Bella blinks several times and murmurs, “I do, yes.”
“Well, I think maybe magic wants to be found. And I think maybe we’re the ones who are supposed to find it.”
“What, like fate?” It’s the first thing Agnes has said since they stepped outside, and both her sisters flinch from the venom of it. “Like destiny?” Fate is a story people tell themselves so they can believe everything happens for a reason, that the whole awful world is fitted together like some perfect machine, with blood for oil and bones for brass. That every child locked in her cellar or girl chained to her loom is in her right and proper place.
She doesn’t much care for fate.
Even Juniper looks a little cowed by whatever she sees in Agnes’s face. “Maybe not. Maybe it’s just luck that Bella found that spell. That the three of us wound up in St. George’s Square. On the equinox. A maiden”—she taps her own chest. “A mother”—she nods to Agnes. Bella casts her such a baffled, owlish look that Agnes suspects she didn’t notice the swell of her belly until this very second. Her mouth makes a small, perfect O.
“And a crone.” Juniper points at Bella, who makes a disgruntled sound. “Like the Last Three themselves.”
None of them speak for a moment. Juniper limps a little closer, until they stand in a tight circle of three, heads nearly touching. “Maybe Agnes is right, and that’s all horseshit. But what if it isn’t? What if we could make every woman in this city