The Once and Future Witches - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,79
of paperwork, scratching idly at his pimpled chin, apparently unbothered by the sickly smell that rises from the floorboards: a stagnant reek, like still water and old meat.
She raps her knuckles on his desk and he looks up at Beatrice with bored, pinkish eyes.
“I am looking for information regarding a woman taken into custody early this morning. A Miss James Juniper Eastwood.”
A dim spark of interest. “She one of the witches they brung in?”
Beatrice gives the clerk her most severe librarian’s glare and is gratified to see him straighten reflexively in his seat. “What she is or isn’t remains to be proven in a court of law, sir. What I would like to know is where she’s being held, on what charges, and in what specific condition. I am also interested in the whereabouts of a Miss Frankie Ursa Black and Miss Jennie Lin—”
“S’not public information, ma’am.” He shrugs. “Didn’t look too good when they drug her in, though.”
Cold sloshes in Beatrice’s stomach. She gathers herself. “I would like to speak to your supervisor immediately, young man. A girl has been arrested and apparently injured, without due process or a fair trial—”
Her outrage attracts the attention of the officers lounging in the back office. One of them slouches to the front. “What’s it to you, woman?”
Beatrice transfers her milky glare to him. “I am Miss Eastwood’s landlady, if you must know. And I take considerable offense when one of my tenants is arrested on false charges.”
The officer grunts at her. “There’s nothing false about her charges, ma’am.” He scrounges lazily through the detritus of the front desk and produces a poster with WANTED FOR MURDER & SUSPECTED WITCHCRAFT printed in large capitals beneath a drawing of a woman’s face. Her hair is an untidy sprawl of ink rather than the chopped-short nest Beatrice knows, but it’s unmistakably Juniper. The artist captured the defiant line of her long jaw, the wild gleam of her eyes.
Beatrice swallows. “I’m not sure what this proves, precisely, but—”
The officer slides another paper across the desk: a yellowed page from The Lexington Herald. MURDER BY MAGIC, it reads, CROW COUNTY VETERAN FOUND DEAD.
Beatrice doesn’t need to read the article, because she already knows what it says. She found out seven years ago what Juniper was, what lay coiled beneath her skin, waiting to strike. Her daddy should have remembered it, too, but maybe he got soft or stupid over the years. Maybe one day he took too much from her, some last precious thing, and left her with nothing to lose.
Beatrice skims The Herald: untimely death; signs of the uncanny; daughter seen fleeing the property.
She slides it back across the desk and the officer shakes his head. “What kind of woman would kill her own father, eh?” He taps the paper twice. “This’ll be in The Post first thing in the morning. I wouldn’t go around telling folks you rented a room to a murderess, if I was you.”
Beatrice notices a brass badge shining dully on his chest, showing a torch raised high, and understands that Miss Quinn was right. That there will be no bail or due process, that the rule of law has given way to the rule of men and mobs. That it’s too late.
She retreats, and watches the men forget her as soon as she leaves their sight. Outside the air is thick and gray with the promise of rain. Beatrice tries hard not to think of Juniper down in the Deeps, all alone with the rising water. At least the cellar was dry, most days.
Beatrice doesn’t know where she’s walking until she is standing in the wood-paneled hall of the Salem College Library, blinking dimly at her office door. Her sanctuary, her one safe place.
But there’s something subtly wrong. It takes her a frazzled moment to realize that her nameplate—the cream-colored card with her name in neat script—is missing from its brass holder.
Her door is locked.
She stares at it for several seconds before retreating to the washroom and scrubbing the disguise from her face. Her own eyes are clouds looming back at her in the mirror.
Miss Munley is working at the circulation desk today, shuffling stacks of paper in a way that is meant to communicate that she’s very busy and harried and doesn’t have time for nuisances like Beatrice.
“E-excuse me, ma’am?” (After St. Hale’s, Beatrice’s words developed a tendency to clot and stick in her throat, like sour milk. It took years to make them flow cleanly again.) “My office