Page 50 of The Women of Wild Hill

On the rare occasions when Flora spoke about her own mother, she never failed to mention how utterly ordinary Lilith had been.

She didn’t mean the description as an insult, merely proof of the mysterious ways in which DNA worked.

Some Duncan back in the mists of time must have been normal, too, and passed her traits (or lack thereof) down the line to Lilith.

Flora had loved her mother dearly, even if she hadn’t known her all that well.

Both of her parents had been workaholics throughout her childhood.

She’d spent more time with Ivy than she had with either of them.

Flora was twenty-eight and living in Los Angeles when her parents died in a twin-engine plane crash that was ruled accidental at the time.

Perhaps they’d intended to share their secret with her someday.

In any case, Flora had been surprised to find clear instructions in her parents’ will.

While Levi’s remains were to be donated to science, Lilith was to be buried alongside the witches on Wild Hill.

At the time, it seemed wildly out of character.

If only she’d known, Phoebe thought. With just a few cursory internet searches, she’d identified at least thirteen of the men who’d likely been poisoned by the very same substance that would one day take Flora’s life.

Lilith’s victims were Nazi scientists whose crimes were ignored by the American government in the hopes they’d share their knowledge with the West instead of the Soviets.

Who knew what future horrors their deaths had prevented.

Phoebe’s grandparents were heroes, and Lilith was most certainly a witch.

Phoebe knew her mother would have been proud of their courage.

It was a shame no one had told her. And as she labored in the mansion’s old kitchen, Phoebe’s family gave her food for thought.

Light and dark, life and death, healing and killing.

As far back as she could remember, Ivy had taught them these weren’t opposite concepts.

They were complementary. Symbiotic. They worked together in complex ways.

In those days, neither she nor her sister had ever really believed it.

Phoebe was a healer, a light in the darkness, a giver of life.

Brigid, the dark-dwelling executioner, was her polar opposite.

But thinking about Lilith’s life made Phoebe question that logic.

Her grandmother had been both executioner and giver of life. And she sure as hell wasn’t boring.

Whenever the girls had asked what Lilith’s power was, either Flora or Ivy would answer, “Chemistry.” That hadn’t struck Phoebe as terribly interesting—certainly not compared to other gifts in the Duncan line.

Only now was she developing an appreciation for it.

No matter how hard she tried, no matter how long she toiled over the hot cauldron in the mansion’s basement, she couldn’t replicate her grandmother’s poison.

She was keenly aware the clock was ticking.

Brigid couldn’t be controlled much longer.

Unless they could put their plan in action soon, her sister would go rogue.

There was no doubt in her mind. It was only a matter of time.

It terrified Phoebe that Brigid had acted so irresponsibly at the Geddes house.

It was sheer dumb luck she hadn’t been caught on camera.

And the similarities between her sister’s relationship with Liam Geddes and their mother’s affair with his father weren’t lost on Phoebe, either.

She did not want to see her sister sacrificed to the mission the way Flora had been.

But she just couldn’t get the mix right. When the latest batch of ingredients literally went up in smoke, Phoebe would have hurled the cauldron across the room if it hadn’t been too heavy to lift. Instead, she threw a bucket of water on the kitchen fire and stomped upstairs for a much-needed break.

She’d long since visited its every room, but she never tired of wandering around the old mansion.

Angus Campbell’s father had filled the house with books and art that he never had a chance to enjoy—if he’d ever had any intention of doing so.

There was always something new to discover.

On one excursion, she’d found a framed photo of Wild Hill shortly after the Campbells took possession of the land.

The only sign that any humans had ever breached the virgin wilderness was a small, rose-covered hut on the site where the mansion would one day stand.

For the longest time, she couldn’t pull her eyes away from the picture.

Even in static black-and-white, the hill called to her.

And Phoebe was forced to marvel at her own hubris.

She’d been mad to imagine she could keep her daughter away from this place.

The Old One had gotten her way, as always.

All Phoebe could do was beg her forgiveness and pray that she’d keep Sibyl safe.

Nothing had happened by accident. They were all part of a larger scheme.

What role they would play in it remained a mystery.

But she saw evidence of it everywhere she went in the mansion.

Even the paintings that lined the grand staircase told a story.

The six portraits had intrigued Phoebe the first time she saw them.

They were all of women who shared a marked resemblance that suggested they might be family.

They weren’t Campbells, that much was certain, but they gazed down at her from the wall with satisfied expressions, as though they were right where they wanted to be—and were pleased that Phoebe had finally arrived.

Only the last of the portraits bore a plate.

It read, Janet Douglas. The name didn’t seem terribly promising before Phoebe searched for it.

The world was full of Janet Douglases. But there was only one whose face matched the one in the painting—a woman also known as Lady Glamis, accused of conspiring to poison King James and burned at the stake as a witch.

The Campbell patriarch, it seemed, had decorated his walls with portraits that pleased his eye. It had never occurred to him that the subjects’ power might be more than skin deep—or that they would reign over the mansion he built long after his death.

PHOEBE WAS STILL LOITERING ON the landing when she heard a tapping from one of the rooms on the second floor.

She followed the sound to Bessie’s favorite chamber, on the far west side of the building.

There, she found a raven peering in at her through the window and tapping its beak against the glass.

Most ravens look alike, even to witches, but this one was far bigger than most of its fellows.

She could have sworn it was the same creature that had come to see her in Texas.

When Phoebe opened the window to let it inside, the creature took off in the opposite direction.

Phoebe followed it as it flew across the grounds, over the heads of Brigid and Sibyl, who were talking in the drive.

Sibyl wore gardening apparel, but Brigid was dressed in a black sleeveless dress, five-inch stilettos, and a hat with a veil.

Once again, she’d raided Sadie’s old wardrobe.

“Where are you going?” Phoebe called down to her sister.

“Josh Jacobs’s funeral service,” Brigid shouted up.

That’s why the bird had demanded her attention. It wanted her to be there with her sister. “Hang on,” Phoebe ordered. “I’m coming with you.”

PHOEBE ALWAYS FORGOT JUST HOW much she despised funerals until she arrived at one.

She spent the service fighting the urge to flee.

It drove her crazy how the so-called normal people got it all wrong.

The caskets with their toxic plastic and polyester.

The corpses pumped full of carcinogenic chemicals, their faces spackled with paint.

The dyed flowers flown in on fuel-guzzling planes from tropical farms that had replaced native rainforest. What should have been a ceremony marking a return to nature had been transformed into a desecration of the earth.

She was relieved to hear that the graveside service was family-only. She couldn’t take the sight of Mattauk’s weed-free, water-guzzling cemetery, which could have doubled as a golf course. After the church ceremony, most mourners were directed to the Jacobs family estate instead.

“Liam wants to introduce me to a few people.” Brigid winked as they navigated the path to the garden where guests were gathering. “Wanna come?”

Phoebe looked around to make sure no one was listening. “Do not kill anyone here!” she demanded. “You have to control yourself. The Old One gave us the mushrooms for a reason.”

Brigid rolled her eyes and gestured to the guests milling around them. “If she wants me to be good, why does she keep placing all these temptations in my path?”

“Brigid! You almost got yourself—”

The conversation came to an abrupt end as Liam approached the two of them.

“Ladies.” He slipped one arm around Brigid and held the crook of his other arm out to Phoebe. “Care to mingle? Funerals are second only to weddings for networking. There are people here even I don’t know. I saw the Meat Man a few minutes ago. I’d love to bend his ear.”

“The Meat Man?” Phoebe couldn’t help but ask.

“Dan Wallace. Owns AmStar. Started off as a ranch in Wyoming, now they’re a multinational livestock conglomerate.”

“Oh, I know that company!” Brigid gushed. “Don’t the tree huggers have their panties in a twist now that AmStar is turning the rainforest into cow pasture?”

Phoebe lifted a brow and locked eyes with her sister. Brigid was getting a little too into her role.

“That’s the one,” Liam confirmed. “Stock rose ten percent after the recent protests, thanks to AMN’s coverage. I’d like to see if Wallace is interested in investing some of those profits in advertising. Would you like to meet him?”

“No,” Phoebe said. “I would not.”