Page 20 of Witch and Tell

“Rodney!” I yelled after him. Too late. He moved too fast for me to stop him. The paper was gone for good. “I’m so sorry. I hope it wasn’t important.”

“Point in case,” Ruth said.

“Point in case what?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Wanda clenched a smile so hard, I feared for her molars. “Nothing at all.”

That night I continued to feel as if a noose were tightening around me. I wandered my apartment—out the tiny kitchen, down the hall overlooking the atrium, into my living room, and through to my bedroom— only to repeat the pacing in the opposite direction.

Ian was still missing. Lalena had sent me several mournful texts, but she didn’t want my company, and I didn’t have the right words to soothe her.

And then there was the obliteration of my magic. I dropped to my bed, spurring Rodney to emerge from his dark napping place under it. He leapt to my side. At least he was still with me, but for how long? Whatever the dark magic was, and from wherever it came, it was getting worse. My power was locked up, and the walls around it grew thicker. I’d been so sure I’d seen Ian’s body in the atrium. I winced at the memory. Was that part of the dark magic, too?

Another thing I had to contend with was Wanda’s seeming phobia about Rodney. It wasn’t just me who loved having him at the library. Patrons had told me scores of times how they enjoyed finding him napping in the cookbook section or batting a pencil down the hall or simply stretched on a windowsill enjoying the view.

I resisted looking out the windows. Either Sam was home and refusing to spend time with me, or he was away and I’d wonder where he was, and with whom. Either way was another twist to my heart.

I lay back, and Rodney climbed onto my chest. “Naughty cat,” I told him. “Where did you hide Ruth Littlewood’s list, anyway?”

As I talked, I stretched, and my fingers touched the embroidered monogram on the sheet Babe Hamilton had given me.

I sat abruptly, dumping Rodney to the side. I pulled the monogram closer and examined it. The thread was a shade lighter than that used for the rest of the embroidery. It was newer. As I fingered the fabric, my senses grew even more dull. Dread rippled through my torso.No.Couldn’t be. I leaned back and took in the pattern as a whole, and I saw it: a glyph.

My grandmother’s letters had taught me about glyphs. They were spells made by a word or phrase written out with repeating letters eliminated. The remaining letters were then fashioned into a symbol embodying the intent and energy of the person who’d made the glyph. In short, my sheet carried a spell. Because the spell was made of words—my magical source—it would pack even greater power.

It had been Babe Hamilton all along. Babe was a witch. Babe was draining me of my magic, trapping me in a deadening bubble. Babe was my Aunt Beata.

I leapt away from the sheet, then tore it from the bed, dumping my blankets on the floor. I could barely catch my breath. What else had I bought from her?

The quilt, for one. Touching only corners, I dragged it and the sheet to the landing outside my living room door. I’d purchased at least two more sheets from Babe. I pulled them, freshly washed and folded, heavy from vintage métis, from the linen closet and tossed them on the others. I had no idea if they were enchanted, too, but I wasn’t taking chances.

What else? I ransacked the kitchen drawer where I kept dishtowels and cloth napkins and added four dishtowels and a napkin embroidered with four-leaf clovers to the pile growing on the landing. A 1920s chemise threaded with pink ribbon. A rustic linen table runner with poppies on it. A length of handmade lace.

My heart throbbed double time in my chest, and my hands trembled. Did I have enough magic left to fight hers? I had to try.

Chapter Twelve

Finally, it was late enough to carry out my task. I’d tied the linens into the largest sheet and stuffed a tote bag with salt, matches, lighter fluid, and my volume ofGrimm’s Fairy Tales. It barely spoke to me now, but it contained all the magic I had left.

I set out quietly into the night. Both Big House and the caretaker’s cottage were dark, and it was late enough that the air had cooled and the crickets ceased their chirping. Only the whoosh of the wind in the cottonwoods on the river’s bank broke the complete silence.

Then I heard it: the faraway caw of a crow.

My breath quickened, but nothing would get in the way of what I had to do now. Rodney on my heels, I circled the library and followed the path along the river until I could turn off to a less-used trail going into the woods. Here, sure no one could see me, I flicked on my flashlight.

The dark of the forest nearly swallowed the shaft of light, and the moon, now just a sliver, was little help.

“Slow down, kitty,” I urged Rodney.

He knew where we were headed: to the witch’s circle. Most often when I wanted to practice magic best carried out outdoors, I went to the abandoned stacking house on the other side of the retreat center, near the millpond. The concrete stacking house’s roof had long fallen in, and its windows and doors had rotted decades ago. Trees sprang up in its crevices, and it had the feeling of a plein air cathedral. I loved it.

However, the stacking house was too close to the retreat center for me to burn anything larger than a taper. The last thing I needed was the volunteer fire department showing up as I was setting fire to a pile of cotton and linen. I shook my head, trying to imagine explaining that.

An owl hooted from somewhere near. At least it wasn’t a crow. Something rustled in the underbrush, and I shivered. Besides these noises, all I heard was my own breath as I steadily made my way over roots and through the knee-high ferns to the witch’s circle. A few minutes later, I thought I’d made a wrong turn and veered too far west, but soon I found the opening in the trees.

Here I was at last. I dropped my tote to my feet and caught my breath. The witch’s circle was a meadow the size of a suburban backyard, but it was large enough that moonlight, as thin as it was, iced the grass and mossy logs. Fir trees surrounded us like mammoth sentries.

I’d accidentally stumbled upon the circle the summer before, when I was gathering mushrooms with a friend who was in Wilfred as part of a team to film an interview with Roz about her bestseller,The Whippoorwill Cries Love. The friend, Leo, was also researching a documentary on folk magic. He’d pointed out the clearing and told me they were considered magical places, both feared and venerated. I cared less about that and more about the fact that I was far enough from the trail that I wouldn’t be seen.