* * *
As Sally went forward she thought about the women before her who had fought to protect those they loved, those who had been erased from history, who never had a chance to tell their own stories. Vincent had told her that like follows like, what you take away you also must give. She reached the front door, the same door that their ancestor, Maria’s mother, Rebecca, had fled from so many years ago. It opened to her touch, the wood hot, the air all around her buzzing with energy. The air was hotter inside than out. The floor was stone, dug from quarries in the north by men who were little more than slaves. Long ago, the hanging lamp would have held five hundred candles, all white and aflame, the stone walls would have been covered by French tapestries, the chairs made of leather and walnut, the large tables hewn from a single oak, the bowls made of brass.
Tom Lockland was in the great room, there before the fire. He was the avenging angel, hunched over, lost in his dreams of revenge. Whatever small magic that was in his blood had surfaced and bloomed. When he heard footsteps, he turned to face Sally. He knew her right away, the silver eyes, the delicate features that resembled Kylie’s. With their shaven heads, Tom and Sally looked alike, but that just went to show one couldn’t tell much from appearances. They had nothing in common except the past.
“I tried to help your daughter. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t kept her away from magic.”
“I was wrong then,” Sally said. “And you’re wrong now.”
“I wonder if Professor Wright would agree with you. I’ve been stealing from him for years. If he’d been as smart as he thought he was, he would have remained a thief. At least he was good at that.”
Sally looked beyond Tom to see Ian prone on the floor, afflicted in the same way he’d been when she first found him, paralyzed from the herbs taken from the old apothecary garden in Devotion Field. He’d been sure of himself; he’d thought he could take Tom in a fight, for he was six inches taller and two stone heavier, but he was no match for poison.
“You don’t care who you hurt,” Sally said.
“Certainly not Wright. He’s a sorry example of what magic can do to a person.” Tom saw the shock on Sally’s face and grinned. “Are you sure you still want him?”
“I do, cousin,” Sally answered.
Tom’s gaze grew darker. “Don’t call me that.”
In truth they were barely related, and if he’d ever been part of their family, it no longer mattered. His past had made him ruthless beyond measure. He still carried the scars of being an exile in the village and in his own household, and Sally might have pitied him once, but not anymore. She took out a mirror and held it up so that anything he sent out to her would return to him threefold and then she saw him for who he was. She began the incantation from her family’s Grimoire, one Maria Owens had written down for a desperate time. The sacrifice was to come, not the loss of her hair, which would grow back in a few months’ time. Maria’s spell would take away abilities Tom might possess, few as they were, but it would take Sally’s as well. That was the price to pay. That was the key. She would no longer have magic.
I renounce all that I have to be rid of you. You will walk away and never return.
Tom lifted his arm in the air, his index and middle finger raised, a gesture of defiance since the thirteenth century. He wanted Sally to know he was undefeated.
They say people don’t change, not at their core, not unless they face great trauma, but fate can change, and the lines on Tom Lockland’s left hand were already disappearing despite his challenge to her. Sally heard a whispering and when she looked there was a girl with black hair on the stairs. She was repeating the enchantment that Sally had spoken, her lips moving, her intention clear and pure. It was not magic that had caused the curse, but mortal foolishness. Betrayal, abandonment, scorn, suffering, revenge, love. What felt right in the moment, what caused disaster, what you wished you could call back, for what was done could be undone. Sally repeated the incantation along with the girl on the stairs, even though she knew what it meant and what it would cost her to be rid of Tom. It was a revelation to feel a stab of grief now that she was losing the one thing she’d always wished to rid herself of. She was already losing her magic.