“What about the book in the greenhouse?”
“We’ve searched the Grimoire a thousand times,” Franny assured her. “There’s nothing there.”
“There has to be. Jet said the cure is in a book,” Kylie insisted.
“Jet?” Franny was truly puzzled. “When did she say that?”
“In her letter.”
Franny felt a chill settle over her, the cold clasp of unfinished business. If it was Jet’s concern, then it was hers as well. “I think you’d better show that to me.” There was a wash of sooty ash above the rooftop, above the trees. The time had come when fate would make the best of them if they didn’t make the best of it.
The letter had been written for Franny, but does a letter belong to the person it was written to or the one who finds it? It had made its way to Kylie and so, in her opinion, it belonged to her now. Instead of allowing Franny to see Jet’s message, Kylie took off running through the muddy garden, Gideon’s raincoat flapping out behind her in what had become a foul wind rising in the east.
“Kylie,” Franny cried. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“If you don’t know the answer, maybe my mother does. Maybe this is one more thing she’s been hiding.”
* * *
The Owens School for Girls had been the first of its kind in Massachusetts. Grammar schools for boys were commonplace, the first in the commonwealth being the Boston Latin School, which opened in 1635. Soon thereafter there were Dame schools for girls, which taught reading and writing, as well as the domestic arts, but Maria Owens wanted more, and so did her daughter, Faith, who taught Latin and Greek. This was long before the radical notion of equal education for females became a reality in 1830 when a high school for girls opened in Boston and compulsory education laws were passed in 1852.
The school, situated in the library, had closed at the turn of the eighteenth century, and the former classroom was now the quiet corner of the circulation desk, where Sally was figuring out the monthly bills. The library was run as a private institution, depending on the yearly sum Maria’s will provided, from a trust handled by the family’s attorneys, the Hardys, on Beacon Street in Boston. All the same, the library had always been open to the public and even for those interested parties who lived one town over, or outside the limits of Essex County, Jet had always been happy to produce a library card.
Kylie was so agitated when she arrived that the books on the shelves responded in fear, with several flopping onto the floor in a flurry of pages.
“My goodness,” Miss Hardwick cried as Kylie stormed by, not even noticing the elderly librarian.
Miss Hardwick was relieved that she could use her plastic grabber, newly purchased at the hardware store, to reach for and retrieve the fallen volumes, delighted to think of the many ways it could be put to use. Grabbing the newspaper, grabbing for toast, grabbing that annoying teenaged boy Ryan Heller who came to the library to stir up trouble and moon over girls and who’d never in his life once withdrawn a book.
Sally was concentrating on the bills, wondering if they would have to find a way to cut back on the charges for heat and electricity, when she glanced up to see that her daughter had arrived unexpectedly, dressed, it seemed, in a raincoat and pajamas. She wondered if she had somehow fallen asleep and if this were a dream, for she often had such deep visions in her sleep, ones so real that when she woke she was confused as to which was her real life. But no, Kylie was here, her face drawn and pale. The lights above them were flickering, never a good sign.
“I need to break the curse,” Kylie said in a no-nonsense tone. She didn’t seem like herself at all. Her voice was flat and more adult. “I need to do it now.”
Two teenagers in the next room were paging through the newest graphic novels, unaware that several lights had blinked completely out. Nearby, Miss Hardwick was still intent on picking up books with her grabber.