“The one that Jet put on the shelf, dear,” Miss Hardwick explained. “The Book of the Raven.”
Sally turned terribly pale upon hearing this news. She looked as if she might faint. What book was this?
“Would you like to join me for a drink?” Miss Hardwick suggested. Not only was the whiskey excellent at the Black Rabbit, but the martinis were famous for the punch they packed, and tonight the special was meat loaf, a local favorite.
“Where did that book come from?”
“Jet left it. I thought it was for Franny, but apparently not. It was in the Do not resuscitate section.” Sally looked even more puzzled. “The magic section. It was a little joke your aunt Jet and I had. If a patron took out a book from that section, they were responsible for what happened next.”
“What sort of book was it?”
Sally looked as she had when she was a girl, suspicious and intelligent, her eyes bright with worry.
“It was the sort that burned your hands as a matter of fact,” Miss Hardwick said. “Your aunt said it was a Book of Shadows and that I should stay away from it.”
Sally had gone stone-cold. A left-handed Grimoire.
They went out together and Sally, though preoccupied, returned a wave to Miss Hardwick as she walked toward the lights of the inn. The notion of a book she’d never heard of made her nervous, for she’d believed that she was aware of every volume in their collection. And yet, how much damage could one small book do? How powerful could it be? That was when Sally began to run, because she knew the answer. Words were everything, stories were more powerful than any weapon, books changed lives. She ran along the spotty pavement to Magnolia Street and when she arrived she saw that the gate was open. Gillian’s battered black and white Mini had been parked on the road at a curious angle, and Gillian, herself, was out on the porch waiting for her.
“We came when we heard about Gideon,” Gillian said. “Kylie left a message for Antonia.”
There was Antonia, up on the porch with Franny. Kylie had run off and now must be found, they all agreed that was the logical way to proceed. But Antonia noticed that her mother and aunt Gilly were stealing worried glances and speaking about the curse. Pure nonsense, was Antonia’s first thought. Seventeenth-century superstition. How could they take this seriously, although clearly they did. Antonia recalled that her mother had spoken harshly to the cousin from Maine who’d blurted out something about a curse at Jet’s funeral.
Sally had often been a distracted parent, too wrapped up in her own hurt and guilt when she lost her husbands to entirely be there for her daughters, and it had fallen upon Antonia to be the dependable one in the family. She was the serious older sister who made certain Kylie did her homework, who corrected math and science papers, and who’d suggested that Kylie apply to Harvard so they would be together in Cambridge. Antonia was the daughter who never reproached her mother, or asked for the limelight, the clever girl who did as she was told, who went to bed on time and always was at the top of her class. But as practical as Antonia was, she had a story she kept to herself. Until she’d become pregnant, sleep had eluded her, and she’d always had a problem with lucid dreams that often absorbed her wholly, seeming more real than the life she lived. To avoid dreaming she stayed up, buzzed on coffee and schoolwork, reading until all hours. When she’d first started medical school, her circadian rhythms were so off, she’d gone to a sleep clinic but had received no satisfactory answers. Since becoming pregnant, coffee was out of the question, and she’d been dreaming more all the time. If this had been any other day she would have said nothing about the disturbing dream she’d had the night before, but her sister was missing, and it was time for her to speak her mind.
“I dreamed of a death by drowning,” Antonia said after a measured pause, uncomfortable when Sally and Gillian turned to study her, both clearly nervous. “It was one of us.”
“People in our family can’t drown.” Gillian was quick to dismiss the dream. Talk of drowning was never a good idea, not in their family.