“So you found your salvation in magic,” Sally said in a scornful tone. “And you think it’s fine if you occasionally go to the left to get what you want.”
He heaved a sigh. What made her think she knew him, and worse, what if she did?
“It’s written all over you. You don’t just believe in magic, you’re consumed by it.”
Now he was provoked. There were a thousand other things he could be doing this morning. “If you so disapprove, maybe you should go your way and I’ll go mine.”
Whenever Sally was vulnerable she was unpleasant and she knew it. Could it be they were alike in this? “I shouldn’t have said those things,” she admitted. “I’m desperate.”
“We can find her.” So now it was we, was it? Ian felt ploddingly stupid. He was overthinking. What they were forging was a business transaction, the oldest one of all. A life for a life.
He went to speak to the librarian, who had helped in his research before. When he began asking questions about The Book of the Raven, the librarian nodded, and led them down a long corridor to the reading room. Ian glanced over at Sally, who seemed folded in on herself. Magic hung in the air, thick moody gasps of it in every breath.
Vincent had been at work for well over an hour. He’d been given a pair of black cotton gloves to use as he looked through stacks of Grimoires, some donated, others stolen or found by accident, still others having narrowly managed to escape being burned, their pages singed, the paper emitting the acrid green scent of smoke. So far, he’d unearthed several references to Amelia Bassano, who knew astrologers and royals and theater people, but no mention of The Book of the Raven.
Sally wasn’t surprised to find that her grandfather had beaten them to the library. Her aunt Franny had confided that long-ago Vincent had practiced on the left-hand side, and that he’d been born with the temperament for magic, always curious, able to see what others could not.
“Your girl was here,” Vincent told Sally. “Yesterday. She has the book, but it refuses to open.”
Stunned, Sally turned to the librarian. “Did you help her?”
David Ward explained he’d found little concerning The Book of the Raven, only a mention of Amelia Bassano’s practice of magic. The librarian seemed to be more interested in references to the Owens family history.
“Our history?” Sally said, wary.
He thought it wise to pursue that avenue of research, for every curse began in the past.
Sally quickly scanned the entries which recorded that a woman named Hannah Owens had been tried as a witch then set free when the witch mania temporarily passed and those imprisoned were released for no reason, just as they were arrested without cause.
“That’s my home,” Ian told them. They waited for him to say more, but he remained silent, confused by the turn of events. He had not believed in the concept of fate, and yet here they were, with ties to the same county. He thought of himself as a boy of ten, standing at the edge of the fens, certain that if he only waited long enough he would know why he’d been fated to grow up in a place he despised.
Ian asked to look at the book, a genealogical record of his own hometown, Thornfield. He had a bone-rattling chill of recognition when he saw the name Lockland.
“Hannah Owens was involved with the Locklands in the mid-seventeenth century,” David Ward said. “As far as I can tell, the original ancestor saw to it that she was burned as a witch.”
Sally felt a shiver run through her. “Did you mention this to my daughter?”
“I suggested the Locklands might have retained documents. There was a reference to the last remaining member of the family, Tom Lockland.”
Bad Tom, Ian thought. That piece of shit. He’d heard Tom Lockland was stealing magic books from practitioners and historians in an attempt to access magic. A few months earlier, Tom had come slinking around Ian’s office, with the nerve to ask if Ian wanted to hire him as an assistant. The answer had been no, and ever since Ian had wondered what Tom had really wanted. Now he wondered if Tom Lockland was responsible for the disappearance of Raueskinna and if the hex might have been an act of revenge for Ian dismissing him out of hand.