“You can’t keep it from me if you know what’s to be,” Ian had insisted.
“Fate will make the best of you,” Margaret Wright scolded, using an old adage that many mothers told their children in their village. “If you don’t make the best of it. That’s what the witches say.”
Now in the taxi, he thought his mother would be amused to see how baffled he was whenever he was in Sally’s presence. He could barely bring himself to look at her. His first instinct was to leap out of the taxi at the next red light and run in the other direction, but he stayed where he was, already reproaching himself for being a fool.
“We’ll pick up the others, then take the train to Essex,” he told Sally. “We should get there as soon as possible. All right?”
She knew she would say yes even before Ian asked the question. Her world had already begun to change. If magic was what was needed, magic it would be. And so she said yes to the man who would lead her to the first Essex County, where the land was so marshy unwitting people sank into the fens if they weren’t careful, where the crows protected each other and Devotion Field was often the setting used to celebrate weddings, where it was possible to find what you’d lost, where there had been ashes rising on a day when a woman burned, when Maria Owens first decided that love was not a blessing but a curse.
PART FOUR
The Book of Love
I.
As the train hurtled through the darkening evening, Gillian hunched back in her seat to observe the rising pink moon from the window. When she was young, people said she could bewitch men with a single glance, but the truth was she’d never had the power to do so. She’d veered onto the Crooked Path when she got involved with a man who was nothing but trouble, and she’d learned her lesson. Never love someone who cannot love you back, Jet had told her. That is the way to heartbreak and nothing more.
Gillian had been glad to sit by herself on the train so that she might have her own private thoughts uninterrupted. They were passing near the village of Canewdon, once called the village of witches, and Gillian gazed out, assuming she would spy only the sky and the countryside, but there was more. She leaned forward, rapt, as she did her best to make out the shape on the other side of the glass. No one else looked out. No one else noticed anything unusual.
Franny and Vincent were in seats next to one another, their heads close, chuckling as they spoke about the past. Sally and Ian had wound up together accidentally. As soon as Ian sat beside her Sally called out, “Oh, Gilly, come sit with me.” Ian had immediately risen to his feet, assuring them he would be happy to move, but Gillian had begged off, explaining that she was drained from the time change and wanted to sleep. Ian and Sally then exchanged glassy looks. “I don’t talk while traveling,” Sally had warned him, sounding haughtier than she meant to. Ian understood completely. What she’d meant was simply Leave me alone.
“Fine,” Ian had assured her as he’d retaken the seat beside her. He wished she didn’t have a heart-shaped face. He hadn’t even known there was such a thing, but there it was, scowling at him. “Don’t say a word. That will be a pleasure for me as well,” he said flatly. Distance, he told himself. And yet he couldn’t heed his own advice and edged closer to her. “We can never speak if that’s the way you’d like it to be.” Good lord, he thought, what was wrong with him?
Sally had started, indignant. “Are you trying to be rude?”
“I don’t have to try.” Why not be blunt? That had always been his method of navigating the world. “I was born that way, and I’m sure my mother, who you’ll meet before long, would agree.” When Ian saw the curious look on Sally’s face, he added, “If you don’t want me here, that’s your choice.” He sounded like a besotted lunatic, even to himself. “I can go sit in the loo.”
Sally laughed, charmed despite herself by the way he held forth, for at heart he was his mother’s son. You could judge a man by whether or not he got along with his mother, and beneath his bad-mannered fa?ade, Ian was devoted to his. “Of course, I want you here. You owe me that. But you have my solemn promise, I will ignore you,” Sally assured him “It should be easy to do.”