Nor was dreaming. In her dream, she was standing at the edge of a precipice, overlooking miles of frothy gray ocean. She looked down and saw long, pointed nails, like talons, painted red. Green swirling tattoos covered her waxy skin.
Where am I? Something was familiar about this place. She’d been here before. Many times, in fact. Two people stood behind her, waiting. Something told her they would wait all day if she desired it. They would wait until their knees buckled, until they toppled over with hunger or their tongues dried up in their mouths.
Neither was much older than seventeen. One was a skinny punk who had so far proven to be about as noteworthy as his neglected Mohawk. The other was a slender girl Nor recognized as her former classmate Catriona. Both of their arms were covered in bandages. There was a gruesome gash on Mohawk’s cheek.
Doubt was in Catriona’s gaunt face, and Nor somehow knew that there could be no doubt today. Most especially from Catriona. That she was from the island was what made her useful, but if there was doubt —
She beckoned to Catriona, drew her close, and stroked her sunken cheeks with those red talons. The girl’s thirst for her attention and approval flushed across her face like a fever.
“Not to worry, my pet,” Nor purred in a voice not her own. “Do what I ask, and I promise, you will be rewarded immensely.” Any doubt Catriona had felt was gone.
Nor watched as Mohawk boy and Catriona wended their way down to a small dinghy at the dock. Only a few abandoned boats remained in the marina, sticking out of the water like shattered teeth. The dinghy lurched into the gray. Soon, it was but a tiny pinpoint in the distance.
Nor turned her attention back to her surroundings. The crumbling roof of an abandoned building peeked out from over the treetops. There was a reason she was here. What is it?
Her mind filled with a memory that did not belong to her: the life draining from a man’s eyes, blood pooling on the floor. She had been a bit overzealous with that one. And still, every drop of the man’s blood had not been enough. It turned out he had been a stranger to the archipelago, so she could only cast but a few illicit spells with it before the feeble power of that sacrifice slipped through her fingers. This was why Catriona’s compliance was so important — that couldn’t happen again.
“At least killing him had been fun,” Nor said aloud, and the voice that came out of her mouth chilled her to the bone.
It was then that Nor remembered why she was here. It had nothing to do with the place. The place was inconsequential — a convenient means to an end. No, this had everything to do with the people. The new hope for power raced through her veins like a drug. The true price of her spells had nothing to do with money. What did someone who could have anything she wanted need with money? No, the true price was blood. And pain. It was simple and somewhat trite, but it was also wicked, which was what made it so fun.
It didn’t take long for the boat to return. At first, it appeared that they had failed, but as they disembarked and made their way up the trail, she saw they were dragging someone with them — a woman. Her head lolled sluggishly against her chest. Even from here, Nor could see the green vines inked into her skin.
“Is she dead?” she asked in the voice that was not her own.
“You said you wanted her alive,” Catriona answered.
“And so I did.”
Nor looked at the woman’s face and frowned. She turned to the boy and slapped him hard across the face.
“But you said you wanted —” he cried.
“I was very clear about who I wanted.”
“We — we couldn’t get to her,” he stammered, avoiding looking into her eyes. “She closed the bakery early. But this one’s from the island. Isn’t that enough?”
“No, it is not. Was I or was I not quite explicit about that detail?”
Mohawk and Catriona shared a look. “Should we take her back?” Catriona dared to ask.
Nor examined the woman, slumped over like a dumb beast raised for slaughter. She might not have been the one she had requested, but she wouldn’t have to be wasted altogether.
“I suppose she’ll do for now.”
The two breathed a sigh of relief. Nor raised her arm, and the fern tattoo unlatched from her skin. Nor knew she could cause people pain just by thinking it, could split their skin open just by desiring it, but that wasn’t quite as memorable and not nearly as nightmarish.
The fern wrapped itself around the woman’s neck and made a deep puncture wound. The woman whimpered. The thorns the ferns sprouted were sharp, but not too sharp. Too sharp and they wouldn’t hurt — not at first. Where was the fun in that?
The fern was readying itself to sink deeper into the woman’s skin when Nor gave a jolt, and the fern retracted with a crack.
“What is it?” Catriona asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Shut up!” Nor commanded, and listened harder. She swore someone, from quite a distance away, had started to scream.
Nor lurched awake, throwing her hands out in front of her as if to halt some disaster. The pale sky told her it was early morning. The cold January air seeped through the thin windowpanes. Her pillow lay on the floor on the other side of the room. Bijou inched his way back out from under the dresser, and Nor breathed a shaky sigh of relief. Her throat felt raw.
As if, she realized with a start, I’d been screaming.
The sound of footsteps pounding on the stairs sent Bijou back under Nor’s dresser. Judd burst into the room wielding a large metal bat. Antiquity was close behind, ears pinned flat to her head, hackles raised in alarm.
“What in God’s great green pastures was all that hollering for, girlie?” Judd thundered, dropping the bat to the floor. It landed with a clatter that sent Nor’s pulse racing once more. Nor told herself that even though the dream had felt real, that didn’t mean it was real. She’d had plenty of realistic dreams before — dreams in which she could fly or run on water. In one dream, all of her teeth had fallen out. She looked down at her nails. They were not painted red. Her skin was not covered in green spiraling tattoos.
“It was just a nightmare,” Nor insisted, her words turning into a little purple cloud.
Judd pulled her pipe out of the breast pocket of her pajamas and stuck it between her teeth. “That’s it?” she said, shaking her head. “All that noise over a bad dream?”
Nor just nodded, distracted by the purple cloud floating up to the skylight and plastering itself to the glass.
“Well, you’re awake now,” Judd said. “Apothia’s got breakfast on the table if you’re hungry.” She paused and picked up the metal bat before leaving the room. Nor was suddenly worried that Judd could see her lie splattered against the window. But of course she couldn’t.
Nor hugged her knees to her chest. It wasn’t just a nightmare, she thought. But what the hell was it? Fern couldn’t possibly be anywhere near them. Last time Nor had checked, her mother was on a national book tour. She’d read online that at one of her mother’s New England events, several people had been hospitalized after waiting in line for over four hours in the middle of a snowstorm. Losing a few toes to frostbite was apparently a small price to pay for a chance to meet Fern Blackburn.
When Nor got downstairs, Judd was at the front door, speaking to an unfamiliar woman wearing a Pendleton scarf and an older man in a sweat-stained Stetson. “Sorry about this, Judd,” the woman was saying. “You know I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t think it was absolutely necessary.”
The woman in the scarf turned, and two young men came into view behind her. It was Pike and Sena Crowe Coldwater. Nor recognized them from that night on the beach. They were carrying someone — an unconscious woman whose brunette hair was wet with blood.
Judd grunted and motioned them inside urgently. “Apothia!” she barked over her shoulder.
Without hesitation, Apothia grabbed hold of the tablecloth on the dining room table and sent the remnants of their breakfast crashing to the ground. Plates and coffee mugs shattered against the floor. A piece of buttered toast slid slowly down a wall along with splatters of orange juice and smears of jam.
The two young men laid the unconscious woman gently across the table. Judd rolled up her sleeves, her brow furrowed in concentration.
“We found her on the steps of the Witching Hour,” Pike said. “Looks like she either stumbled into something, or —”
“More like something stumbled into her,” the older man finished.
“This wound here is a nasty one,” Judd muttered, examining a laceration across the back of the woman’s head.
“I had my best people working on her,” the woman in the scarf said, “but for the life of them, they could not get any results. I’m telling you, these injuries did not come from anything natural.” She looked at Judd’s hands, placed on either side of the wound. “How’s her pain?”
“Whatever it was that got to her, Dauphine,” Judd answered, “was meant to hurt. That I’m sure of.”
Apothia brushed the woman’s hair away from her face. It was Wintersweet.
Nor’s palms began to sweat. She edged closer to the table, stepping on broken china and cold toast. Blood from the head wound stained Judd’s hands. Familiar and gruesome lesions circled Wintersweet’s neck.
As if made by barbed wire, Nor thought, or a thorny vine. Was it possible that the dream hadn’t been a dream at all?
I don’t want this, Nor thought, backing away from the table. If it was a premonition, why did it have to be this one? And why now? It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t even safe in her dreams.
“Standing there gaping is about as useful as a handkerchief with holes in it, girlie,” Judd rumbled. “Get her out,” she muttered to Apothia. “It’s too damned crowded in here anyway.”
Apothia put a hand on Nor’s shoulder. “Let your grandmother work,” she murmured.
Nor nodded dumbly and let Apothia steer her toward the back door.
She shoved her feet into the felt boots Apothia kept near the door and grabbed one of Judd’s thick alpaca wool sweaters. Just before closing the door behind her, she saw Judd pull one of her hands away from the back of Wintersweet’s head and hold it out to the woman she’d called Dauphine. Dauphine calmly pulled long silver quills from out of Judd’s palm. As they emerged, they dissipated into thin air.
Outdoors, Nor felt a little better. She wrapped her grandmother’s sweater more tightly around herself and was comforted by the scratchy wool against her skin. The sweater was so large it practically dragged on the ground, but it smelled like Judd: pipe tobacco and cayenne pepper and the sharp tang of antibacterial soap.
Bijou, who’d followed her outside, trotted off the path, drawn by a rustling in the rhododendron bushes. His little ears pricked up, and his thoughts filled with flashes of wild animals — raccoons, rabbits, and wild turkeys. He was desperately hoping for a turtle. Nor crouched down to peer into the brush with the little dog and then fell back with a start.
What they were looking at was definitely not a turtle.
Glowing yellow eyes in a narrow canine face stared back at them. The red fox quickly leaped over her and, with two silent bounds, was over the fence and into the thick of the forest.
Before he disappeared from view, Nor caught a few of the fox’s thoughts. He was there to see her, not out of curiosity, but as if he’d been sent on a mission to check on her. What was stranger was that he was off to report that she was safe. Why would someone need to know that?
“He didn’t seem to like you much,” a voice said.
Nor jumped. “You scared the hell out of me,” she yelped, glaring at the boy sitting on the porch of Apothia’s little white studio. “What are you doing here?”
“I came with Dauphine and my cousins,” Gage said coolly. He tipped his head back and took a long drag off a cigarette.
Nor had the intense desire to punch him in his smug face.
“Then why is everyone else who came with Dauphine inside helping,” Nor asked spitefully, “while you’re sitting out here in the cold?”
“Good point.” He paused to take another long pull off his cigarette. “But then again, who else is out here with me?”
Well, he’s not wrong. Nor watched the ash spill from the end of his cigarette before finally admitting, “To be honest, you probably know a lot more about what’s going on than I do.”
Gage studied her, then moved over and motioned for her to sit next to him. “What do you want to know?”
“You’re going to tell me?” Nor was surprised.
“I’m feeling generous this morning, but who knows how long that’ll last, so you better talk fast, kid.”
I could probably get at least one good punch in. Probably. “Why do you —” Nor started, careful to keep a comfortable distance between herself and Gage when she sat down, “and a bunch of people I’ve never even met — seem to know so much about my family? Things no one else knows?”
“We really are starting at the beginning, aren’t we?” Gage shook his head. “Well, that’s because of an agreement made between my ancestors and the mighty matriarch of your family, Rona Blackburn.”
“What kind of an agreement?” Nor asked.
“A binding one, apparently,” he said sardonically. “Did you know it was my ancestors who put out the fire that almost destroyed the island? No, you’ve probably only been told about how your great-great-grandmother bravely saved all those books from being burned to a crisp. And Astrid Blackburn didn’t rebuild the whole island, not single-handedly at least. My family helped her, just like they’ve helped every Blackburn daughter, including Rona herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Where did you think Rona went after those bastards burned down her house?”
Nor mulled this over. “So your ancestors have been here since —”
“Since before yours,” Gage said. “By the time the so-called Original Eight showed up, my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Lachlan Coldwater, had already been here for almost five years. He was kind of a hermit, but he had a wife, Nellie. They had kids, and their kids had kids. And so on.” Gage turned to look at her. “Do you get what I’m telling you, kid? Anathema Island doesn’t have eight colonizing patriarchs, it has —”
“Nine,” Nor finished.
“I was going to say one, but yeah, I guess you could say nine.”
The ramifications of what he was saying slowly dawned on her. Not eight original men, but nine. Nine. Nor’s heartbeat quickened with dread. “But you said your ancestors took Rona in,” she hurried to say. “So why would she —” She stopped herself before she could say it.
Gage gave her a look. “I know what you’re thinking. That’s the big unanswered question, isn’t it? No one’s certain whether or not my family is included in old Rona’s backfired curse. Every generation, the male descendants of my family hold their breath and wait to see if it’s their turn to succumb to the charms of a witch.”
Nor blushed. “You know about that?” she asked quietly.
“Of course.”
“And those descendants would include —”
“Yours truly.”
Of course. For a moment, Nor didn’t know what to say. It did clear up a few things, such as —
“Is that why you didn’t want to work with me on that science project in seventh grade?” she blurted out.
Gage stared at her and then snorted with laughter. “Fuck, I’d forgotten all about that.” He shook his head. “Yeah, but I also thought you would have made a lousy partner.”
“I didn’t know you were slated for valedictorian,” Nor shot back.
“No, that will be my cousin Charlie,” he said scathingly. “Look, kid, I don’t have all the answers. We might be part of the curse. We might not be.” He tossed his cigarette on the ground, stood, and started walking away. “All I know is I sure as hell don’t want to be the one to find out.”
“Trust me,” Nor called after him. “It wouldn’t exactly be a dream come true for me either!”
What a dick. But once he was gone, a different and more desperate feeling started to creep into the pit of her stomach. Though she hated to admit it, Nor sympathized with him. He was afraid, and she knew what it was to be afraid. She knew that fear hurt in a way that was hard to explain; it could make you say things you never thought yourself capable of saying, do things you never thought you were capable of doing.
Nor stared at the lights in the Tower. A moment passed, and then another, and her attention was drawn to his discarded cigarette, still smoldering.
Nor picked it up, studied the dying embers, and imagined pressing the lit end into the back of her hand. She thought about the white-hot pain invoking that familiar rush of adrenaline. How it would soon enough be replaced by a dull nothingness, both soothing and addictive, that she’d tried so hard to forget.
Nor dropped the cigarette and crushed it under her foot until all that was left was a scorched mark on the ground.
Nor walked back into the Tower holding Bijou. Reluctantly, she put him down; it felt better to have him in her arms, with his thoughts of rainwater and pelicans to calm her. She followed him through the kitchen and saw Pike and Sena Crowe standing in the foyer, stoic statues on either side of the woman Judd had called Dauphine. Each had a large knife slung on his hip.
“Oh, come now, Judd,” Dauphine was saying. “You’re being difficult for the sake of being difficult.” Sitting at Dauphine’s side was, peculiarly, a wolfhound, one as large and as old as Antiquity.
“I am doin’ nothing of the sort,” Judd grumbled. Judd’s posture was rigid. Her mouth was the taut line of a person who disliked what she was hearing. Antiquity loomed beside her.
Nor wasn’t sure she’d ever seen anyone argue with Judd before. Apothia and Judd could orchestrate a knockdown, drag-out fight with just eyebrow raises and flared nostrils; Apothia had a way of soothing Judd’s wild temper, and it certainly hadn’t ever been by matching Judd’s rage with her own.
“If you’re all so damned worried about it,” the older gentleman wearing the cowboy hat interjected, “I don’t see why you all can’t just come stay with us. You’ll be safe as houses up there.” He moved his hand as he talked. He was holding a knife, and briefly, it was all Nor could see, watching the flashing blade as he wove it deftly between his fingers.
“Because there is protocol to follow, Everly —” Dauphine reminded him.
“Dauphine —” Everly scoffed.
“And protocol,” Dauphine continued, “hardly calls for sequestering Blackburn women without irrefutable evidence that they are, in fact, in danger.”
“Too right,” Judd grumbled.
“I’d like to get back to the matter of the woman we found on the brink of death a few hours ago,” Dauphine continued.
Nor’s heart sank. “But she’s okay now, right?” she interrupted. Everyone turned to look at her. Nor turned to her grandmother. “You were able to heal her?”
“It wasn’t anything I couldn’t fix,” Judd rumbled. “So don’t you worry about that, girlie.”
Nor breathed a tiny sigh of relief. She could feel Dauphine studying her. There was something about her that made Nor wary of looking her in the eye, afraid that it would be just as blinding as staring into the headlights of an approaching car or straight into the blazing sun. The wolfhound at her side cast a lupine shadow like a menacing shroud. But unlike Antiquity, whose thoughts brimmed with memories of the hunter she had once been, this wolfhound’s thoughts were calm, as placid as a dank forest floor.
“For the time being,” Dauphine finally said, “I think we need to keep our focus on figuring out exactly what happened to Wintersweet. So far, there is nothing to support the idea that this has relevance only for the Blackburn daughters. We must assume that there may well exist a threat to us all.”
As the room erupted into a boisterous debate, Nor caught a glimpse through a window of Gage, who’d come back and was standing in the yard, his back turned to her. His cigarette sent a lone spiral of smoke into the morning air. Suddenly she felt like she was standing on the edge of a dark cliff, with an irresistible urge to jump.