A Witch's Feast (22 page)

“What? Fiona, that’s not funny.”

“It’s not a joke.” She glanced again at Mrs. Ranulf, whose pale eyes bulged. “Mariana and Connor are witches, it turns out. Mrs. Ranulf caught them. It’ll be on the news soon.”

“This is crazy.” There was a noise like the shuffling of papers. “I’m going down to rent a car and come down to see you. Is Mrs. Ranulf around? Can I speak to her?”
 

Fiona felt awash with relief. Maybe her mother could fix this. “She’s right here, as it happens.” Fiona held the phone out to Mrs. Ranulf, who rose from her chair.
 

She pressed the receiver to her ear. “Yes?”

There were a few moments of muffled words from the other end of the line, and then Mrs. Ranulf’s face paled. “Mrs. Forzese. We do what we must to protect our country.” She slammed down the phone before glaring at Fiona. “Your mother would like to terminate your education here. You will not be finishing your junior year. It’s a terrible waste.”

“She misses me.” Fiona turned, leaving Mrs. Ranulf alone in the drawing room. She hurried through the hallway to the garden doors, slipping out quietly. She still had to meet Tobias and Alan to look over the spell book.
 

Fiona picked her way through the overgrown field behind the gardens. There was a burning smell in the air, and a tendril of dark smoke curled into the sky from somewhere near the cemetery. The scent of a barbecue made her mouth water.
 

She was meeting Tobias and Alan in the magnolia grove by the river. Despite the gentle sounds of the water lapping against the shore as she drew closer, her shoulders locked with tension. The Purgators were watching everyone with hawks’ eyes. It was a relief that her mother was coming to get her, but she couldn’t leave without finding Mariana and Connor.

Through the trees, she spied Alan and Tobias sitting on a fallen trunk. She’d been dying to sneak into their room again last night to look over the spells, but the idea of waking the crypt demon again gave her pause.
 

Alan looked up and waved as she approached, while Tobias’s gaze darted around. He’d seemed—
jumpy
lately, like he was waiting for something to happen. She sat next to him on the moss-covered trunk, trying not to think of his strong arms around her the night before.
 

She wiped a hand across her sweating forehead. “I spoke to my mother. She’s totally freaked out that they arrested Mariana. She’s coming down here.”

“At least we have a ride out of here after we find Mariana,” said Alan. “My parents aren’t coming for me. They think the Ranulfs are amazing.”

Fiona glanced at Tobias. “So what spells do we have to work with?”

Tobias pulled the scrapbook out of Alan’s backpack. “It’s not really a spell book. More of a diary. It belonged to Great-Grandfather Edgar’s wife, Pearl.” He touched the gold-embossed cover.
 

Her stomach sank. “But there were spells in it.”

“Only at the start.” He opened the cover to the brittle spell pages, clipped into the book. “Just three, in fact. One cures corn leaf blight. The other two, I’m not sure.”

She folded her arms. “A corn leaf blight cure? What’s the point of that?”

Tobias looked at her askance. “Stop people from starving. It just doesn’t help us.”

She pulled at the collar of her T-shirt, trying to loosen the tight neck. “
I’m
starving, if you count what they’re doing to us here.”

Alan leaned forward. “But there’s some other interesting information in the rest of the book.”

“Like what?” She pulled the book from Tobias, paging past the spells.

“It mostly amounts to one thing.” Alan leaned back on his palms. “The Ranulfs were terrible people. Exhibit A.” He pointed to a diary entry. “Pearl describes a failed slave escape from the early 18
th
century, some of the Ranulf slaves among them. The captured slaves were hanged, drawn and quartered, right here in Virginia. Pearl approved heartily.”

“Christ,” said Fiona. She flipped back to the early pages to find a hand-drawn family tree spanning dozens of pages. “How far back does the family history go?”

Alan stared at the river. “Very far. All the way to the Norman invasion, when the Randwolfe family arrived in England
. In the 17
th
century, King James sent them here to ensure that witchcraft didn’t take hold in the New World. The Ranulfs still want to establish a monarchy, led by the Brotherhood. They’re playing the long game. And they’re awfully fond of slavery.”

 
Tobias squinted as a ray of sunlight pierced the trees. “Perhaps, but they were scared of their slaves.”

 
“True. There was a big revolt in 1775 that had them totally panicked. The Ranulfs were convinced the slaves knew magic.”

Fiona turned another handwritten page. “There was a slave revolt in 1775? That’s right when the American Revolution started.”
 

Alan ran his hand along soft green moss on the tree trunk. “Not only the same year, but the same week of April. It was all related, but the Ranulfs were outraged. Here they were, trying to fight for liberty, and their slaves were getting ideas about freedom.”
 

“So what happened?” asked Fiona.

Alan grimaced. “It didn’t work out for most of them. Pearl’s only lament was that they weren’t burned to death or broken on the Catherine wheel like they were in New York. At later points, little rebellions worked out better, and the escaped slaves formed the Underground Railroad.”

She brushed a curl out of her eyes. The heat felt oppressive today. “So do you think it’s true? The slaves knew magic?”
 

Tobias plucked a leaf from the vines that wound around the trunk. “She talks about something called John the Conquerer. It was a plant with magical properties. The Ranulfs suspected that their slaves used it to torment them at night. With the plant’s power, they could move around quickly and undetected. Over time, some used it to organize escape routes to Canada.”
 

Fiona turned the page. Pearl had drawn a flowering plant with bell-shaped blossoms.
 

“The Ranulfs started to punish the slaves with increasingly severe beatings,” Tobias continued. “Over time, the slaves used the Conquerer to organize, get supplies together. Some figured out how to escape in the night.”

Under a sketched plant leaf, Pearl had scrawled
A witch’s feast.
Fiona traced her finger over the curling leaves and petals. “Do you think John the Conquerer still grows around here?”

Alan shrugged. “It’s possible, but Pearl did everything she could to get rid of it. When she caught a black farmer named Isaac selling it in 1892, she told the police he’d broken into her house. It was her little way of combating witchcraft. He was beaten and hanged by a mob.” He scratched his neck. “Not far from here.”

Fiona turned another page and gasped. Glued to the black pages were sepia postcards, but instead of depicting scenic views or art, they were photographs of people murdered by mobs: burned men contorted on pavement, others hanging in nooses from trees or streetlights, or lying lifeless on the ground. There were a few women in bloodied and torn dresses, dangling from trees, and a victim burning on a pyre surrounded by men in suits and women in floral blouses. The bystanders grinned at the cameras, like they were at a parade. “What
is
this? Some kind of Purgator thing?”

Alan shook his head. “An American thing. Lynching postcards were popular a hundred years ago.”

Her stomach turned. “What kind of psychopath would want a lynching postcard? This is horrible.” She flipped to the next page. In one of the crowds, a woman in a headscarf stared at the camera. Behind her a young man hung from a tree, his face beaten beyond recognition. Fiona’s eyes lingered on the woman—her sunken eyes and pale skin. Unlike the other cheerful idiots, she didn’t seem to be having any fun.
 

“The cellar they mentioned,” Alan mused. “That could be the institution. I bet it’s through the crypt door. And that’s where Mariana’s being kept.”

“We can at least try out the two spells,” said Tobias. “They might do something for us.”

The shadows lengthened as the sun lowered over the river. They’d need to return to their rooms soon for bedroom checks.

Fiona scanned the postcards again. In one, a crowd leered at the camera, this time surrounding a charred body chained to a tree. Among the gawkers was the woman with that haunted face again, her hair covered in a scarf. There was something familiar about her.

“I say we try the spells tomorrow,” said Alan. “Mrs. Ranulf is on high alert for witchcraft now. But tomorrow everyone will be too distracted with party preparations to notice what we’re up to. Mr. Ranulf is coming back, and Munroe will be getting herself ready for her hot date with Tobias.”
 

“Guys.” Fiona flipped to more gruesome postcards, her skin prickling into goose bumps. Again she’d found the doleful woman, her sad eyes open wide. “The same person is in all these photos.”

“What?” Alan peered over her shoulder.

It wasn’t just the photos. Fiona had seen her face before.
The hollow eyes, the anguished twist of her mouth. A chill ran up her spine.
“Guys—it’s the crypt monster.”

“No way,” Alan whispered.

In the distance, Munroe’s voice called out, “Tobias?”

“The Fury?” Tobias pulled the book toward him. “That’s what Mrs. Ranulf called her. A Fury.”

Fiona’s arm brushed against his. “What
is
a Fury?”
Finally, we’re getting somewhere.
 

“Tobias?” Munroe was drawing closer though the trees.

 
He shoved the book back into Alan’s bag, handing it back to his friend. “They’re spirits of vengeance, drawn to terrible injustices. Whatever the Purgators are using her for, Pearl must have lured her here with that lynching she orchestrated. Then they captured her.”

Munroe’s footfalls crunched over fallen leaves and twigs.

“But what are they doing with a Fury?” whispered Fiona.

Before Tobias could answer, Munroe appeared at the edge of the grove, her arms crossed over her chest. Her hair was a deep russet in the setting sun, cascading over her green sundress. “What are you guys
doing
here? We’re supposed to be finishing our costumes for the party.” She glared at Fiona. “You wouldn’t want people thinking you were sneaking around, would you? It’s not exactly a good time to raise suspicions.”

Two things woke Jack from his sleep: the buzzing of a mosquito in his ear, and a tall blade of grass tickling his cheek.
Am I sleeping in a park?
He swatted at the bug, rolling over and shielding his eyes from the harsh glare of the sun. He still gripped the sapling in one hand. He must have slept on it. Nearby, a crow called out over the gentle sounds of waves lapping at a shore.
 

His muscles aching, he sat up to look around. He was on the bank of the James, and its cool waters flowed just feet from his resting spot. Through the felled trees and shrubs along the bank, he could see the river’s wide expanse, maybe two hundred feet across. He glanced in the other direction, at a sprawling brick mansion on a hill. The house stood three stories high, crowned with white windows.
Percy Plantation.
 

He grabbed his bag and stood, brushing the grass and dirt off his black clothes.
 

Papillon delivered the welcome news that Fiona was nearby—very close, in fact. But he couldn’t see her until he’d regained control of his appetite. Otherwise he risked picking her bones clean, and he’d never be able to forgive himself for that.
 

He trudged up the hill, rubbing at a cramped muscle in the back of his neck. He didn’t relish the idea of speaking to George. “The Earl,” he styled himself, though it wasn’t an official title. His older brother
had
been an earl during his natural lifetime. In fact, as one of the wealthiest members of the Elizabethan court, he’d been known as “the Wizard Earl”
for his vast collection of Angelic texts. Little brother George argued that the title should have passed to him after a great-grandnephew had died without an heir. He’d stolen the wizard’s texts for himself, and he might be the greatest philosopher alive today.

 
The only problem was that George was insane. He’d never recovered from his years in Jamestown, still haunted by his time as governor of the troubled colony. It was over four hundred years ago, and the man was still traumatized. Then again, Jack reminded himself, George was the reason that he was alive at all. He’d sought out the Earl hundreds of years ago to learn the secrets of immortality.

He strolled up to the large white door—the river entrance—and rang the front doorbell. George had more than enough money for servants, though they never stayed around long. Jack was never sure if they quit, or if he ate them.
 

Songbirds trilled from a nearby ash tree, and Jack smoothed his rumpled clothes. Hunger speared his gut, and he was desperate for fresh meat to replenish himself.
 

After a long wait, George pulled open the door. A slight man with a large nose, he scrunched up his small eyes whenever he encountered sunlight. Since he never left his house, it seemed to blind him. He smiled, exposing stubby white teeth. “Jack. Please come in. The scrying mirror told me you’d be coming, of course,” he guffawed.