Her plan was to find their bedrooms and en suite bathrooms (the Jessup mansion looked like it would have a lot of en suites) and search through combs, brushes, towels, clothing, pillowcases… whatever might have strands of hair clinging to it.
And once she had the hair samples, she could go back to her house with her witches and conduct a series of group scrying spells, to uncover if any of the Jessup men had written the shadow messages.
Div had left Mira and Aysha to keep an eye on the party and make sure no one followed her. Mira was doing a good job fussing and fawning over Colter. Aysha was doing as well as she could, not losing her cool at all the anti-witch talk.
And Hunter. He was going to be an easy one. He was clearly attracted to her, which she would use to her advantage, just as she always did with people who were drawn to her that way.
There was a room to the right; soft classical music drifted from it. Div poked her head through the doorway. Floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books, an enormous antique desk… it appeared to be a study or a library. The music was coming from an old-fashioned-looking radio, but the room was unoccupied.
No, not a bedroom or bathroom. Move on.
Except… an odd sight caught Div’s eye. Behind the desk, a piece of red velvet the size of a small tablecloth hung on the wall. It wasn’t a curtain, and it looked out of place. Was it covering something? Curious, she walked up to it and pulled up a corner to peer behind it.
Behind the red velvet drape was a large board made of cork. Div lifted the cover higher. Dozens of items were pinned to it with silver pushpins—newspaper clippings, photographs, handwritten notes, sticky flags. Long pieces of red string connected some of the items to others, creating a bizarre sort of constellation.
What the hex?
She’d seen a board like this before. On a detective show on TV. It was called a “murder board,” and it was a technique the detectives used to hunt down a murderer.
Were the Jessups hunting down a murderer?
Div leaned forward to study the items on the board. Several of the photographs were faded and sepia-toned, half-torn or crinkled at the edges. Some showed a man with a hawklike nose, bushy beard, mustache, and hair, and small, piercing eyes that radiated coldness even in the mottled, imperfect images.
She then turned her attention to the newspaper clippings. The articles dated all the way back to the 1870s, 1880s. One headline blared: Famed Witch-Hunter Disappears.
Witch-hunter?
Had the Jessups put together a murder board so they could hunt down a witch-hunter? But why? Wouldn’t witch hunters and the Antima be on the same side, basically? Also, the person would have died long ago.
“Whatcha doing?”
Alarmed, Div let the drape fall to cover the board. She turned around, already preparing to cast a memory-erase spell.
A young girl stood in the doorway. Maybe ten or eleven, she wore black jeans and a black T-shirt with a rhinestone heart on it. Her long blond hair had green and orange streaks. She didn’t seem to be suspicious of Div; in fact, she was smiling in a friendly way.
Div tried to remember what Mira had told her about Colter’s family. She’d mentioned something about twins.…
“You must be Colter and Hunter’s sister?” Div said pleasantly as she mentally debated—memory-erase spell or no memory-erase spell?
“I’m Cassie.”
“Hey, Cassie. I’m Div. I was trying to find a quiet place to make a call, but I don’t seem to have any bars. Also, where is your bathroom?”
“Which one? We have like three of them down here, for guests, and we have four more upstairs, for the family.”
Div registered this. So Colter’s, Hunter’s, and Mr. Jessup’s bathrooms were upstairs. Also, Cassie seemed oblivious to Div’s snooping. No memory-erase spell.
“Wow, that’s a lot of bathrooms!”
“Yeah. I still have to share one with my sister, Caitlin, which is so not fair. Do you have your own bathroom?”
“I do. Hey, maybe you could take over one of the downstairs bathrooms and move all your makeup and stuff in there?”
Cassie considered this. “Oh, yeah, that’s a good idea!”
“Right?”
“’K, I have to go now because I told my friend Sienna I’d be on Roblox like an hour ago. We’re in the middle of a zombies-in-the-desert campaign.”
“Cool. It was nice meeting you. By the way, I like your hair.”
“What? Oh, thanks. I wish it had more colors, though, like pink and blue and purple. Then it would be more rainbow.”
Cassie touched the back of her head as she left the room. As she did so, pink and blue and purple strands suddenly appeared, then disappeared just as quickly.
Div clutched at her throat, stifling her shock. She hadn’t done that, had she? No, she definitely hadn’t.
So Cassie Jessup was a witch? And if so, did she know that? Did her family know, too? Except that her family—at least, the men in her family—hated witches…
She glanced at her phone; the party was halfway over. She needed to get upstairs and get those hair samples. She also needed to find out more about Cassie and about the Jessup family’s fascination with witch-hunters (or with one particular witch-hunter, the guy in those long-ago newspaper articles).
Before heading upstairs, she decided to take a quick photo of the murder board (or whatever the hex it was). She turned, lifted the red velvet drape, and held up her phone…
… and in that same moment, a hand covered her mouth, smothering her. Div tried to scream, but the person’s grip was too strong. Panicked, she tried to wrench away… except that the hand was holding a silky cloth, and the cloth smelled like chemicals. Suddenly, her muscles felt like jelly. Her brain felt like jelly. She barely registered her phone falling noiselessly onto the soft
