A man in a stained gray suit stands at the base of the steps with a lit torch held high. The sight of it—the greasy coil of smoke, the aged iron—makes Agnes feel unmoored in time. As if she’s drifted out of the world of trolleys and elections and into some murkier era of castles and knights and midnight bonfires.
Her feet are numb on the steps. The stake nestles between the winged bones of her back. A pair of men wrap cold chains around their waists, pinching tight, while another unlocks their bridles and shackles, leaving only their collars. Witches always went to God with their tongues free to repent and their hands free to pray. Agnes doesn’t intend to do either.
It seems to her as she stands beside her sisters that it was always going to end like this: the three of them back-to-back, besieged on all sides. The wayward sisters, burned and bound. It seems to her it has happened this way before and will happen again, until there are no witches left to burn or no men left to burn them.
The crowd blurs and sways before her. She catches ripples of motion—the scarlet flash of August’s scarf as he shoulders through the tight-pressed watchers, circling the scaffold, the dark flutter of Cleo’s skirts as she edges closer—but then everything is obscured by a man in a suit the color of old honeysuckle.
Gideon Hill’s shadow oozes two steps behind him, lazy and full-bellied. It stretches its arms high and spills over the platform’s edge, down into the crowd, twisting around ankles and slinking up skirts. His dog trembles beside him, eyes huge in its thin skull.
“Last chance for a confession, ladies.” He addresses all three of them but his eyes linger on Juniper.
None of them answer. Agnes can’t sense her sisters through the cold iron around her throat, but she feels the wound-tight tension in the press of their shoulders against hers.
Hill steps closer to Juniper and says quietly, “Repent. Forgiveness is still possible.” His voice is urgent, almost desperate.
Juniper smiles at him. “No,” she says. “It isn’t.”
His jaw tightens. He turns away in a swirl of cream cloak. His dog lingers a step behind him, looking mournfully at the Eastwoods, until Juniper rasps, “S’alright, girl. Just a little longer.” It creeps after its master.
Agnes feels the dull thud of boots and paws down the scaffold steps, the sawblade buzz of the crowd. Stars appear overhead, dim and distant through the blaze of torchlight.
Hill takes his place in the balcony across from them. He tucks Miss Wiggin’s hand beneath his arm and she gazes up at him with such vacuous rapture that Agnes’s stomach turns. At least their daddy never forced them to love him; at least he never took their selves or souls away. She wonders if Grace hates him, somewhere deep down in her china-doll body.
Hill surveys the gathered citizens, face severe and mournful. Agnes thinks he might make another speech about morality and Satan and modernity, but he doesn’t. Instead he lets his gaze rest on the torchbearer below him. He nods once and a hideous hush falls over the square.
The torch hisses and snaps. A baby wails somewhere in the crowd. Agnes’s thoughts run in dizzy circles—a wise woman keeps her burning on the inside—sorry, Mags—hurry, August—
Bella’s voice comes soft and calm from the other side of the stake, as if she is sitting behind a collections desk rather than staked in the city square. “I translated that inscription, by the way. The one on the door: Maleficae quondam, maleficaeque futurae.” She ignores Juniper’s softly muttered, Jesus, Bell. “In English it’s ‘witches once and witches in the future.’”
“And what does that mean?” Agnes asks.
“I think it means witches will return, one day, no matter how many of us they burn.” Agnes can hear the smile in Bella’s voice, sharp and secret. “I think it means—us. All of us.”
Then the torch touches the pyre and flames lick like tiger claws into the sky, and the Eastwood sisters are burning.
Agnes Amaranth has burned once before. She’s familiar with the glass-shard sting of smoke in her eyes, the way the heat rolls up her body in waves, lifting her hair from her shoulders and singeing the ends. The way her own tears whisper into steam on her cheeks.
The first time, Agnes saved herself. She poured a circle of creek-water around her sisters and said the words and the heat vanished. She and her sisters stood perfectly still as the fire licked and twined around them, as if it was a newly tamed wolf that might still bite.
This time it’s August Lee who saves them. She sees his face through the honeyed glaze of the flames: eyes fixed, lips moving, arm still tight around Eve. The silver flask lies dripping on the cobbles, its contents scattered in a wide circle around the scaffold.
Agnes can see the shine of sweat slicking August’s forehead and the tense set of his shoulders, as if he’s braced beneath some immense weight. All witching takes is will, really, and he will not let her burn.
The scaffold hisses and pops beneath her feet and the flames snap high into the night, but they don’t seem to touch her, as if her skin is coated in armor made of running water. Only her collar feels hot, warming at the presence of magic. It throbs against her throat.
The crowd howls and moans and cheers around August, their cheeks flushed and their eyes glowing red. Their shadows have merged into a single creature behind them, hydra-headed and many-limbed, exultant. Hill looks down on them with no expression at all, as if they are nothing to him but hollow puppets.
When he looks back up at the Eastwoods there are flames dancing red in his eyes, perhaps a trace of grief—but also vast relief, that this threat to his endless, weary life is finally laid to rest.
But soon his
