Juniper grins at the bodies now sleeping soft and well in their cots, leaning heavily on her spindly cane. She can already hear the headlines shouted by news-boys tomorrow (WITCHCRAFT WORKS MIRACLES! FEVERS CURED!).
She limps into the night with her Sisters at her side.
SIGNS OF WITCHCRAFT AT
CHARITY; FEVER WORSENS
July 12th, 1893, The New Salem Post
Miss Verity Kendrick-Johnson, a spokesperson for St. Charity Hospital, has confirmed to The Post that the patients of the first floor ward were found with definitive signs of witchcraft about their persons, and denied that any member of their staff would have participated in such devilry.
Miss Kendrick-Johnson further advises people seeking miracles to look elsewhere; none of the bewitched patients have shown the slightest signs of improvement. Their condition may in fact have worsened, and several of the weakest patients have since passed away. “Put your faith in science and the study of man,” recommends Kendrick-Johnson. “Not stardust and sin.”
ARREST MADE IN CONNECTION WITH THE PORTER CASE
July 6th, 1893, The Times of Salem
. . . the police have taken Miss Claudia Porter into custody in connection to the disappearance of her husband, Mr. Grayson Porter. Mr. Porter, a respected member of the Rotary Club and benefactor to this very publication, has been missing since the 25th of June. “Check the stockyards,” Miss Porter reportedly advised her arresting officers, cackling, “It takes a pig to find one.”
NEW LEADERSHIP NEEDED
July 15th, 1893, a letter to the editor of The Post
In light of the daily headlines about malfeasance and witchcraft running loose—in light of Mayor Worthington’s failure to produce even a single one of the Eastwoods—it seems clear to this letter writer that the city of New Salem is in need of new leadership. I call upon the Mayor to step down from his post, that we might elect a brighter light against our present darkness.
Sincerely,
Bartholomew Webb
Hush little baby, don’t say a word,
Mother will call you by mockingbird.
A spell to send a message, requiring a mockingbird pinion & a great need
Over the following weeks Agnes doesn’t think of Mr. Lee at all. She doesn’t look hopefully down the alley at the end of every shift; she doesn’t feel anything in particular when Mr. Malton flips the page of his calendar to the correct month, or let her eyes linger overlong on the capital lettering at the top (AUGUST). The trick to being nothing is to want nothing.
The shift bell rings. Agnes lines up with the other girls, treasuring the way Mr. Malton’s eyes skip right past her sewer-colored hair and scarred-up face. They fall instead on the girl behind her in line.
The girl started just a few days ago. She’s nothing, too, but not the right kind. She’s young and hungry-looking, bones raw beneath cream-colored skin. Agnes can practically smell the desperation rolling off her.
So can Mr. Malton. “You. Ona.” He picks her from the line like a housewife choosing a chicken at the market. “Come back to my office for a moment.”
Mr. Malton saunters to the back of the mill, keys jangling on his hip, and Agnes stops in the doorway, jaw gritted, willing Ona not to follow him.
Ona’s eyes cross hers once, flint-black, and then she trails after him like a lamb behind the butcher.
Agnes looks away. It isn’t hard; she’s had years of practice. She simply turns her head aside and walks on, with Mama Mags’s voice in her ears: Every woman draws a circle around her heart.
She can’t seem to make herself step out into the alley. She’s caught on the threshold, too stupid to leave, not quite stupid enough to turn back. Instead of Mags’s voice she hears her sister’s: Don’t leave me. She thinks of Mr. Lee, in love with a woman who won’t look away.
Agnes turns around. Maybe because there are witch-ways burning in her pockets, or because her own daughter might grow up to look a little like Ona. Or because she is a damn fool.
Mr. Malton’s office door is locked. Agnes whispers to it and the latch rusts to nothing in her hand.
The room smells of shoe polish and alcohol. Ona is perched on the meanest edge of her seat, shoulders set, her eyes obsidian. Malton looms over her, one hand on his desk, the other on the back of her chair.
He looks up at the squeal of hinges, the faint patter of rust on the floor. His lip curls at the sight of Agnes with her pox scars and her swollen belly.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Leave,” Agnes tells the girl in the chair. She can see from the resentful flick of Ona’s eyes that she’s resigned to doing what she has to, and that she doesn’t care to have it witnessed. “Now, girl,” Agnes growls, and Ona slips around her and vanishes into the mill, a rawboned shadow.
Malton is staring, slack-jawed. He turns to Agnes with an ugly gleam growing in his eyes, a lust that has nothing to do with want. “Care to explain yourself?”
Agnes takes a twist of her hair between her fingers and hisses the words. The false color melts away, her pox scars fade, and she stands before him wearing her true face once more. “Good afternoon, Mr. Malton.”
He jerks so violently he falls backward into the chair. Agnes thinks how quickly she might grow used to men flinching rather than flirting.
Malton gapes at her, fishlike, before gasping, “Begone, witch!” and fumbling for the silver cross beneath his shirt.
Agnes tuts at him. “Pretty sure that only works on vampires.” She leans closer, enjoying the way he presses himself against the office wall, as if she has a deadly nimbus around her body. “If you scream, I swear they’ll find a pig wearing your suit when they come running.”
She doesn’t technically have the ways to work the spell, but it hardly matters. She can tell from the panicked bulge of his
