“I’m certain,” Anne said, placing her gloved fingers over Beatrix’s and giving them a reassuring squeeze. “I’m the Diviner now. There’s nothing waiting beyond those doors that I won’t be able to handle. And besides, I need you two to do something for me while I’m speaking with the Crowleys.”
“What’s that?” Violet asked, curious and eager to avoid waiting quietly outside of the house for Anne to return.
“You see that building over there?” Anne asked as she turned them around to face the other side of the street.
They were too far away to see what rested inside, but even across the road, Anne could tell that time had not been kind to the poor building. There had obviously been a shop on the first floor at some point, but the gilded letters painted along the sign that hung above the large windows were chipped away, leaving behind an indecipherable etching of dull lines and curves. And even though a gas lamp sat nearby, everything seemed consumed by shadows, as if the storefront had resigned itself to a life in the darkness decades ago.
“I think that’s where Philip used to live,” Anne continued. “Why don’t you try to learn more about it?”
“Of course,” Violet said as she rubbed her hands together, clearly enjoying the promise of a challenge. She was already stepping toward the shadowy structure, eager to uncover its secrets. “Come on, Bee.”
Before her sister could protest, Violet grabbed her by the arm and started pulling her away. Beatrix had only just enough time to cast a hesitant expression in Anne’s direction before she disappeared from her side, caught by Violet’s unrelenting grip.
Anne watched her sisters cross the street and then turned back to the marble monstrosity, wondering what awaited her inside.
When she reached the very top of the stoop, Anne was surprised to find that the front door was entirely black. From the street, she’d thought it was merely obscured by shadows, but Anne could see now that the surface had been painted to create that effect.
She lifted her hand to grasp the brass knocker that was fixed at its center, but before her gloved fingers could touch the smooth metal, an odd sensation made her pause and reach for the handle instead.
At first, she thought it had to do with the fact that the knocker was coated in frost and looked too cold to touch. But then she became aware of a barely perceptible warmth that wrapped around the finger where Mr. Crowley’s ring rested and realized her hand was being pulled forward of its own accord, like a magnet that had just found its mate.
And as soon as she heard the muffled click of the ring hitting metal through the cloth of her glove, the door creaked open.
Though Anne wasn’t in the habit of waltzing into a witch’s home unannounced, the stillness that greeted her when she stepped over the threshold kept her from calling out.
The entire entryway smelled of chrysanthemums and faded fabric, like the fragrance that fills the room when a box that’s held a wedding dress is opened for the first time in decades. It wasn’t an unpleasant aroma, but it reminded Anne of when a customer seemed to be holding on to a memory too tightly, as if they feared the whole of it might crack if they forgot the exact color and texture of the moment.
Everything was so silent that Anne swore she could hear the beat of her heart echoing against the smooth, dark stone beneath her feet.
Before she could wonder what to do next, a lone flame fluttered to life in the hallway, daring Anne to walk forward. She moved toward it, and another candle a few feet from the first flickered as well, encouraging her to follow the trail that was unfurling in front of her.
Anne took another step and then another, the row of candlewicks catching and growing brighter as she moved closer to a room at the very end of the hall.
When she was only a hair’s breadth away from the threshold, Anne sensed a strange noise slipping between the cracks of the door. It sounded like a thousand whispering voices struggling to come together to the same beat of a metronome. The ringon Anne’s hand began to vibrate then, and once more, she felt herself reaching for the knob, pulled to it by something beyond her control.
But as the door creaked open and Anne saw what rested within, she forced her feet to stay rooted to the ground, no matter how much Mr. Crowley’s ring begged to be brought inside.
The walls were covered from the baseboards to the ceiling with clocks of so many shapes and sizes that Anne doubted she’d be able to say for certain how many there were, even if she stood in the center of the room all evening and tried to count them. Some looked as if they could be pocket watches while others were so large that the walls shook with the force of the pendulums that swayed back and forth beneath their faces.
But their hands ticked at exactly the same moment, filling the space with a steadyclick-click-clickthat seemed to tug at her thoughts and pull them deeper into the room.
And as the beat grew stronger, so did the whispers.
In the hallway, they’d just been the barest echo beneath the ticking of the clocks, but now they were becoming louder. Anne knew that in a moment the texture of their words would finally take shape, coming together to tell her something that felt urgent, the syllables taking on the texture of desperation and longing.
Anne was torn between a sensation in the back of her mind that insisted now was the time to turn away and a desire to step into the room, where she could better hear what promised to be shared.
But before she could decide which impulse to follow, Anne felt a hand roughly grab her by the shoulder and pull her back into the hallway.
“What in Hecate’s name do you think you’re doing?” an icy voice demanded, nearly lost beneath the sound of the door being thrown shut.
Resisting the urge to scream, Anne whirled around and realized with some relief that she hadn’t come facetoface with a ghost. No, as she turned her chin upward, Anne took in the sight of a perfectly real man with shockingly blond hair who looked so angry that she worried his cutting glare might bore a hole straight through her chest.
“The house let me in,” Anne said defensively, taking a step back to put her hands on her hips. The brash disapproval that laced the man’s tone instantly made her want to straighten her spine and stand as tall as she possibly could. “So you could say that I’ve already been invited inside.”
The stranger’s brows rose in surprise at that, and he whirled around as if waiting for the walls to tell him that she was lying. As he turned back to face her, Anne realized with a start that the man’s hair wasn’t blond at all but perfectly white. She hadn’t noticed at first because he couldn’t have been more than a few years older than herself, much too young for his hair to settle into that stark color naturally. But then Anne remembered that the type of magic used by necromancers came at a cost: it turned a strand of hair white every time they were able to contact a spirit and give them the voice they needed to speak to the living.
And Anne couldn’t see a single lock of hair on this man’s head that wasn’t a shocking shade of white. She was facing a very powerful witch indeed.
