“We must discover who this ring belongs to,” Anne said, her eyes fixed on Vincent’s face. “As soon as we possibly can, before things become so tangled that other witches cannot complete their own Tasks. To do that, I need your family’s help.”
Anne waited for Vincent to react, but she was met only with silence that seemed so charged she could feel it brush against her skin.
And then Vincent abruptly turned his back on her and began to march away, the candles flashing behind him as his footsteps echoed against the walls.
“I must ask you to leave, Miss Quigley,” Vincent announced once he reached the front door.
“I beg your pardon?” Anne said, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the cavernous hallway.
“You won’t receive any help here,” Vincent replied, his words as still and unmoving as a pair of dates etched on a tombstone.
“But it’s in your best interest to see the Task brought to a close,” Anne insisted as she strode toward Vincent, anger seeping through the rapidly fracturing cracks of her composure. The irritation that had been simmering just beneath the surface was so potent now that if she touched a metal doorknob with her bare hand, sparks would have snapped from her fingertips. “If it remains unfinished, it will mean no end of trouble for you and your family.”
Vincent’s shoulders stiffened at that, as if he’d already been aware of the burden that the Crowleys would shoulder when the odd magical unravelings were linked back to them.
But the cutting glint in his eye only grew sharper as he opened the front door and let in the brutal whip of the wind. It grazed Anne’s cheek, but the bite of Vincent’s next words felt harsher than the unrelenting grasp of winter.
“You must leave,” he said, any promise of an explanation fading faster than an ember tossed into the snow.
Anne knew that she should beg him to reconsider, to apologize for her tone and ask that they sit down to start the whole conversation anew. To somehow undo this disastrous first impression as one does when they’ve skipped a knot in theirknitting and pull back the yarn so that they can replace the mess with neat, even rows.
But something about Vincent made Anne want to push herself to the limit, to say things that she’d never dared utter before.
“You will change your mind,” she said instead, so firmly that the picture frames started to rattle on the walls. “And when you do, you can find me at the Crescent Moon.”
If Anne had lingered for just a moment longer at the threshold, she might have noticed how her words brushed against the whispers that seeped out from the cracks of the door at the end of the hall, saturating the foyer with the sound of longing and unmet intentions waiting for a chance to finally be fulfilled.
CHAPTER 12
A Lighthouse
Suggests that light will be found in the darkness.
While Anne was being pulled toward the ticking of a clock in the Crowleys’ home, Beatrix was standing in front of the shop across the street, her face pressed against the cold glass as she attempted to see what rested inside.
The evening shadows had stretched out their tendrils, and the light of the gas lamps reflected against the shop windows in a way that somehow made it more difficult to determine what was on the other side of the glass.
“I’m not sure we’re going to be able to find anything,” Beatrix sighed as she turned toward Violet, who had been standing farther back on the sidewalk so that she could see the faded gold lettering above the shop.
“The windows are all boarded up from the inside,” Violet murmured, as if she hadn’t heard Beatrix at all.
“Well, then I’m not sure how much we can do,” Beatrix said. “Not when the hour is so late and we can’t see anything through the windows.”
She threw her hands down in defeat then, the tips of her gloved fingers grazing the glass, just enough to leave a streaky impression against the frost.
But before her hands could lose touch with the window, one of the boards clattered to the floor of the shop.
“What did you do?” Violet asked as Beatrix slowly leaned forward to peer through the crack left by the fallen board.
“Nothing,” she insisted. “It must have been loose already.”
Once more, Beatrix peeked through the glass, placing her hands on either side of her face to block out the reflections cast by the gas lamps.
At first, it was difficult to make out what rested in the shadows, but after a few moments, those odd stacks and shelves started to take shape.
“It’s a bookshop,” Beatrix gasped, transfixed by the sight.
“A very dusty one at that,” Violet remarked with a sniff, as if the mere sight of what rested inside made her want to sneeze.
