DON’T MISS THE FIRST BOOK IN
THE CAHILL WITCH CHRONICLES
BORN WICKED
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THE CAHILL WITCH CHRONICLES
STAR
CURSED
JESSICA SPOTSWOOD
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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G. P. Putnam’s Sons • An imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group.
Published by The Penguin Group.
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, USA.
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Copyright © 2013 by Jessica Spotswood.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission in writing from the publisher, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.
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Published simultaneously in Canada.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-101-61648-2
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To my brilliant husband, Steve, who challenges me to be better but loves me as I am.
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Contents
Also by Jessica Spotswood
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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CHAPTER
1
I FEEL SUCH A FRAUD.
I stand with Alice Auclair and Mei Zhang in a narrow tenement hallway that stinks of boiled beef and cabbage. We are all dressed alike: black woolen cloaks covering stiff black bombazine dresses, heeled black boots peeping out beneath floor-length skirts, hair pulled back simply and neatly. This is the uniform of the Sisterhood, and while none of us are full members yet, we are on a Sisterly mission of charity. We carry baskets of bread baked in the convent kitchen and vegetables from the convent cellar. We keep our eyes low, our voices quiet.
No one must ever suspect us for what we really are.
Alice knocks. Fine onyx earbobs swing from her seashell ears. Even on a mission to feed the poor, she finds a way to flaunt her family’s status. Someday her pride will be her undoing.
I half relish the thought.
Mrs. Anderson opens the door. She’s a widow of twenty-three with blond hair a shade lighter than my own and a perpetually harried expression. She ushers us inside, her hands fluttering like pale moths in the November gloom. “Sisters, thank you so much for coming.”
“There’s no need to thank us. Helping the less fortunate is part of our mission,” Alice says, grimacing at the cramped two-room flat.
“I’m grateful.” Mrs. Anderson presses my hand between her icy palms. She still wears her gold wedding band, though her husband has been dead three months now. “My Frank was a good provider. We always made ends meet. I don’t like to depend on charity.”
“Of course not.” I give her an uneven smile as I pull away. In the face of our deception, her gratitude makes me squirm.
“You’ve had hard luck. You’ll be back on your feet soon,” Mei assures her. The fever that tore through the p> city in August claimed Mr. Anderson and their eldest boy, leaving Mrs. Anderson to fend for the two surviving children.
“It’s not an easy thing, to be a woman alone in the world. I’d take on more hours at the shop if I could.” Mrs. Anderson slides the jug of milk into the icebox. “But it gets dark so early now, I don’t like to walk home alone.”
“It isn’t safe for a woman to be out at night.” Mei is stocky and short; she has to stand on tiptoe to put a jar of apple butter on the shelf next to the canned vegetables.
“So many foreigners in this part of the city. Most of them can’t even speak proper English.” Alice’s hood falls back, revealing golden hair that waves prettily away from her pale forehead. Looking at her, you’d never guess what a harpy she is. “Who knows what kind of people they are?”
Mei flushes. Her parents immigrated from Indo-China before she was born, but they still speak Chinese at home. She’s the only Chinese girl at the convent and conscious of it. I daresay Alice knows that; she has a talent for poking at people’s bruises.
The old Cate Cahill would have taken Alice to task, but Sister Catherine only helps Mei unpack sweet potatoes and butternut squash onto the scratched wooden table. Sisters do not have the luxury of losing their tempers—at least not outside the convent walls. In public, we must be models of ladylike decorum.
I loathe these visits.
It’s not that I lack compassion for the poor. I have plenty of compassion. I just can’t help wondering how they would feel about us if they knew the truth.
The Sisters pose as an order of women devoting their lives to charitable service for the Lord. We deliver food to the poor and nurse the sick. That is the truth—but it’s also true that we are witches, all of us, hiding in plain sight. If people learned what we really are, their gratitude would turn to fear. They would think us sinful, wanton, and dangerous, and they would have us locked up in the madhouse—or worse.
It’s not their fault. That’s what the Brothers preach at church every Sunday. Few would risk going against them, and these poor people already have less than most.
No matter how kind Mrs. Anderson may seem, she’d give us up. She’d have to, in order to protect her children. They all would.
“Sister Cath’rine! You’re back!” A small boy runs out of the bedroom, his hands full of jacks, his mouth smeared with the blackberry jam we brought last week from Sister Sophia’s cellar. Alice shies away from his sticky fingers.
“Good day, Henry.” This is my third visit to the Andersons’ flat, and Henry and I have become fast friends. He’s lonely, I think. Now that his mother goes out to work, he a
nd his baby sister are left with an elderly neighbor all day. It can’t be much fun for him.
“Henry, leave Sister Catherine alone,” his mother scolds.
“It’s all right. He’s not bothering me.” I take the final item—a jar of juicy red tomatoes, seeds floating in the pulp—from my basket. As I kneel, my eyes fall past Henry to the pallets stuffed with straw ticking. The first time we came, they had a nice mahogany sleigh bed, a matching trundle for Henry, and an armoire, but Lavinia’s had to sell them. Now her pretty blue wedding quilt is tucked neatly over her pallet and their clothes are stacked in cardboard boxes.
Henry sits, scattering jacks across the floor and giving me a gap-toothed grin. I’m out of practice, but I was a champion at jacks in my day. A memory flashes through me: Paul McLeod squatting across from me on the cobblestone walk in my garden, the hot summer sun beating down, the smell of freshly cut grass all around us.
Once upon a time, memories of my childhood friend would have made me smile—but notterle—bu anymore. I treated Paul poorly, and I’ll never be able to apologize.
He’s not even the one I hurt most. The thoughts hammer at me, relentless.
“I been practicing,” Henry announces, tugging at the grimy white shirtsleeves that end halfway up his skinny forearms. “Got up to ninesies yesterday. Bet I can beat you now.”
“We’ll see about that.” I settle across from him while Alice and Mei and Mrs. Anderson cram together on the stained, lumpy brown sofa, clasping hands and bowing their heads in prayer. I ought to join them, but my relationship with the Lord is fragile these days. I’m in good health and safe from the Brothers’ meddling eyes, but it’s hard to feel thankful when everyone I love is at home in Chatham and I’m here in New London alone.
I miss my sisters. I miss Finn. Loneliness carves a hollow in my stomach.
Henry and I are up to sevensies when there’s a furious pounding on the door. I freeze at the sound, the red rubber ball bouncing right past my outstretched hands.
The baby stirs in her wooden cradle. Mrs. Anderson leans over her for a moment on the way to the door. “Shhh, Eleni,” she says, and the tenderness in her voice makes me miss my own mother.
Mrs. Anderson opens the door to a nightmare of black cloaks and stern faces. Two Brothers push past her into the flat.
My heart stops. What did we do? How did we give ourselves away?
Alice and Mei are already on their feet. I scramble across the room to join them, and Henry rushes to his mother’s side.
A short, bald Brother with a long face and piercing blue eyes steps forward. “Lavinia Anderson? I am Brother O’Shea of the New London council. This is Brother Helmsley,” he says, indicating an enormous red-bearded man. “We have received a report of impropriety.”
It’s not us, then.
Relief courses through me, followed closely by guilt. Lavinia Anderson is a good woman, a good mother, kind and hardworking. She doesn’t deserve trouble from the Brothers.
Lavinia presses a fist to her mouth, her wedding ring glinting in the fading afternoon light. “I’ve done nothing improper, sir.”
“That will be for us to decide, won’t it?” O’Shea turns to us with a smug, self-important smile. He stands like a bantam rooster with his chest thrown forward, shoulders back, legs spread wide, in the way of a small man trying to seem bigger. I take an immediate dislike to him. “Good day, Sisters. Here to deliver weekly rations?”
“Yes, sir.” Alice bows her head, but not before I see the flash of mutiny in her blue eyes.
“It’s a pity your charity’s been wasted on the undeserving. Poverty is no excuse for wantonness,” Helmsley snarls. “Just lost one husband and already setting her cap for another! It’s scandalous is what it is.”
Mrs. Anderson clutches Henry’s thin shoulder, her face suddenly white.
“Do you deny that you allowed a man to escort you home last night? A man who was no relation to you?” Brother O’Shea asks.
“I do not deny it,” Lavinia says carefully, her voice quavering. “Mr. Alvarez is a customer at the bakery. He was leaving the same time I was and offered to see me home.”
“As a widow, Mrs. Anderson, your behavior must be beyond reproach. You cannot consort with strange men on city streets. Surely you know that.”
I bite my lip, face cast down. What other choice did she have—to walk home alone and risk being robbed or accosted? To hire a carriage with money she cannot spare? To beg her employers for an escort? This problem would never present itself to girls like Alice or me. Before we joined the Sisters, our movements were shadowed by ladies’ maids and governesses. A proper lady rides hiiveady riddden away in a closed carriage, not down in the dust and dirt for anyone to stare at and take liberties with.
But Mrs. Anderson cannot afford a carriage or a maid. She has neither parents nor a husband to look after her. What, precisely, would the Brothers have her do? Stay home and starve?
“I wasn’t consorting. I mourn my husband every day!” Lavinia insists. Her shoulders are thrown back, her chin is up, and she meets O’Shea’s eyes straight on.
“You’re a liar.” O’Shea nods at Helmsley, who slaps her across the face.
I flinch, remembering the way Brother Ishida once struck me. My hand flies to my cheek. The cut from his ring of office is healed now, but I will never forget the indignity of it—and the vicious pleasure on his face.
Lavinia stumbles back against the cradle. The baby lets out a wail.
Henry launches himself at Helmsley’s legs. “Don’t hit my mama!”
He shouldn’t have to watch this. No child should. “Should we take the children into the other room, sir?” I ask O’Shea, who is clearly the brains behind this visit.
“No. Let him see his mother for the slut she is.” O’Shea leans down and grabs Henry’s small shoulders, shaking him. “Stop that. Stop it this instant, do you hear? Your mother is a liar. She betrayed your papa’s memory.”
Henry stops fighting, his brown eyes wide and frightened. “Papa?”
“I haven’t!” Lavinia protests, tears coursing down her face. “I would never!”
“Your neighbor reported seeing you arm in arm with Mr. Alvarez,” Helmsley continues, looming over her. He must be six feet tall.
Lavinia cowers away from him, pressing back against the peeling blue-flowered wallpaper. “I stumbled over a loose brick, and he caught me before I fell. That’s all there was to it, I swear! It won’t happen again. I’ll be home before dark from now on.” But that means giving up several hours of work—and pay—that her little family can scarcely afford.
“A woman’s proper place is in the home, Mrs. Anderson,” O’Shea says. He releases Henry and turns to Helmsley, sneering. “You see, this is what comes from permitting women to take on outside work. Gives them false notions of propriety. Turns their heads from the Lord.”
“Makes them think they can do for themselves just as well as men,” Helmsley agrees.
“Do you think I like going out to work?” Lavinia shrills, and I want to clap a hand over her mouth. Arguing will only make this go worse for her. “I only took this job after my husband died. We can’t depend entirely on the Sisters’ charity. We’d all starve!”
“Hush!” Brother O’Shea roars, strutting up to her. “Your insubordination does you no favors, madam. You should be thankful for what you get.”
Mrs. Anderson takes a deep breath and offers up a watery smile. “I’m sorry,” she says softly, looking at Mei and me pleadingly. “I am very grateful. I’ll do whatever you want. I’d swear on the Scriptures, I’ve done nothing wrong!”
O’Shea shakes his head as though she has committed another grave sin. “Then you would forswear yourself.”
A grin settles on Helmsley’s ugly bearded face, and I sense a trap closing around her. “Your neighbor said Alvarez kissed your hand when you parted. Do you deny that?”
“I—no, but—” Lavinia sags against the wall. “Please, let me explain!”
“You’ve told us enough falsehoods for one day, Mrs. Anderson. I think it’s clear what’s been going on here. We are arresting you for crimes of immorality.”
The baby begins shrieking. Henry is crying, too, clinging to Lavinia’s skirts.
“We could stop this.” Alicep ais.” ’s lips barely move. Her voice is so low I can hardly hear her over the commotion, but I catch her meaning immediately.
What she’s suggesting is dangerous. Doing magic outside the convent puts every one of us at risk. And mind-magic is the rarest, wickedest kind of magic there is. Erasing one memory can take other, associated memories with it; performing mind-magic repeatedly on the same subject can leave devastating mental scars. Long ago, when the witches ruled New England, they used mind-magic to control and destroy their opponents. The Brothers tell those old stories to keep people frightened of us, though Alice and I are the only two students at the convent even capable of it.
“No,” Mei begs, her dark eyes frantic. “Stay out of it. It’s not our business.”
“Four of them. We could do it, together.” Alice’s soft hand clasps mine. “Count of three.”
What the Brothers are doing is hateful and wrong; it wouldn’t trouble me overmuch to use magic on them. But Alice is more confident in her skill than I am. I’ve never performed mind-magic on more than one subject before, and certainly never on a child. What if we fail or it goes wrong and we damage Henry’s mind permanently?
I snatch my hand away. “No. It’s too risky.”
Then the moment is gone. Helmsley is binding Lavinia’s wrists with coarse rope.
“Our work is never done, Sisters. I’m sorry to subject you to such a scene,” O’Shea says, though it’s obvious he’s rather enjoyed having an audience. He gestures to the fresh bread and vegetables piled on the kitchen table. “You’ll want to take that to someone else in need. No point in letting it go to waste.”
Star Cursed: The Cahill Witch Chronicles, Book Two Page 1