Born Wicked: The Cahill Witch Chronicles, Book One: The Cahill Witch Chronicles, Book One

by Jessica Spotswood

  Maura scoots over to make room for me. We both peer out at Mrs. Corbett dubiously.

  “I don’t think Father seems the slightest bit interested,” I announce.

  “Of course he’s not. Father’s not interested in anything besides his books and his business. He’s never even here. We’d be the ones stuck with her. Like with this governess.” Maura wrinkles her nose.

  I wait for the explosion forthcoming. Tess and I, we’re watercolors compared with the rich oil painting that is Maura, with her flame-bright hair and a temperament to match. She’s impetuous. Intractable. Easily infuriated.

  “It might not be so bad. Perhaps a governess could liven things up a bit,” she says finally.

  I jump up, staring at her as though she’s grown another head. “You want a governess? Living right here? I suggest you might practice your piano and you take my head off, but you’d welcome some stranger whose sole job is to boss us?”

  “Well, I’m sick of you doing it,” Maura mutters. “I’m fifteen now, Cate. I don’t need you watching out for me anymore. I’m not a baby like Tess. Even Tessisn’t a baby, not really.”

  I pick up the blue velvet slippers she’s tossed helter-skelter by the bedside. “I know that.”

  “Do you? You don’t act like it.” Maura snarls something under her breath, and the slipper in my hand is suddenly a spider. It starts to crawl across my wrist and up my arm. I freeze, but only for a moment.

  I’m not a weak, squeamish girl, afraid of things that scurry through the dark.

  Maura cured me of that. My magic became evident from the age of eleven, but hers didn’t manifest until she was twelve, and then it exploded overnight. She was dizzy with it. After Mother died, she was impossible. We were in mourning—we seldom went out except to services—but she wasn’t cautious enough at home by half. I lived in terror that one of the servants would catch her—or, Lord forbid, Father. We quarreled constantly about her carelessness. After our rows, hideous ghosts popped out of my closet; spiders crawled through my bed and wove webs in my hair. Snakes wrapped around my ankles, licking at my feet with forked tongues.

  I learned to think my way out of such things quickly. And to never, ever show my fear. Mother taught us that a witch’s power is all in your mind. We can’t change matter, only how people see things, and—in very rare cases—how they remember them.

  “Commuto,” I say, and the spider turns back to a slipper. I toss it into a pile with the others by her wardrobe.

  “Aren’t you bored silly, Cate? I know I am. If I didn’t have my novels, I’d throw myself right in the river.” Maura’s eyes snap as she stands and stretches, the fabric pulling tight through the bodice. She needs new dresses to fit her new curves. “What life do we have here, wandering around the house like ghosts? Don’t you ever cravemore?”

  Do I? It’s been years since I’ve let myself consider what I want. It hardly matters. I didn’t want Mother to die; I didn’t want Father to turn into a shadow of his old self; I didn’t want the responsibility of policing my sisters. I certainly never wanted to be a witch in the first place.

  The universe has yet to take my wishes under consideration.

  Maura still thinks she can bend the world to her will. She’ll learn.

  A memory floats up—running through the garden, chased by a towheaded boy with mischievous green eyes. Letting him catch me and tickle me until I was breathless. The way he looked at me, his sunburned forehead nearly touching mine, his body pressing me into the grass. How he laughed and rolled away, his cheeks as red as Maura’s hair, and it was suddenly evident that we were too old to play such games.

  I bite my lip—an unladylike habit, I know, and one that Tess has picked up from me. “What is it you want to do? What am I stopping you from— afternoon teas at Mrs. Ishida’s? Shopping with Rose Collier and Cristina Winfield?”

  “No. I don’t know. Perhaps!” Maura begins to pace.

  Good Lord. If those sound like attractive options, she’s lonelier than I ever dreamed. “No one is stopping you from making friends. You could invite the girls from town over for tea whenever you like.”

  “As if they would come! They barely know us and we dress like ragamuffins. Besides, you’re the oldest, you’d have to host, and you’d rather be a hermit.”

  I sink onto Maura’s bed, smoothing the yellow coverlet that Mother sewed during one of her long convalescences. Maura’s right; I wouldn’t enjoy making odious small talk with the simpering town girls. But I would do it. For her. To keep us safe. “Is that really what you want?”

  She spins the old globe Father gave her for her last birthday. “I don’t know. I want more than what we’ve got now, I know that. We have to start thinking of our futures, don’t we? How are we supposed to find anyone to marry us if we never leave the house?”

  “You make us sound like shut-ins,” I argue. “We go out.”

  “To services and piano lessons.” Maura spins the globe faster, until it becomes a blue-green blur of places we’ll never see. “It’s all well and good for you. You’ll marry Paul and have his babies and live next door forever. How you won’t die of boredom, I don’t know, but at least it’s settled. What about me?”

  I ignore the jibe. “It’s hardly settled. He hasn’t bothered to come home and visit me once.” I arrange her pillows in a neat row, fluffing them with more force than necessary. “Maybe he’s fallen in love with some city girl.”

  “He has not.” Maura gives me a wry smile. “We’d have heard. Mrs. McLeod would have told everyone in town.”

  Mr. McLeod is an invalid, confined to his bed, and Paul is his mother’s only child and her delight. Her cosseting drives him to distraction. It surprised me at first, him going off to university. His marks in school were never good; Father had to give him extra tutoring. Now I suspect he just wanted to escape that dreary house. Still, it’s no excuse not to visit. He hasn’t been home in four years. Not even for Christmas. Not even for Mother’s funeral.

  “Well, you’ll find out next week, won’t you?” Maura stands before the looking glass, running Mother’s old tortoiseshell comb through her curls. “Are you nervous?”

  “No,” I lie. “It’s just Paul. Besides, I’m mad at him.”

  “Well, you’ll have to get over that. It’s not as though you have a line of men queuing up outside to marry you.” Maura appraises me, sprawled across her bed in disarray. “You ought to get the governess to order you a new dress. Something fashionable. You can’t let him see you like that.”

  “Paul wouldn’t care.” Would he? The boy I grew up with wouldn’t.

  I ought to put my pride aside and try to please him. That’s what a good, practical girl would do.

  “Look at yourself.” Maura tugs me up to stand next to her. My hair’s falling out of its braid and there’s an ink stain on my sleeve. But even at my best, I can’t compare with her. Maura’s always been the family beauty. My hair is straight and blond with the barest hint of red, not gorgeous bright curls like hers, and my eyes are dull gray like Father’s. Worse, my pointed chin hints at stubbornness. It’s an ill-kept secret, though—one you’d uncover by talking to me for five minutes.

  “You look a mess,” she says frankly. “But you would be lovely if you tried. You should try, Cate. Six months and you’ll have to marrysomeone. You can’t stay here and protect us forever.”

  Six months before I turn seventeen—but only three before I have to announce an engagement. The thought chips away at my composure.

  Maura’s right. She’s saying the same thing as Mrs. Corbett—not in the same way, and not for the same reasons. But if Mother were alive, Maura and I would be attending teas, paying and receiving calls, positioning ourselves as eligible, marriageable young ladies. I’ve put it off, afraid of bungling it somehow, of drawing attention to us. Now I’ve waited too long and the delay has done just that.

  We mustn’t give the Brothers any reason to suspect us.

  “I think we should give the gover
ness a chance. We’ll be careful,” Maura promises.

  “She’ll be living right here. She’ll never let you read those novels, or Tess continue her studies, or me spend all day in the dirt.” My heart falls at the thought. Gardening is the one freedom I’ve allowed myself. If the governess makes me stay indoors all day painting fruit baskets, I’ll go mad. “If she realizes what we are—”

  Maura smirks, twisting her curls up into a chignon. “If she’s troublesome, we’ll alter her memory. Isn’t that what evil witches do?”

  I whip around to look at her. “That’s not funny.” My sisters don’t know that I’m capable of mind-magic. It’s terribly rare, and it’s reckoned to be the very darkest kind of magic there is. Mother was the only one who knew, and even she was horrified.

  Maura skewers her hair into place with pins. “I was only joking.”

  “Well, don’t. It’s not right to go into people’s minds and muddle things! It’s too invasive. It’s—” I stop myself before I saywicked.

  But Maura stares at me in the mirror, like she knows what I’m thinking. “We’re witches, Cate. We were born that way. Magic isn’t shameful, no matter what the Brothers would have us believe. It’s a gift. I wish you would accept that.”

  CHAPTER 2

  I KNOW WHAT THE BROTHERS would say: magic isn’t a gift from the Lord, it’s devil-sent. Women who can do magic—they’re either mad or wicked. Destined for an asylum at best, or a prison ship or an early grave.

  “It feels more like a curse,” I sigh, straightening the hairpins on her dressing table.

  “To you!” Maura slams her hand down on the dressing table, rattling the glass bottles and scattering the hairpins again. Her blue eyes burn bright in her pale face. “Because you try to pretend it doesn’t exist. If it were up to you, we’d never use magic at all. We should be learning all we can, practicing as much as possible. It’s our birthright.”

  “So you would have us practice magic in the mornings, and have the Brothers’ wives and daughters over to tea in the afternoons? You don’t think the two are a wee bit incompatible?”

  “Why? Why can’t we have both?” Maura plants her hands on her hips. “It’s not the Brothers who are stopping us, Cate. It’s you.”

  I reel back, stung, and almost knock into the globe. I steady it on the pedestal with both hands. “I’m protecting you.”

  “No, you’resmotheringus.”

  “Do you think I enjoy it?” I demand, throwing up my hands. “I’m trying to keep you safe. I’m trying to keep you from ending up like Brenna Elliott!”

  Maura sinks onto her window seat, her hair as red as the maples lining the drive. “Brenna Elliott was a fool.”

  It isn’t that simple, and Maura knows it. “Was she? Or was she just careless? They ruined her either way.”

  Maura raises an eyebrow, skeptical. “She was odd before.”

  “Odd or not, she didn’t deserve what was done to her in that place,” I snap.

  Brenna Elliott gives me nightmares. She’s a girl from town, my age. It was never unusual to find her walking down the street, deep in conversation with herself, humming beneath her breath. But she was a pretty girl and Brother Elliott’s granddaughter, and everyone forgave her eccentricity— right up until she tried to warn her uncle Jack of his death, the day before it happened. After he died—right on schedule, in a carriage accident—her own father turned her in. She was accused of witchery and shipped off to Harwood. Less than a year later, she slit her wrists. When her grandfather found out, he insisted she had been simpleminded all her life—that it was illness responsible for her mad talk, not witchery. He brought her home to recover. For the first few weeks, she had to be fed like a baby and wouldn’t talk to anyone. She still barely leaves the house.

  I grab Maura’s arm. “I’m not bossy for the joy of it. I’m trying to protect you. I won’t see you shipped off to Harwood. I won’t stand by and see Tess with scars on her wrists and no life in her eyes!”

  “Shhh!” Maura hisses, flinging me off. “Father will hear.”

  I can’t help it. The thought of my sisters being sent away to suffer Lord knows what because of some lack of diligence on my part—it haunts me.

  I’d rather they think I’m a shrew.

  “I’m going out,” I announce. “You go tell Tess about the governess, if you’re so pleased.”

  I pound down the wide wooden staircase, worry choking me. I hope Tess will be sensible of the threat this newcomer could bring. If only I could trust my sisters to be more careful, more vigilant about what could befall us—

  I promised Mother I would look after them. I was the one she trusted—not Mrs. Corbett, not Mrs. O’Hare, not even Father. Their safety is my responsibility now. But they don’t make it easy. They practice magic whenever my back is turned, whenever they think no one will see. They relish unconventional pursuits and unconventional books. Lately Maura’s been rebelling against my rules, fighting me at every turn.

  I do everything I can, but it’s always too much or not enough or all wrong somehow.

  The kitchen smells of cinnamon and apples. A pie sits on the wide windowsill, steam fogging the glass, leaking from the cross carved into the center of its golden crust.

  I grab my cloak from the peg by the door and hurry outside. The air is sweet and acrid at the same time, a blend of smoke from the chimneys and dead leaves blanketing the ground. My favorite spot is up ahead: a bench in the rose garden beneath the statue of Athena. There, surrounded by the tall hedges, we can’t be seen from the house—except from the window in the east corner of my bedroom.

  I know: I’ve checked.

  I throw myself onto the cold marble and shove off my hood. My eyes fall on a rose, its tips brown and nibbled, petals scattered around the stem. I fix it in my gaze.

  Novo,I think.Novo.

  It doesn’t revive. It does not alter itself in any way.

  But I can feel the magic in me. It’s there in every breath, every angry heartbeat, its gossamer threads pulsing and tightening my chest. It’s teasing, cajoling, begging to be let loose. It’s always like this when a strong emotion comes over me. Particularly when I haven’t let myself do magic for a few days.

  I try again:Novo.

  Nothing. I slump forward, elbows on knees, chin cradled in my hands. I’m a useless witch. Tess is barely twelve, and she can alter the entire garden without a word. Could probably do it with her eyes closed. I’m sixteen and I can’t manage a simple silent spell.

  I don’t want to be a witch. I’d stop using magic entirely if I could, but it’s impossible. I tried once, two years ago.

  It was the winter after Mother died, and Mrs. Corbett and some of the Brothers’ wives came to call. They kept bleating on about how sorry they were and my poor dear mother. It was infuriating. They didn’t know Mother at all; she never liked any of them. They were just nosy, noisy sheep.

  I thought of sheep and the magic swayed up and there it was: a great woolly creature in the corner of the sitting room, right next to Mrs. Corbett. It actually nosed her sleeve. She jumped, and I was certain she’d seen it. I was ready for the shrieks to begin—ready to be arrested and hauled off to Harwood.

  Maura saved me with anevanescospell. She magicked it away.

  Mrs. Corbett didn’t see the sheep at all. None of them saw it.

  I’ve never tried to suppress the magic since. I practice sparingly, grudgingly, to keep from losing control. But I follow the rules Mother laid out for us. We must use magic only in the rose garden. We must speak of it only in hushed voices and behind closed doors. We must never forget how dangerous it can be—nor how wicked, in the hands of those without scruples. Mother told me these things—told me vehemently and often—sitting right here on the bench where I am now, with me listening from the grass at her feet.

  I wish Mother were here. I need her. Not just to tell us how to keep the magic a secret from Father and the Brothers and the governess and all our neighbors. To teach us how to be wit
ches and ladies and grow up without losing the best and truest parts of ourselves.

  But Mother isn’t here and I am. It’s up to me to figure out how to remedy our reputations. I’ll call on the Brothers’ wives. Buy more fashionable dresses. Smile and nod and laugh. I’ll do everything in my power to make certain the new governess thinks we’re ordinary, empty-headed girls who don’t pose a threat to anyone.

  I didn’t fall to pieces when Mother died. I can’t do it now.

  “Novo,”I whisper, peeking through my hands. This time the rose morphs into a bright blossom.

  The garden grows dark, the statuary looming ghostly behind me. I stand reluctantly and head for the house. It’s an old saltbox farmhouse that Father’s grandparents built when they settled here. Maura wishes we lived in one of the new houses in town, one with a turret and a widow’s walk and scrollwork above the doors, but I like our house the way it is: sturdy and safe. If the white paint is peeling a little, if one of the dark shutters on the second floor hangs at a crooked angle, if the steeply sloped roof is missing a few shingles since the big storm back in August—well, John’s been busy. The Carruthers boy quit midsummer. Who cares if it’s looking a bit ramshackle? No one comes to call on us anyway.

  As soon as I turn the corner into the garden proper, I smack into someone.

  I stumble back in surprise. It’s seldom that I encounter anyone out here save John, our handyman. I like it that way. Tess is comfortable in her kitchen; Maura prefers the company of books over flowers; Father rarely leaves his study except for supper or sleep. The garden ismine.

  I feel a punch of irritation at this intruder.

  He reaches out to steady me, a book tumbling from his hand, and that’s how I recognize him: Finn Belastra. Of course he would have his nose in a book, though how he can see to read in the dusk I don’t know. He must have a cat’s eyes.

  “Excuse me, Miss Cahill.” Finn pushes up his glasses with his index finger. He’s got freckles scattered like cinnamon all over his cheeks. And his face—he’s grown into it since I saw him last. He used to be a scrawny beanpole of a boy. Now he’s—well. Not.