by Beth Byers
Ariadne’s gaze narrowed and her anger rose. They were no threat to Nighton or their neighbors. Circe taught music and gave painting lessons. Echo was taking classes at a college in the city. The little girls went to the school with the rest of the town’s children. Up until a few nights ago, Ariadne made booze and spent too much money on fashion magazines. They might be frivolous, but they were hardly a threat.
Ariadne was a nature witch—hardly the scariest of witches—but she was also the eldest of the eldest of the eldest of the Wode. Of all the sisters, Ariadne was the most dangerous, and the fury rising in her powered by being the eldest Wode was a perilous combination. When she called to the wind, it answered. She lifted a single finger and jerked it at an angle towards the moon. The hood of the man who had been leading the chant flew off, and her eyes landed on Lindsey Noel, the mayor’s son.
“Where is Circe?”
“Hiding in her closet.” Echo sounded disgusted, but Ariadne wasn’t going to stand for Circe cowering. Not with this scene before her.
“Circe Euterpe Magnolia Wode. Come see what you have done.” The command of the eldest was clear, echoing through the house that had been layered in spells and power for generations of the Wode and that answered to Ariadne before all others.
Circe unwillingly descended the stairs from her turret room and joined her sisters at the window. Each step was a long creak of noise as Circe fought the call of her sister. She came slowly into the bedroom.
“I loved him,” Circe whispered, tears slipping down her cheek.
Neither Ariadne nor Echo snorted, showing the magnitude of the love they had for their sister. It didn’t matter that Circe was only nineteen months younger than Ariadne or that Echo was a full five years younger than Circe. Circe was the innocent one, the tender one. Echo was the pragmatic one, and Ariadne was the one who made the hard decisions.
Circe whispered, “We’re not black.”
“Do you think that matters?” Ariadne snapped. “We’re witches. Those men don’t care about the color of your skin or that we’re humans just like they are. They care about power. They want it, so they want us cowering from them.” In a flash of sisterly viciousness, she added, “Hiding in our closets.”
“This is bad.” Echo’s mouth twisted sourly. “This gets people burned at stakes rather than just having crosses burned on lawns. We’ll be the start of the newest witch hunt.” She dropped her tone low and whispered, “Cassiopeia and Medea will be tormented at school.”
“It isn’t 1593!” Circe moaned. “They won’t burn us.” Her gaze moved between the sisters and she whispered her next question. “Will they?”
“They’ll just murder us in the dark,” Ariadne muttered. “Echo is right. This is bad. Them knowing what we are is bad, Circe.” She’d said the very same words only a day ago when telling Circe what had happened at the speakeasy. “We don’t tell. We don’t reveal ourselves. Not to normal humans. Not to lovers. No matter the promises and the protestations of love. Everything about this is dangerous.”
“But—”
“Circe, darling, you’re going to be fired tomorrow. No mother is going to let her child receive art lessons from someone who is being harassed by the Klan.”
“But I love teaching…” Circe’s disbelieving moan was the last piece of Ariadne’s puzzle.
When she turned to look at Circe and saw her black eyes were fixed on the man she had loved—did love—Ariadne was convinced that reality still hadn’t broken the armor of Circe’s love.
Enough was enough. If a burning cross wasn’t enough, then distance, foreign men, and bright lights would have to slaughter Circe’s infatuation with that pretty beast Lindsey Noel. Why Circe with her ability to see beyond a normal human still couldn’t see his cold heart was beyond Ariadne.
Ariadne’s fury fed the wind and it blew the rest of the hoods off and into the flaming cross. In her anger, her magic was fiery hot, and she emblazoned symbols of the KKK on the men. Not all of them would escape unscathed from the revelation of who they were. There were as many good men disgusted by the KKK as there were members of the Klan, probably more.
Her gaze settled for long moments on Jay Moore. She’d thought they were friends.
Some of the men chanting and shooting their guns into the air would lose their jobs over this. Perhaps they’d lose their girls. Perhaps they wouldn’t. Justice, in her blindness, would fall on some and not others. Before Ariadne’s mark faded, justice would land on at least some.
“Pack the bags, Echo. Gather the pets, Circe. Girls,” Ariadne said to the little ones, “Echo will help you. We’re going on an adventure.”
Neither of them said a word but Cassiopeia nodded quickly and Medea dared to pull the covers from below her eyes down to her chin. Their little girls’ gazes fastened on Ariadne who was coated in the power of the Wode house, the wards, and her fury.
“We’ll shut up the house, set the wards, and use our power to fuel a forgetting spell. Otherwise we’ll come home to ashes and an empty foundation.” While they were gone, the memory of what they were would fade and as it did, she’d know when it was safe to return to their home. There was no returning with the little girls, not until the forgetting had happened.
Ariadne laid the spell work far into the night, and when the sun rose she dropped a long silver chain around her neck that corresponded to the spell worked in her basement. Etched into the back of the pentacle was the tail end of her spell. When the engraving shone in the moonlight, the spell would reach its completion. The sisters of the Wode would, once again, be the three odd girls who loved jazz and cocktails and no longer the witches of Petticoat Lane.
Ariadne checked her watch and did another spell. One she’d never normally descend to. She laid the spell in place and attached it to her silver necklace. They weren’t poor women, but they weren’t rich either. This wasn’t a trip they’d have taken if they’d been given a choice. Her work in making booze during the prohibition was bringing in a fortune, but she’d put it all back into investments, real estate, and businesses her scrying had told her to trust.
She hadn’t intended on a last minute trip for indeterminate length. They were not, unfortunately, very fluid at the moment, a problem any witch worth her salt could cure, but few did due to the sheer crassness of it all. Regardless, fortune would soon be bending their way.
LATER THAT NIGHT, NIGHTON, MARYLAND
ARIADNE EUDORA WISTERIA WODE
Ariadne loaded the back of the truck with the last of her house-made booze. The prohibition was running strong, but Maryland, bless them, never enforced the laws. It made for a good place to make gin and a bit of a risky venture to transport it to Washington D.C. and New York City. She quickly sketched look-away runes on the back of the truck and then glanced at her sisters who stood on the porch with their trunks.
“Did you get the cats?”
“Of course,” Echo said crossly, as if she’d forget. Five cats wouldn’t be odd at all.
Circe sniffled, her gaze fixated on the cross in the yard. Ariadne hadn’t slept the night before and her last act had been to get Abraham Jones to come over with some of his timber. The two of them had turned the cross into an arbor long enough to walk through. She had thrown her wisteria seeds and magic at the arbor, and the flowering trees and vines were already flourishing. They’d blossom without her there, but she was sure to layer the plant with bespelled and potioned compost from her gardens.
The little girls were sitting on the steps, looking about as though they were being ripped away from everything they’d ever known while also ready to embark on an adventure at the level of going on a safari. Their black eyes were wide, their black braids were mussed, and their pale cheeks were even whiter than normal.
“It’s pretty now,” Cassiopeia said. Medea had yet to make a noise beyond the most necessary of whispers. If silence would do, Medea wouldn’t even whisper.
Circe’s lip trembled. “I can’t believe he did that. He loves me.”
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From what they could tell, Circe couldn’t believe much of what Lindsey Noel had done. It seemed the only thing Circe did believe was his lies about loving her. Not even dragging Echo into a slew of gangsters and holding her with a gun to her face had broken through his hold. What lies had Noel told to make her forgive him since he’d crashed their bootlegger delivery? And how could Circe be so stupid?
Chapter 3
APRIL 1922. WASHINGTON D.C.
ARIADNE EUDORA WISTERIA WODE
Ariadne walked alone down the center of the road. It would have seemed something like a gunfight at noon if the road that led from the Wode house to the town had anyone to see her journey. She wore a black dress with black shoes and a black sweater. Her black hair was held back by a black headband, and her eyes were black with fury and magic.
Each side of the road was planted with large oak trees and each tree knew and acknowledged Ariadne Wode, the eldest of the eldest of the eldest of the Wode. A wrought iron fence bound the Wode property in, and on each pillar between sections of the fence, carved statues and runes looked over the property. As she moved along the road, she activated the runes that hadn’t been keyed since the Wodes first arrived in Nighton. The shame she felt while closing off their property from the world because it was no longer safe wasn’t something she had ever wanted to experience.
Nighton had been settled nearly two hundred years before but had never grown much. It was all part of the Wode family’s bag of tricks. They’d settled it and kept it to themselves.
At the entrance of Petticoat Lane, there was a small brick house. It was lovely, with steps that had runes carved into them and layered wards—a gift from the Wode. Ariadne walked up the steps and opened the front door with a simple flick of her dominant hand. When she walked into the house, she found Lettie Moore sitting at the table in her kitchen, sipping her coffee.
Lettie had been the same age as Ariadne’s mother, and their children had been raised between the two houses. Lettie’s green-eyed gaze landed on Ariadne and she winced. She should wince. It had been her son Jay, along with Lindsey Noel and the rest of that pack of miscreants, that had set fire to the cross on Ariadne’s front lawn.
“You look just like your mother Eudora when I see you angry. Your eyes flashing. Hers did too. She could get up in arms about anything. Or nothing at all.”
“Well,” Ariadne said mildly, crossing her arms over her chest and reminding herself that Lettie might have been a near-aunt, but she was not family. Nothing could be more certain given the previous evening. “I am angry.”
“I wondered when you would come. How long it would take.”
Ariadne paused only for a moment, ignoring Lettie’s questions for her own. “Why did you do it? Why did Jay do it?”
“Your family has controlled Nighton too long.”
“We settled Nighton. We carved it out of the wilderness with our magic and our sweat.”
“So you get to rule Nighton? That’s not how things work in America.”
“No.” Ariadne bit her bottom lip to hold back her fury. “We hardly rule this village. If we did, Graham Noel would not be the mayor. What have we done that is so wrong? Own the property that has been ours since we tamed it from the wild? But it’s not that we own property, is it? It’s that I did not give money to your son’s business. You betrayed us over filthy lucre. Just as he did.”
“He’s a good boy.” Lettie’s voice was tight with emotion.
As Ariadne thought, Lettie had been angry since Ariadne turned down Jay’s offer of marriage soon after her mother’s death. As though, in grieving, Ariadne should take the first offer and let a man rescue her, even if he were a friend. As though happiness only came if you were married. As though things would have been better to have one more person to look after because that was what Lettie really wanted. Someone to keep on mothering her son for her and adding grandchildren to the mix. Preferably rich grandchildren who lived in the big Wode house.
“The Wode do not owe a business to every man who asks. Not even if it is your son.”
“While you break the law with your nonsense.”
Ariadne wanted to shriek. She knew all too well that Lettie had berry wine in her cellar. Ariadne had given it to her and Lettie had a glass nearly every evening. “No one in Maryland cares what we’re doing. Least of all you,” Ariadne snapped. “Not everyone wanted the noble experiment.”
“So you’re just going to throw aside the laws of our land? For money.”
“Yes. You know, you aren’t better than me. You put all our lives at risk for money and because you were angry.”
Ariadne was all for whoever who wanted to engage in the experiment. She was also all for making a fortune off those who wanted to make their own choices about what they drank. She wasn’t all right with the world telling others how to live. Not when it wasn’t an action that was intrinsically wrong.
She supposed she was sensitive because of who she was—a witch in a world where people had been burned, hanged, pressed, and tortured for being accused of being what she actually was. Ariadne reached up and took a silver-shaped rune from the place over the door.
“We’re done.”
“Wait!” Lettie said, but Ariadne didn’t look back. Her job was to protect her sisters first, and Lettie had endangered that out of monetary grievances. “Wait! I knew they wouldn’t get through the doors. I just wanted you to know I was upset. Jay wouldn’t have hurt you. Not really. I knew you’d be all right even if I didn’t say anything.”
Ariadne opened the front door and jerked both hands out to the side. Runes and protections that had been placed on the house since it was built were removed in one gesture.
“Wait! Ariadne, wait! I’m sorry. Please stop.”
Ariadne turned back at that, meeting Lettie’s gaze. “We would have come if you needed us. We would have risked everything because of the bond between your family and ours. We would have helped you and sacrificed for you and bled for you. Someone burnt a cross on the lawn outside the house where my mother died giving birth to Medea. Someone threw a brick at the window that keeps my sisters safe. Someone shot guns towards us—”
“I knew you’d be safe,” Lettie wailed. “I knew it would be all right. You’re the Wode. The eldest of the eldest.”
Ariadne ignored Lettie’s whine. “And why were my little sisters terrorized? Money. Never mind the bond that lasted nearly a century between the Moore and the Wode. Let alone the friendship of my mother and you swearing to her to mother us in her place.”
“I know,” Lettie wailed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was just so angry.”
“And now I am.”
“Forgive me,” Lettie begged. “My god, Ariadne, I’m sorry. Please.”
Ariadne turned back and eyed the woman she loved as a mother and shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Of course you can,” Lettie said.
“I won’t then,” Ariadne said quietly, heart breaking yet again. How could she trust someone who’d let men with guns near her sisters? What if they hadn’t woken? What if they’d been overrun? Lettie had known and stayed tightly in her house after all their history. It just wasn’t forgivable. Not for Ariadne. “Your pettiness nearly cost us our lives.”
Ari left the house, putting Lettie and the betrayal behind her, and went through the gates to the property again. She walked the orchards, she visited the trees that had been there when her kin had arrived and those that had been planted by her family. She walked among the trees, mind racing.
Outed as witches…where were they to go? What would they do? Perhaps it was the presence of her family graveyard that gave her the idea. Perhaps it was just the first random thought that trickled through her mind, but Ariadne left the wood to gather her sisters and start their journey.
APRIL 1922. NIGHTON, MARYLAND USA
CIRCE EUTERPE MAGNOLIA WODE
Ariadne had gone off in a snit as soon as the last of the trunks was loaded and Circe was left with Echo,
who didn’t quite meet Circe’s gaze. The little girls were whispering between each other as they held their little kittens.
“I didn’t know he would do this,” Circe whispered.
It wasn’t enough. She didn’t need to see Echo’s reaction to know it wasn’t, but Circe didn’t dare to look at her sister either. She felt sick to her stomach and her heart was broken. Squashed flat. All that was left where her heart had been was empty space and pain. Lindsey was so sweet. He brought her flowers and told her how lovely she was. He asked about her family history and cared what she had to say.
Unlike Ariadne, Lindsey always cared what Circe had to say. He didn’t ignore her suggestions or her wants.
Circe sniffed into her handkerchief and then knelt down on the lawn near the new wisteria tree. The purple blooms didn’t remove the ugliness of the cross. She knew Ariadne and Abraham had made it from the cross on purpose, but for Circe—it would always be a reminder of when her lover decided to terrorize her sisters.
“I know,” Echo said in that gentle way that a little sister shouldn’t have to use for an elder sister, “that this is hard.”
Their gazes met, saying things that no one else could. There was so much pain between the three oldest sisters. The history of losing their parents, their mourning, their childhood, their lost dreams. Watching Ariadne change from their big sister to their semi-mother, semi-sister, and head of the family when she was too young. Ariadne could have handled it better. It was a thought that Circe had a thousand times, a million. Circe would have handled it better. Circe would have been kinder. More understanding.
Mama had once said she’d given birth to a trio of dangerous creatures, but it wasn’t true. Ariadne was dangerous. The eldest of the Wode with the skill and power to go with the birthright and the ability to tap into the protections and spells that had been layered into their home and land. The inheritance of the Wode was vast and could barely be matched by some of the other great families. The Laveau. The Hallow. Perhaps the Redferne.