Page 123 of A Time of Witches

These experiences tangled with Lilith’s own past, sending a spear of agony at her most painful memory. Daddy’s death. When she’d used a bowl of water to scry in high school and saw his death in the mirrored surface. The next day, he’d ignored her plea to go the hospital, instead meeting with a wealthy client as Mama pressed him to do.

According to Mama, if Lilith had never said he’d have a heart attack from all that foolish magic, he wouldn’t have been worried all day. He wouldn’t have taxed his heart. He would have lived.

Memories of her heavy shame followed. She never opened herself to magic again. Not until that fateful day at Enchanted.

The memories continued to pour in, including when Asher had walked Lilith to her room, that lingering pause when he almost kissed her. Lilith’s heartbeat fluttered. Another recollection, this time of only moments ago, her hands in the protection of his, the yearning in his gaze.

“Oooh,” Aunt Jacqueline chirped.

Lilith grimaced.

“Focus,” Aunt Jacqueline said in seriousness. She closed her eyes and intoned, “Let the thread of time unwind, to reveal what we must find. Return her once all is said, and please ensure she is not dead.”

“Seriously, please stop saying that,” Asher said irritably.

Aunt Jacqueline peeked an eye open, glaring at him, before closing the eye again and repeating the line a final third time.

Lilith likewise closed her eyes and opened her mind to the words, losing herself in the chant.

Nothing happened.

She clenched her teeth. Please let the charm work. Please let the charm work.

She could not afford for it not to.

Please let the—

All at once, the world spun around her, and her stomach plunged like a roller coaster drop.

She clenched her hands into fists and suddenly realized she was no longer holding on to Asher and Aunt Jacqueline. The air was cooler, the grass damp under her feet.

How was she standing?

A moment of fear ensnared her, and she blinked her eyes open. The moon overhead was larger now, a waxing gibbous moon rather than the waning crescent she’d left behind.

“It’s you.”

Lilith turned to the sound of the voice and the birthmark on her arm thundered in time with her heartbeat.

Two women stood by the fire, and one of them was Jacinda.

Chapter Sixty

Sybil

Sybil was forced outside and pushed onto a wooden cart. Her eyes ran with tears against the brilliant sunlight, trying to adjust after being so long in the darkened prison.

Still squinting, she took in the condemned women and men alongside her, their faces drawn, haggard with exhaustion.

Crowds of people pressed against the cart as it rolled forward, making slow progress. They’d come armed with rotten food and insults to hurl with vicious abandon.

After only several minutes, the cart stopped before a small, narrow building, just outside the market.

Sybil had spent much of her life in this area, procuring food and sundries. Then there was the Maypole in the spring, and at Christmastide in winter the mulled wine and hot roasted chestnuts that Jacinda always burned her fingers on in her haste to get to the sweet nut within.

These memories clogged in Sybil’s throat, blazing with the realization that there would be no more.

Rough hands grasped Sybil by the shoulders, hauling her from the cart with such force she stumbled.