Page 19 of A Time of Witches

How she thought she could fill that void with money—until Lilith’s father died, then she realized maybe that void could have been filled with love.

Lilith doesn’t have that emptiness in her.

Lilith’s pulse stuttered at the sight of her name in her mother’s journal.

She thinks magic completes her, and maybe it does. We didn’t imagine that honeysuckle vine growing toward her.

Most likely, I resent her. Because I know I’ll never have that. I tell her the magic is all nonsense. Maybe it’s my way of protecting her from being hurt like I have, but part of me realizes I might be making her feel small, the way Mama did with me. To make her feel the way I always have.

The journal almost slipped out of Lilith’s hands. Mama hadn’t feared magic—she’d feared Lilith, been jealous of her.

Resentful.

Something painful twisted in Lilith. Something she didn’t have the time, energy, or capacity to unpack.

She returned her attention to the journal, this time her mother’s crisp handwriting detailed their ancestry, dating through Savannah’s existence and reading like a history lesson from school.

Their family had been one of the first to relocate to Savannah after it was established as the first city in the newly claimed thirteenth colony of Georgia. There was a grandfather killed in the late eighteenth century while trying to reclaim the city from British rule. More than a few ancestors fell victim to yellow fever.

Before Savannah, the family had been in Maryland.

Lilith continued reading, skimming Mama’s handwriting. A strange scent caught Lilith’s attention. Lavender and…hay?

Brackenmere Manor—Bury St. Edmunds, England.

An image flashed in Lilith’s mind, a Great Hall with glossy wood paneling, a hearth that covered almost the entire rear wall, carved with two women standing on either side adorned in Grecian attire. Overhead, beams arched like a ribcage, stretching above straw-like rushes that were slick underfoot. The scent of hay and lavender grew stronger, revealing something else.

Meadowsweet.

How could she identify an herb she didn’t even know?

Lilith blinked herself back into her living room in Savannah, her heart slamming.

What the hell was that?

She hadn’t imagined that room. She had been there.

Even now, the redolent fragrance of the floor rushes still lingered.

Fingers trembling, she turned the page…and froze.

Sybil Brantham.

Burned as a witch.

The fortune teller’s voice hissed in Lilith’s mind, “Sybil.”

Thunder cracked outside, lightning flashed, and the entire house went dark.

Chapter Nine

Sybil

Over the years, Sybil learned that Jacinda’s disposition improved when given time alone.

Sybil had not been such a child at Jacinda’s age. No—at sixteen, she had fallen in love and had her life planned out. A familiar pain flared within her, one old enough that it ought to have calcified by now.

Never would she love a man the way she had John Griffin. Two years her senior, he had given her his heart. They’d pledged their undying love to one another, vows that made John’s father balk. After all, a landowner’s son could not wed the peasant daughter of the local healer. In all Sybil’s life, she had never been made to feel so low as the day John’s father looked at her, lip curled in disgust.