Page 6 of A Time of Witches

Because with that whisper of recognition came the tease of hope, that she might explore what had for so long been forbidden.

“Of course.” Lilith ventured back to the cash register to ring the woman up, working around Brutus as he tried to rub his face against her hands.

When the customer left, Lilith glanced down at Essie’s text again.

Enchanted.

She was right—of course—maybe there was something to the dreams. And if so, maybe the time had come for Lilith to finally explore the supernatural.

Chapter Three

Sybil

July 1645

Bury St. Edmunds, England

The candles whisked out. All three at once.

Sybil Brantham froze, quill poised above the parchment.

There had been no wind in her bedchamber at Brackenmere Manor. No movement. No breeze to cause even a flicker.

A chill crept up her spine like something living, icy tendrils ticking each vertebra.

An omen.

Light limned the heavy curtains, indicating there was no longer a need for the candles. In Sybil’s former life, she would not have been so wasteful. She could not have afforded to be. And certainly, she would not have had beeswax candles, but ones made of tallow, the odor oily and rancid.

Smoke curled from the blackened wicks, cast in a shard of light where the curtains had not been fully closed. Sybil’s gut knotted with anxiety.

A gentle knock sounded at her door.

She set aside her quill, clinked the cap onto the pewter inkwell, and closed the ledger. There would be time for noting the monthly stores and expenses later.

“You may enter, Bess,” she called out.

The maid bustled in and set to yanking back the curtains. Daylight streamed in and motes that had clung to the heavy velvet frolicked in a wild frenzy that left the air feeling charged.

“Anne can tend to the garden,” Bess said disapprovingly as she withdrew the brown worsted dress from the carved oak coffer. “Goodness knows the lass needs more to do.”

If Bess let the other servant share her tasks, the girl would have more to do. On an ordinary day, Sybil might have reminded Bess of that fact. But those candles snuffing out…

Sybil could not clear them from her mind.

A warning to be sure.

But of what?

There was much to fear in this world where political turmoil tore the country in half, rife with religious persecution, where women were so oft the brunt of the world’s injustices with so many of their menfolk at war.

Only a sennight before, four women in Manningtree swung by their necks after an accusation of witchcraft. Sybil scarcely bothered with newsbooks, finding the content more scandal and drivel than actual news. But this one she’d purchased for a sixpence, waiting until she was home to read the horrors.

They had all been women. Women without men to speak for them, to rein them into the boundaries of society, especially prone to such danger. Women, after all, had no voice on their own.

Bess frowned. “Is something amiss, mum?”

Sybil blinked. “No, I… I’m not myself this morning.” She offered a pleasant smile in the costly Venetian looking glass on the dressing table. “Working in the herb garden will set me to rights.”