Page 95 of The Book of Magic

His life’s work was revenge and he was more than willing to use left-handed magic to do so. Like called to like, and to destroy something you often had to become it yourself. Tom had claimed the Crooked Path and took to walking at Lockland Manor, once his family’s sprawling estate, now belonging to the National Trust, visited by scores of hikers and vacationers when there was fine weather. The house itself had been built in the 1300s, but it was mostly a shell, topped by a tall spire, for it had been consumed in flame, and for those who dared to venture inside it was possible to look through the damaged ceilings to the sky above. It should have all been his—the parkland, the manor house, the family wealth—but the Locklands’ circumstances had grown worse with each generation and people in the village had calmly watched them come to ruin. There was drink involved, and bad luck; marriages were wrecked, lives were cut short, poverty haunted them, jail terms led to disaster. It was a tradition for women married to the Locklands to disappear and leave their men, and there were few who could blame them. Tom’s own mother had vanished on his fifth birthday and his father had neglected him, leaving him to sit outside the pubs he frequented where Tom would wait till all hours, having been reminded not to call his father Dad in front of any of the ladies, beaten when he talked back, sleeping in a shed whenever one of these ladies was brought home for the night. Tom had learned that women were heartache from the moment you encountered them and that men were not to be trusted. The first Thomas Lockland swore he’d married a witch; he’d taken their son away from his wife to be raised by his sisters, but in the end his wife had ruined him. When she ran away, he tracked her to the house of a woman who practiced the Nameless Art and after his downfall at the hands of this woman, Hannah Owens, his wife had run off with another man and the child they’d had during her marriage to Lockland.

The family curse had been initiated when his seventh great-grandfather was poisoned only half an hour’s walk from the village, in a place called Devotion Field, where an apothecary garden had once grown, rife with dangerous plants including yarrow and black nightshade, wolfsbane and foxglove and lords and ladies with its toxic black berries. All this bad fortune had been conjured by a cunning woman who had long ago been burned. Festivals were held on what had once been her land on the old holidays of May Eve, All Hallows’ Eve, Candlemas, and Lammas, with women gathering as the wheel of the year moved forward. On these occasions, white paper bags lit by candles arose into the violet sky so that stars seemed to be both falling and rising.

People in the village were fools for the old folkways and they always had been, leaving out saucers of goat’s milk for witches on overcast nights, allowing crows to fly through their windows rather than chase them away, drinking herbal teas they thought would strengthen their constitutions. It was the village council that had voted to remove the Locklands from their property nearly three hundred years earlier and Tom intended to pay them back threefold. Let them sit in their houses and hide, let them lock their doors and leave the streets of the village empty. When he had the power to do so, he would make them understand what it was like to be in exile in your own home.

Tom fixed his gaze on Kylie upon encountering her, immediately interested. It wasn’t her beauty that drew him in, but the aura of magic around her. Even someone with as little talent as he could tell she had power. “Did you want something?” Tom asked, for in his experience people always did.

Kylie took a breath. The next step was about to begin. “Tom Lockland?”

“That would be me.” Tom took in the measure of the girl and decided that she was far more than a spoiled American.

Kylie introduced herself and said, “I thought you might help me. I’ve heard that you know something about curses.”

“A bit.” Intrigued, he beckoned for her to come inside. He’d spent the best part of ten years searching for a way to break the curse that had afflicted his family for more than three hundred years, to no avail. The older a curse was, the more difficult it was to disperse, for it took root and grew, twisting through a person’s psyche and heart with punishing strength. Some people said that removing it could cause more damage than the curse itself.

“I need to know how to end it and I don’t have much time,” Kylie admitted.

Lockland had gray eyes, a rare pale color not unlike her own. It was not every day that a cursed American came to your door. It might be a bit of luck. Kylie was too tall, a good five inches taller than he, slender, with coltish arms and legs, and was wearing a dreadfully large raincoat and rumpled clothes in which she’d slept. She was a reluctant beauty, and that always appealed to Tom, who considered such women to be a code to crack. Convince her she was more than she’d ever imagined and she might just be yours.

Once escorted into the house, Kylie paced rather than taking a seat. She kept her backpack hooked over her shoulders as if ready to flee at any moment.

“Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?” Tom asked.

“My boyfriend is in a coma,” Kylie told him. “It’s very serious.”

“I’m not a physician if you’re looking for medical help.”

“I’m not in need of a doctor. Gideon has plenty of those.” She stared at him then. “I’m in search of magic.”

Another man might have laughed at this announcement, but not Tom. He nodded, even more interested; after all, he was looking for the very same thing. It was after five and ordinarily he would have poured himself a whiskey. Instead he fetched them both cups of tea. To Kylie’s, he added a sliver of a wood mushroom that would cause even the most vigilant and wary individuals to reveal themselves.

“Anyone who falls in love with us is ruined,” Kylie said between sips of tea. The taste was refreshing, and she drank one cup and then was poured another. “My boyfriend Gideon was struck by a car. That’s why I have to end the curse. There’s no other way to bring him back.”

Kylie was talking too much and she knew it; she was about to tell Lockland about The Book of the Raven, it was on the tip of her tongue, but she stopped herself, recalling the librarian’s warning.

“Do you have any idea of how this might be accomplished?” Tom cocked an eyebrow and waited for her response. He wasn’t particularly educated, and had never gone to university, but he’d had to be shrewd in order to survive his childhood. When he smiled, he was disarming, and even more handsome than she’d first noticed, with movie-star looks from a bygone era.

“That’s why I’m here. My family was from this village, and I assume the curse must have begun here.”

“And your family is fine with what you’re doing?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Kylie said.

Lockland could spot an insincere person, he was one himself, and this girl was honest. He’d had to be canny to get through life in this dreadful village where people held gatherings to celebrate magic and were proud of their heritage. The library had been a witch’s house and it was said that writers often came all the way from London in search of inspiration when they were blocked. Many of the former inhabitants of Thornfield had been devotees of green magic, known for their use of the Nameless Art, particularly in matters of health and well-being. Healing, however, was not Tom’s interest.

When and if Tom finally broke his family’s curse, he would turn it back upon the townspeople who had stood by to watch his family’s ruination. He would open up doors that had been closed for centuries; he’d paint all the mirrors black and burn down the library with its foolish collection of Grimoires, women’s magic, green magic, earth magic, red magic. Devotion Field would disappear in a blaze, children would be lost in the fens, people would take to their beds, unable to be cured of an illness that rained down upon them. Let them be cursed, he thought. Let them know what it’s like.

“Whatever you can teach me, I want to learn,” Kylie told him. She had a sweet, innocent voice that affected Tom in a way he wouldn’t have expected. He almost felt his heart go out to her, but he stopped the sudden haze of compassion, easy to do when you’ve had enough practice. By now, Kylie had finished the tea. She had the urge to tell all, to confide in someone who would understand her.

“Place your hands flat on the table,” Tom suggested. He did the same. When their knees touched they both felt a jolt. “Let it rise up,” Tom said in a quiet tone that almost sounded hopeful.

The table shuddered and rose off the floor, floating between them. Kylie gasped; without thinking, she lifted her hands and when she did the table fell with a clatter. Tom smiled broadly, sweat on his brow. This girl not only had power, she released something in him as well.

“We did that,” he said proudly.

Kylie’s cheeks flushed. She could feel her blood turn hot. “I’m willing to do anything to break the curse.”

Tom Lockland considered her. “Are you sure?” These days you didn’t want to take advantage of anyone. You had to convince them they wanted what you wanted.