Page 19 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Spite & Spellwork

14Ah ma (Taiwanese Hokkien): Grandmother. This term is widely recognized and used across multiple Chinese dialects for older women who may or may not actually be your grandmother.

15Shrouded in myth and mockery, the Morris is a cacophony that has been masquerading as folk dancing for hundreds of years. Dancers strap sleigh bells to their shins and hop around twirling handkerchiefs or clanking heavy sticks in hopes of annoying nature enough that no season overstays its welcome.

It is widely agreed that the Morris should never be attempted completely sober, and dancers are always one poorly timed thwack away from a concussion.

Chapter 6 Avery

She couldn’t block out the sounds.

She was pressed into the back of the closet, pulling fabric on top of her to both conceal herself and further muffle the screaming. She could make out the word “please.” Hands grasping, she pulled more off the shelves until she lost her balance and the piles heaped on top of her became so heavy she might suffocate beneath them.

Her breath was too hot. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. The screaming had stopped—or perhaps she could no longer hear it?

But she could feel the vibrations of furniture breaking one flimsy wall away. She clenched her eyes and held her breath, trying to burrow farther under the fabric. If she could get low enough, she could vanish. She could get far away from here. Far away from the sound of her mother’s screams still haunting her.

The telephone rang. But the fabric was still suffocating her. Avery clawed and kicked violently, hoping one of her limbs would gain purchase and she would rise out of the pile. She broke through to the cold morning air with a gasp. Her limbs flailed against the waves of blankets, but a sheet twisted around her leg foiled her balance, and she crashed to the hardwood floor with an unforgiving thud.

The phone rang again, sounding suspiciously like a high-pitched giggle at her predicament.

She grunted and blindly reached for the cell phone sitting on the antique end table, still half in bed and upside down. “Saga?” the name she’d so carefully guarded herself from speaking or even thinking the past month tumbled past her lips like a lifeline as she fought her way to consciousness.

“Afraid not.” The warm tenor of the man’s light Bengali accent was familiar albeit uncharacteristically grim.

Avery blinked and her own bed came into view in the dim morning light, as well as the mess of covers her leg was still entangled in. “Lahiri?” she asked hoarsely. Her hand flailed for the lamp on her bedside table. Maybe if she could see the knot she was in better, she could free herself from it.

“Seventy-eight Neal Street. Meet me here as soon as you can.”

“What’s going on?”

“As soon as you can.” He hung up.

She would need to make a point to Lahiri about the impoliteness of such a call, especially when it was made so close to sunrise. Once she was no longer captive to her own bedsheets…and was clothed.

Avery had not recognized the address. Yet when she looked it up, she found it to be part of what was still called Seven Dials, a junction in the West End where seven streets converged at a circular point bearing a pillar at its center. The Seven Dials of Avery’s memory was easily one of London’s most notorious slums. She had prepared herself for that. She ensured nothing was left in an outside pocket of her coat, and, recalling the ungodly scent of the place, she spritzed her handkerchief with orange water before departing. It wouldn’t mask everything, but it would make breathing through the stench of death, excrement, and rot bearable.

What she had not prepared for, however, was that Seven Dials had finally become the dream of its creator. The streets were cobbled, the air was fresh, the storefronts were colorful and the paint pristine. Nothing looked faded or peeling. There were no boarded-up buildings, no broken windows, no beggars or thieves ready to beat you down to steal the metal from your teeth. The place would have been entirely unrecognizable were it not for the strange bones of seven streets converging at a single point.

She wanted to tell someone. No. Not just someone. She knew exactly whom she wanted to tell. And she knew that someone would listen. That someone would smile with her whole being as Avery described Thomas Neale’s great design and desire for Seven Dials to be popular among the wealthy. That someone would suppress a laugh and that smile would turn sympathetic as Avery explained that for centuries after his death, the area seemed determined to dig itself further into poverty and misery just to spite him. It was easy for Avery to picture that someone, but it made her chest ache.

Neal Street itself was paved with gray stone bricks and blocked off from automobile traffic with short pillars. The narrow lane, while currently draped in blue-and-white police tape, was intended for foot traffic only and, under normal circumstances, would allow access to a variety of small boutiques and eateries. Number 78 was a deep-blue storefront emblazoned with silver lettering that read BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE.

Peculiar. The phrase had been used as means of excommunication from the Catholic Church, yet the window display suggested the store catered to the occult. A sign in the window advertised a fortune teller and advised passersby to inquire within regarding readings.

Within the perimeter of the police tape were two uniformed officers, interrogating a bewildered redheaded boy. Avery estimated he was somewhere between seventeen and twenty. His skin was already pale, but it had forfeited any rosiness for an ashen pallor. Whatever he had seen inside, he was not likely to forget it.

Avery instantly recognized the detective who was waiting for her outside the police tape. His beard was trimmed and his suit immaculate, and he held some sort of drink carrier in one hand while gesticulating for her to join him with the other.

Reza LahiriJinn (Ifrit), Age: 47

6’0”, approximately 200 pounds, black hair, dark complexion, well-groomed. Always grinning—except now he isn’t, which is concerning.

Prefers to not use magic.

Family:

Wife, Leigh Hudson (witch), owner of Hudson’s Café & Confectionary.

Young daughter, River.