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“Exactly.” Lillian sobered. “It’s a witchfinder. I’d heard stories about them as a girl, but they were all destroyed centuries ago.” Her gaze fell to the brass raven in my hand. “At least, we thought they were.”
Humanity had a track record for killing anything they didn’t understand, and a tool like this could be deadly for witches like us. “So, anyone could hold this in their hand, say my name, and they’d get a shock and know I was a witch?”
Lillian nodded. “A powerful spell was whispered into the metal as it cooled.”
“I don’t know any spells that could live inside a broach like that.” I’d never even heard of such a thing. Not that I knew everything about witches, but this seemed like a big thing to leave out of my training.
“That’s because our spells don’t work that way, but warlock magic is often powered by dark emotions like hate and revenge. They bind themselves to objects.”
I’d never met a warlock, but Lillian had been a witch longer than I’d been alive. She met my eyes. “There are stories in the old coven journals about some relics that washed ashore after a winter storm. That’s when I first read about the witchfinder talisman. I thought they’d all been destroyed.”
I turned it over in my hand. “How did they destroy them?”
“The metal has to be heated under the light of a full moon, and then we perform a purification spell over the liquified bronze.” Her attention flicked to the wall calendar on the wall. “Christmas Eve is the next full moon.”
“Maybe Santa can help out.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.” Lillian smirked at my weak attempt at levity. “We’re very lucky the magic was imbued into such a soft metal that we can melt over a fire.”
I set the dangerous trinket on the worktable. “These were made to find witches and…”
“…either kill them, or capture them to force them to use magic for a king’s bidding.” Lillian tucked the broach back into the box. “I’m glad I found it before it fell into the wrong hands.”
“Whose estate was it from?”
She took out her phone and unlocked the screen. As she pushed it in front of me, I stared at the address and shook my head. “Should I recognize this?”
“I suppose not.” She chuckled. “Mrs. Cannon passed away last month. She and her husband had collected antiques from around the world. I visited the sale in search of an antique chair and instead stumbled across this witchfinder talisman.”
The Cannons had their name on a couple of the parks in Salem and on the side of the Peabody Essex Museum. I’d never met them, but they were old money in town. “Did they know about the Coven of Light?”
“No.” She shook her head. “They wouldn’t have known what the talisman could do… I’m more curious about where they found it.”
She set the box aside and patted my hand. “Ruby tells me you had a visitor last night.”
It took me a second to understand she meant the ghost. “Yeah. Ruby connected me with Jackson from the wolf pack. He’s coming by later to help me compare notes and see if I can find the ghost’s daughter.”
“Ruby said the ghost was a murdered woman, a witch?”
“That’s what she said.” I filled her in on the few details I had, and Lillian went to the cabinet in the corner where she kept the old leatherbound grimoire of spells.
Underneath the spell book was an even older volume. The tattered edges of the cover were blackened from two attempts to burn it over the years. Both times it was rescued before the fire could engulf the pages. The spine creaked as she opened the brittle book.
“This census of witch blood families might be able to help.”
I went around to her side of the worktable. Her index finger strolled through the names and dates. “You think this child might be grown?”
“Yes, probably.” This seemed pointless. All we had was the baby’s first name. “The ghost was wearing a sweatshirt that hung off her shoulder so I’m guessing the murder might have happened in the eighties or early nineties.”
Lillian flipped a chunk of pages and started scrolling through the names and dates again. When she got to the end of the page, she looked my way. “So many family lines have died out.” Suddenly the lines around her eyes aged her with the weight of the years. Lillian had never had any children. When she crossed over, she’d be another lost bloodline in this old book.
She focused on the pages again. “We’re a dying breed. That’s why the coven started protecting the elemental witches.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Like me.” My mouth dried as I forced the words out. “Maybe if someone had protected my mom, she wouldn’t have abandoned me.”
Lillian lifted her head. I’d known her for twenty years, and we’d tiptoed around this subject a million times. But not today. Maybe in finding this lost witch, I could recover some of my own past.
She studied me for a moment. “I’ve thought about that over the years and the only conclusion I keep coming to is that your mother wasn’t from my coven.”
