Page 48 of If Anything Happens To Me

“Daphne’s magic book,” Minerva said. “It’s the Sibylline version ofMalleus Maleficarum—theHammer of Witches.”

“Witchcraft?” I asked, thinking of the little charm, the tiny witch flying through the fog.

“Not exactly,” Minerva said. “It’s more like a family treatise about goodness, healing, seeing the future to improve lives, to bring love, to cause happiness. We’re an old New England clan. Daphne traced our lineage all the way back to Alse Young—the first girl executed for witchcraft in America. She was a botanist from Windsor, right here in Connecticut, blamed for a flu outbreak.”

“You’re related to Alse?” I asked, with some awe. Minerva nodded. We’d learned about the Connecticut Witch Trials in school; they had started in 1647, held in Hartford, just up the river from where Eloise and I lived in Black Hall.

“Some said the Sibylline sisters contracted the disease as retribution for Alse cursing the state with flu,” Minerva said. “Others were accused of fortune-telling—just like the Sibyllines—and people called them witches. It all weaves together, and I think Fitch might have bought into it more than he’d want anyone to think.”

I remembered more about what I’d learned. The Connecticut Witch Trials of the 1600s were evil and devastating, totally wrong and unfair, and directed mostly at women. Awesome women who threatened the status quo—including Lydia Gilbert, who was accused of bewitching Thomas Allyn’s gun. So when on October 3, 1651, Thomas killed a man, it was deemed not his fault, but Lydia’s—for having cast a spell on the gun. And she was executed for it.

Just within the last few years, our Connecticut state lawmakers had officially absolved twelve of the seventeenth-century witch hunt victims, eleven of whom had been executed. It had only taken them 370 years.

“But Alse was innocent,” I said.

“Totally innocent,” Minerva said. “Like all those accused witches, she did have powers—but we all do! Emotion is power. Love is power. My creating charms to celebrate our family legends—power. Those tears that just shook you to the core, Oli—they are power. Iris, your desire to save Hayley—that is power.”

I nodded. Minerva was absolutely right.

“But we have to move fast,” Minerva said.

“And get to the Miramar?” Iris asked. “Are we even sure that’s where he has Hayley? Does it have an attic? Full of dead birds and panels painted with the girls in long white dresses? The sibyls?”

“It does have an attic just like that,” Minerva said. “But the Miramar is a strange place. Too many corridors and back staircases and secret passages. I don’t even know how togetto that attic.”

“Maybe we need to slow down and figure out a strategy,” I said.

“There’s no time, Oli,” Minerva said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The gold dust,” she said. “I hadn’t put it together before, but now that I know he sprinkled it on you, Iris, after he thought you were dead . . .”

My pulse raced, and the blood in my veins felt cold.

“It’s written in theHammer of Witches,” Minerva said, “that the dust of silver and gold is for anointing the dead. So if he needs more . . .”

“It means he’s going to kill Hayley,” Iris said.

Minerva grabbed her car keys, and the three of us ran out to the street.

We tore down the back way to a small parking area. The blue van was gone, so I assumed Matt and Fitch had split up and were probably each driving around, looking for us. Minerva had a lime-green MINI Cooper; I squished into the passenger seat and ducked down, and Iris lay flat on the back seat. We stayed out of sight until we were out of town.

As we drove into Silver Bay, I saw the big Victorian hotel looming over the cove.

“Miramaris Spanish for ‘sea-view,’?” Minerva said. “This hotel started off as a resort and a health spa. A magnet for wealthy people from New York and Boston.”

I gazed at the ramshackle old wreck and tried to imagine that it had been grand in its day.

“After two of the sisters died, our family sort of lost hope,” Minerva continued. “We kept the building, but we let it get run-down. It’s basically just a boardinghouse now.”

“Who lives there?” I asked. My mind was racing. I needed to know everything I could about the hotel if we were to go inside to get Hayley. I kept looking over my shoulder, nervous that Fitch or Matt would pull up behind us at any minute.

“Hardly anyone,” Minerva said. “As the tenants die, the rooms are not re-rented.” She paused, and her eyes flashed with anger. “But one of my favorite people in the world lives there. And she’s the reason I’m upset the family’s not taking care of the property. She deserves better.”

“Who?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” Minerva said.

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