He pulled out his blade and dragged its edge across his forearm, making a cut long and deep enough to draw what might have been a spoonful of blood. Laying his knife on the table beside Jennifer, he dabbed his forefinger in the welling blood and traced a single dark line across the girl’s brow, and a second one from the bridge of her nose, over her lips and chin, down the length of her throat, to her breastbone.
“ Revela potestatem, ” he murmured in Latin, “ ex cruore evocatam. ” Reveal power, conjured from blood.
The words rang in the dark chamber, as if they had been spoken by several voices at once. The stone beneath his feet hummed with power, and the air around Ethan felt even more charged than it had the previous night, when he conjured the horse. This was a stronger spell; he also wondered if perhaps these grounds held some power that he didn’t fully understand.
The ghost appeared beside him, his glowing eyes fixed on the dead girl, a hungry look on his russet features.
Ethan felt the blood on his arm turn to vapor, as sweat on the brow dries in a cooling wind. He watched the blood he had placed on her face, throat, and chest vanish, as if wiped away by some unseen hand. The candles beside him guttered and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
And then the body of Jennifer Berson began to glow. The light emanated from just to the left of her breastbone and spread slowly, radiating out over her entire body, spreading up over her face and head, out to the very tips of her fingers, and down to the soles of her feet. At first Ethan thought the light had no color, that it simply reflected the hue of the candle fire. But when he moved the sconce away and looked at the girl’s body once more, he saw that the glow was actually pale silver, the color of starlight.
Usually the spell Ethan had cast would have concentrated the glow at the point where the murderer’s conjuring had struck her, but the light surrounding Jennifer’s body was as even as moonglow on a snow-covered field. And that shade of silver… Every conjurer’s power had a different hue; the variations were subtle but distinctive. Ethan’s was rust-colored, like the brick facade of the Boston Town House in the late-afternoon sun. His other sister, Susannah, was also a conjurer. Her spells left a residue of greenish blue, the color of the ocean on a clear day. But never had he seen power like this before. It was as if all the color had been sucked out of the conjuring, and this silver was all that remained.
Old Reg’s ghost flashed a mocking grin. Then he vanished again.
Ethan had no doubt that Jennifer had been killed by a conjuring, but he couldn’t imagine what kind of spell had been used against her. It was possible that the way the glow had spread over her body offered some clue. An attack aimed at her heart might have produced such an effect by following the flow of her blood, though in Ethan’s experience such an assault, when revealed by the spell he had cast, should have left a gleaming spot over her chest.
There was another spell he could try, one that could tell him what the murderer had used to fuel his spell. Every conjuring had to draw upon its source, be it one of the elements-fire, water, earth, or air-for the simplest spells, or something drawn from a creature or plant for living spells. The revealing spell Ethan had just tried demanded his own blood. Other living spells could be cast using herbs or tree sap or wood.
Just as every conjurer left his or her color on the residue of a spell, so the source left an imprint as well, if one knew the casting required to reveal it. Ethan did. And perhaps knowing how the spell had been cast would help him learn a bit more about the murderer. He had told Pell that he would speak only the one spell. But this would likely be his only chance to examine the girl’s corpse, and it struck Ethan as foolish not to do everything in his power to learn the identity of her killer.
The wounds he made to conjure began to heal themselves almost as soon as he spoke his spells, which meant that he needed to cut himself again for this second casting. He retrieved his knife from the table, bared his arm, and laid the blade against his skin.
Before he could draw blood, however, he heard a light footfall behind him.
“Don’t you dare!” a voice warned, echoing off the ceiling and stone walls. “Not in this place!”
Chapter Five
Ethan turned slowly, holding up the knife and extending his arm to show that he hadn’t cut himself again.
“Hello, Bett.”
His sister frowned at him and then shifted her gaze to Jennifer’s body. “What have you done to her? Why does she look like that?”
“I tried to learn something of the conjurer who killed her.”
“She was killed by witchery?” Bett said. She walked past him, her satin dress and petticoats rustling. “You’re sure?”
“Look at her,” Ethan said.
“You did that.”
“I merely made the power reveal itself. Her killer did that.”
Bett stared at the dead girl for a long time, chewing her lip; he remembered that from when she was young. She and Ethan had never gotten along, even as children. He and Susannah, on the other hand, had been inseparable, which probably had made matters worse for their middle sister. Bett had always been so serious, so righteous, far more like their father than their mother. She even looked like Ellis. She had his straight brown hair, his dark blue eyes, his square, handsome face. Susannah was Sarah’s daughter in every respect. Not only did she resemble their mother; she also had Sarah’s sharp wit and hearty laugh. Ethan had always felt a kinship to both of them. But except for the scars he now bore, he looked just like Bett and just like their father. Throughout his life he had thought this ironic, though he couldn’t help thinking that those who knew him best-Kannice, Diver, Henry-wouldn’t have seen the irony. They thought him grave, even ill-tempered at times, and they were right. The years had left him far more like Bett and his father than he had been in his youth.
“It’s an odd color,” Bett finally said, her voice low.
“I was thinking the same thing before you came in.” He regarded her slyly. “Maybe you have a knack for conjuring.”
One might have thought from the smoldering look in her eyes that he had accused her of thievery, or worse. “That’s not funny.”
Susannah would have laughed. So would Mother. But he kept these thoughts to himself. When they were young, their mother had taught all of them to conjure. But while Ethan and Susannah had quickly shown an aptitude for spellmaking, Bett had not. It was one more reason why Ethan and Susannah had been so close to each other and to their mother. As a boy he had thought Bett difficult; only later did it occur to him that she had probably felt left out, lonely.
“I don’t know what that color means,” he said. “I suppose it could be the color of the spell that killed her, though I’ve never seen conjuring power that looked like this. It’s more likely that her killer is strong enough to mask his or her castings.” He glanced at her. “That’s why I was going to try the second conjuring. It might tell me something more about the spell itself.”
“You shouldn’t be using witchery in here. Not for any purpose.”
He gestured toward the body. “Not even to find out who killed this girl?”
“If God wants us to learn the identity of her killer, He will reveal it to us in His own way.”
“I was just noticing that my conjuring feels stronger in here than it does anywhere else in Boston. Maybe this is His way.”
The look she gave him would have kindled damp wood. “You are speaking of witchcraft in a house of God!”
“Witchcraft?” Ethan repeated, his voice rising. “You know better, Bett! I expect that kind of nonsense from people who know nothing of conjuring, but not from you!”