Jack turned the corner onto a narrow street lined with redbrick buildings, following the route that the scrying stone had shown. It had once been a straight path from the prison to the main street, but so many things had changed. Saint Peter Street in Salem had once been Prison Lane, and where the bodies had swung over Gallows Hill, children now climbed on a jungle gym. And Salem Village was renamed Danvers after a tormented English Baronet who’d hanged himself in his garden. Cheery old place, the North Shore of Massachusetts.
It was a brisk day for April, and he tightened his gray scarf around his neck. From Brown Street, he turned right onto New Liberty Street. A crimson line marked the brick sidewalk, a guide to tourists hoping to learn of Salem’s dark past.
Jack’s family name remained nearby on the gentle drumlin where he’d once lived: Hathorne Hill. But everything else about the hill was different. For over a century, the grim Victorian towers of the Danvers Lunatic Asylum had blighted his hill’s crest. After the witch trials, they’d found a different way to deal with their outcasts. Of course, the asylum’s name had changed, too. Over the years, even as conditions worsened, the institution’s name had transformed into Danvers State Hospital. The bland moniker belied the misery inside: straitjackets, isolation rooms, brutal shock treatments. Where Jack’s apple trees had once grown, doctors performed hasty lobotomies with icepicks jammed though eye sockets, jiggled around until nothing remained of the person inside.
And Fiona says I’m a monster. I may have an unpleasant side, but at least I’m not a rampant sadist. His father was, though. There was no question about that. But Jack was a visionary.
He turned right onto the pedestrianized brick walkway of Essex Street. Some changes were for the best, of course. When he was younger, this main street had been known by the unwieldy name Ye street that goeth from ye meeting house to the training place.
After passing a cart selling pentagram amulets, he turned right toward Ye Olde Witch Shoppe, its front window displaying crystals, a skull, and a stuffed raven. The scrying spell had sent him here, to this charlatan’s playground. Chimes tinkled as he pushed open the front door, and he surveyed the narrow, candlelit room. Incense, herbs, and fake spell books crowded rows of round tables. The scent of patchouli was stifling. To his left, glass bottles lined wooden shelves, and their handwritten labels identified them with names like BAT’S BLOOD, MEMORY OF VENUS, and WOLFSBANE.
Wolfsbane. Now that might actually be useful.
At the back of the shop, a young woman with wavy, dyed-red hair stood behind a counter, her face partially obscured by a candelabrum.
Jack felt something press against his leg, and he glanced down at a black cat wearing a white Elizabethan ruff. The creature rubbed against his calves with a low purr.
“Grimalkin!” the woman called.
The cat turned and ran to her. Jack followed. As he drew closer, past the dreamcatchers and cauldrons, he could see the woman’s curvy figure and maroon lipstick. She had dark, wavy hair, and tattooed alchemical symbols covered her arms. He hadn’t realized she would be so pretty.
She drummed silver fingernails on the counter. “Can I help you?”
He smiled. “It seems fate led me here.”
She grimaced. “What?”
“A scrying stone brought me to you, Alexandria.”
“A scrying stone?” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, staring at him. “What are you talking about?”
“It showed me all about you. You were a math prodigy. Your parents are Harvard-educated physicists. They pushed you to learn complex programming. You took college classes in high school, got into MIT early. But before the end of your sophomore year you’d stopped attending classes.”
She stopped drumming her nails, narrowing her brown eyes at him. “Have you been stalking me online?”
He opened his palms toward the ceiling. “I told you. I used the scrying stone.” He smiled. “You do believe in magic, don’t you? I saw that you rebelled against your mathematical background. You began to experiment with tarot cards, herbal love spells, and astrology. You dabbled with hallucinogenic mushrooms and dated a didgeridoo player who called himself a shaman. And now here you are. Selling trinkets and spells.”
She was trembling now, and circles of pink bloomed on her cheeks. “Who the hell are you?”
“Jack.” He rested his hands on the edge of the counter, pressing forward. “And I need your help to complete my Great Work.”
“You expect me to believe you’re some kind of wizard?”
He sighed. “Philosopher. But I can see you need more convincing.” He raised his right palm before his mouth, whispering a few words in Angelic. A small cloud of colorful, shimmering moths burst from his hand, fluttering around Alexandria.