She pressed the receiver to her ear. “Yes?”
There were a few moments of muffled words from the other end of the line, and then Mrs. Ranulf’s face paled. “Mrs. Forzese. We do what we must to protect our country.” She slammed down the phone before glaring at Fiona. “Your mother would like to terminate your education here. You will not be finishing your junior year. It’s a terrible waste.”
“She misses me.” Fiona turned, leaving Mrs. Ranulf alone in the drawing room. She hurried through the hallway to the garden doors, slipping out quietly. She still had to meet Tobias and Alan to look over the spell book.
Fiona picked her way through the overgrown field behind the gardens. There was a burning smell in the air, and a tendril of dark smoke curled into the sky from somewhere near the cemetery. The scent of a barbecue made her mouth water.
She was meeting Tobias and Alan in the magnolia grove by the river. Despite the gentle sounds of the water lapping against the shore as she drew closer, her shoulders locked with tension. The Purgators were watching everyone with hawks’ eyes. It was a relief that her mother was coming to get her, but she couldn’t leave without finding Mariana and Connor.
Through the trees, she spied Alan and Tobias sitting on a fallen trunk. She’d been dying to sneak into their room again last night to look over the spells, but the idea of waking the crypt demon again gave her pause.
Alan looked up and waved as she approached, while Tobias’s gaze darted around. He’d seemed—jumpy lately, like he was waiting for something to happen. She sat next to him on the moss-covered trunk, trying not to think of his strong arms around her the night before.
She wiped a hand across her sweating forehead. “I spoke to my mother. She’s totally freaked out that they arrested Mariana. She’s coming down here.”
“At least we have a ride out of here after we find Mariana,” said Alan. “My parents aren’t coming for me. They think the Ranulfs are amazing.”
Fiona glanced at Tobias. “So what spells do we have to work with?”
Tobias pulled the scrapbook out of Alan’s backpack. “It’s not really a spell book. More of a diary. It belonged to Great-Grandfather Edgar’s wife, Pearl.” He touched the gold-embossed cover.
Her stomach sank. “But there were spells in it.”
“Only at the start.” He opened the cover to the brittle spell pages, clipped into the book. “Just three, in fact. One cures corn leaf blight. The other two, I’m not sure.”
She folded her arms. “A corn leaf blight cure? What’s the point of that?”
Tobias looked at her askance. “Stop people from starving. It just doesn’t help us.”
She pulled at the collar of her T-shirt, trying to loosen the tight neck. “I’m starving, if you count what they’re doing to us here.”
Alan leaned forward. “But there’s some other interesting information in the rest of the book.”
“Like what?” She pulled the book from Tobias, paging past the spells.
“It mostly amounts to one thing.” Alan leaned back on his palms. “The Ranulfs were terrible people. Exhibit A.” He pointed to a diary entry. “Pearl describes a failed slave escape from the early 18th century, some of the Ranulf slaves among them. The captured slaves were hanged, drawn and quartered, right here in Virginia. Pearl approved heartily.”
“Christ,” said Fiona. She flipped back to the early pages to find a hand-drawn family tree spanning dozens of pages. “How far back does the family history go?”
Alan stared at the river. “Very far. All the way to the Norman invasion, when the Randwolfe family arrived in England. In the 17th century, King James sent them here to ensure that witchcraft didn’t take hold in the New World. The Ranulfs still want to establish a monarchy, led by the Brotherhood. They’re playing the long game. And they’re awfully fond of slavery.”
Tobias squinted as a ray of sunlight pierced the trees. “Perhaps, but they were scared of their slaves.”
“True. There was a big revolt in 1775 that had them totally panicked. The Ranulfs were convinced the slaves knew magic.”
Fiona turned another handwritten page. “There was a slave revolt in 1775? That’s right when the American Revolution started.”
Alan ran his hand along soft green moss on the tree trunk. “Not only the same year, but the same week of April. It was all related, but the Ranulfs were outraged. Here they were, trying to fight for liberty, and their slaves were getting ideas about freedom.”
“So what happened?” asked Fiona.
Alan grimaced. “It didn’t work out for most of them. Pearl’s only lament was that they weren’t burned to death or broken on the Catherine wheel like they were in New York. At later points, little rebellions worked out better, and the escaped slaves formed the Underground Railroad.”