Her words are off. They seem forced. I can’t help it—I stare at her face. I’ve seen thousands of faces since Anna failed to surface, but I’ve never seen one so similar. Never heard a voice with the same timbre. If I hadn’t touched her, if this girl weren’t clearly made of flesh and bone, I’d think she was a ghost.
She scrubs her face with her hands, nails clean and shaped. Her eyes blink open and then she takes my hands. “I’m terrible. Here I am, barging in on your breakfast, stealing your food, dumping my problems in your lap, and yet I haven’t even asked your name.”
“It’s Evie,” I reply.
“Evie,” she repeats, testing my name out on her tongue. “British?”
“Evelyn, yes. My mother fell in love with the name in Brighton.”
“I can see why.” Annemette smiles, her teeth clean and straight, like that of a princess or a dairymaid.
I tell myself again that she’s not Anna. She’s not even the girl from the porthole or the beach or anywhere else. She’s a farm girl from the other side of the pass. My cheeks grow hot. Annemette squeezes my hands. “Thank you for your generosity, Evie—it’s a gift. Truly.” Her eyes sting red again and her lip trembles. “I doubt I’ll be so lucky again.”
I don’t know what to do with this openness. This odd feeling blooming in my stomach. “You really have nothing and nowhere to go?”
Annemette waves her hands across her body. “Only my clothes and my pride.”
I can’t explain this girl or my feelings or why I have the need to believe her, but I do. And I want to help. “Come with me.”
9
THE LITTLE HOUSE THAT MY FATHER BUILT ISN’T THAT far from Havnestad Cove—it’s practically waterside itself, the cottage at the end of a lane in the shadow of ?ldenburg Castle. It backs up to a thatch of trees that buffer it from a rocky cliff jutting out into the sea.
“It’s so quaint,” Annemette says.
“It’s home,” I answer, and push through the front door. It’s been a long time since I’ve introduced someone to our tiny cottage. When I was little, we’d often take in children while their parents were away at sea. But that stopped after Mother died.
At the hearth, Tante Hansa is stirring something—by the smell of it, most likely the ham-and-pea concoction she brings to every Lithasblot to place beside the roast hog we have on the second day of the festival. Because “there can never be enough swine in this sodden fish market.” Hansa’s back is turned, and I feel the need to announce that we have company—it’s never safe for a witch to have no warning.
“Tante Hansa, I’d like you to meet my new friend.”
Hansa wipes her hands, and I know by the set of her shoulders she was stirring the soup without a spoon. Domestic spells aren’t spectacular, but they’re her favorites because she’d never planned on having a family of her own—and Father and I are more work than she’d like to admit.
When she turns, her face is pulled up in a smile, clear blue eyes flashing with the delight of catching me at something remotely unusual. Hansa is my mother’s older sister by almost two decades, the time between them filled with brothers who lost their lives to the sea’s moods much too young. She is as old as the grief of burying all her siblings suggests. But I have never been able to put anything past her.
Which means her reaction to Annemette is the same as mine. Only she actually says what she’s thinking.
“Why, Anna, returned from the deep, have we?”
Annemette’s mouth drops open as if she’s lost her tongue, her jovial attitude gone as well.
“Annemette, Tante,” I correct. “She’s from the valley. A farm.”
Hansa takes a step forward and raises a brow—quite the feat given the blood-drawing tightness of her hairdo.
“Is that so?” Hansa looks her up and down. “Those hands haven’t seen a day of hard work in all your years. That fair face hasn’t seen the sun. And that dress is worth more than the best cow in the valley.” She takes a step forward and grabs Annemette’s smooth hand. “Who are you really?”
“Tante, please, leave her be, she’s had a rough trip—”
“Hush. You only see what you want to see.” She turns back to Annemette, staring at the girl as if she could bend her will as easily as she tamed the soup. “So, again I ask—who are you really?”
Annemette’s eyes have gone red around the rims again, but she doesn’t cry. If anything, there’s an edge of defiance in the cut of them. Like she’s accepted Hansa’s dare for what it is. But when she speaks, she says the last thing I’d expect.
“Your soup is boiling.”
But the soup is more than boiling. The pea-green liquid hisses as it rolls in violent, unnatural waves over the iron pot’s rim.
“Ah!” Hansa cackles. “I’ve seen your type before.”
I’m stunned. Her type? Is Annemette a witch?
I stare at her.
Another witch. My age. Next to me.
Of all the things I can’t believe about Annemette, this might be the most unfathomable.
Something cracks open in my chest as the secret we’ve held so tightly as a family flies into the soupy air. I stare at this face so familiar and yet so strange, and my mind whirls. Anna was not a witch, but Annemette certainly is.
Annemette nods, and the liquid returns to a gentle simmer.
My aunt’s spotted hands grasp Annemette’s again, but this time there’s a funny light in her eyes, all her skepticism gone. “Evie, child, you’ve made quite an interesting friend indeed.”
It’s a long while before Tante Hansa allows us to escape, having thoroughly quizzed Annemette on her family. In the funny way of things, we both claim lineage to the town of Ribe and Denmark’s most famous witch, Maren Spliid. Tied to a ladder and thrown into a fire by King Christian IV 220 years ago, she became as much a lesson as a legend. Her talent was inspiring, but ultimately her audacity was her undoing. Her death and so many others under the witch-hunter king scattered Denmark’s witches like ashes in the wind. And our kind never recovered—our covens fractured, magic kept to families and never shared.
Given the time and distance, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there’s more than one magical family in Havnestad related to Ribe and Maren, yet I still can’t believe it. We’ve been alone for so long.
After Hansa is finally satisfied with her family tree, Annemette and I head outside. We walk into the woods behind the cottage, where we’re shaded from every angle, including from ?ldenburg Castle and its sweeping views, and start to pick our way down toward the sea.
The ground is covered in gnarled roots and branches, a danger for anyone not looking where they’re going. But I know this steep path better than anyone, and I use this moment to steal another glance at Annemette. Her family may be from elsewhere, but her face still belongs here.
Anna did not have any magic in her blood, at least as far as I know. She had two “common” parents and a grandmother who loved her more than the sun. Her parents left shortly after Anna’s funeral. Took their titles and moved to the Jutland—miles and miles from this place and the daughter they lost. Her grandmother is still here, but she’s gone senile with grief, the loss of her family too much for her mind. I see her at the bakeshop sometimes, and she calls every person there Anna. Even me.
“What?” Annemette says, catching me looking as we pass between twin trees, slick with sap.
I can’t tell her what I’m thinking, but I do have questions for her. “It’s just . . . how did you know we were witches? If you’d been wrong, we could’ve reported you. You could’ve been banished.”
She dips her head to avoid a branch. “I could just feel it.”
Like Tante Hansa did.
“I must not be much of a witch,” I say. “I couldn’t tell. I mean, now my blood won’t stop singing, but an hour ago? No.” There’s so much I don’t know about the magic in my bones.
“I’m sure you’re a fine witch, Evie.”
It’s a nice thing to say, I suppose, but not necessarily true. Tante Hansa teaches me only the most mundane of spells. But I read her books and Mother’s books, and I know there is so much more. With a few words and her will, Annemette brought out all that possibility into the open.