“Even better. There was a drawing, which matched Annie’s athame.”
Bobby got a chill. “What did Anne have to say about that?”
“She didn’t seem surprised.”
“I bet not,” Bobby said. He was starting to think Anne had hunted down that athame with the same intensity that the Venatores Mali had hunted her.
But why?
Chapter 18
“Why would Anne want an athame when she wasn’t a fire witch?” I asked. From Bobby’s glance, he’d been about to ask the same thing.
“Who wouldn’t want it? It was probably worth fifty thousand dollars.”
“Fifty thousand for a knife?” Bobby blurted.
“Not just any knife. If it was the same one, that athame belonged to Roland McHugh. The founder of the Venatores Mali.”
My breath caught. Uh-oh.
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“You notice no one’s come in since you did?” Todd indicated the books lining the walls of the shop. “I got nothin’ but time to read them.”
Bobby rubbed his eyes. “What else do you know about the Venatores Mali?”
“I never heard of ’em before I saw that carving on the athame. They were a secret society.”
“They were burning people on the orders of King James. You’d think someone would have kept records.”
“If they did, they hid them well. The only information I found was in diaries. McHugh scared everyone, including his followers. He was obsessed with witches, and once on the trail of one, he didn’t stop until they were ashes.”
I got a shiver, which was silly. McHugh had been dead for centuries.
“All of the witch hunters and black-robed inquisitors were fanatics,” Bobby said. “It was kind of their thing.”
“For McHugh the hunt was personal. Sure, he fried anyone he could along the way, but he was obsessed with one witch in particular for the rest of his life.”
“The one that got away?” Bobby asked.
“Unfortunately, no. He burned both her and her husband.”
“End of story,” Bobby said.
“Not quite. The woman was a midwife who attended McHugh’s wife in childbirth. His wife and the child died.”
“That happened a lot back then.” Bobby took a breath, let it out. “Although I can see how the man became unhinged.”
He tried to keep his voice neutral, but I heard what lay beneath. I took his hand, and, though he cast me a curious glance, he let me.
“The problem was that the midwife gave birth to three healthy girls shortly after. Back then, more than twins were rare and kind of witchy, their surviving even more so. McHugh got it in his head that the woman had sacrificed his wife and child so that hers would live. He vowed to find those devil-spawned children, no matter what it took.”
“How’d he lose them?”
Both men glanced at me, and I continued. “He murdered the parents. Did they sense the end was near and hide the babies?”
Todd actually rubbed his palms together. Considering all the blood and fire and death, he was enjoying the tale a little too much. “Here’s where it gets interesting. The Venatores Mali surprised the couple in a cottage in the deepest, darkest forest. They built a pyre.”
“Huge mistake in a forest,” I observed.
“They’d made enough of them to know what they were doing,” Todd said. “McHugh believed both mother and father were witches. Strapped them back-to-back on the stake and lit them up.”
I must have flinched because Bobby’s fingers tightened around mine. “The children?” I asked.
“Held in the arms of three hunters.”
“They made them watch?”
“They were a few days old. Doubt they could focus on much, or remember anything at all.”
For an instant I felt the fire hot against my face, the smoke, the smell, the shouts, and the terror. My imagination working overtime again.
“If the triplets were there, then why would McHugh spend his life searching for them?” Bobby asked.
“They disappeared.” Todd flipped his fingers toward the ceiling. “Like magic.”
Bobby snorted. “The men holding them ran off. Protected them. Hid them.”
“Those dudes? Not a chance. Even if they’d suddenly sprouted a conscience, they were scared of McHugh. Those who crossed him were labeled devotees of Satan, and they fried too.”
“There has to be a better explanation than magic,” Bobby insisted.
“According to the diary I read, the parents chanted as they died. The flames burned so high and hot, they were incinerated in an instant. Nothing left but ashes, and if you know anything about burning bodies, that ain’t easy. The children vanished, and they were never seen again.”
“That’s impossible,” Bobby said.
Todd lifted one shoulder. “Blood magic is the most powerful kind. Their disappearance made McHugh nuttier than before. He vowed vengeance on his deathbed.”
“He could vow whatever he liked,” Bobby said. “Death is the end.”
Not always.