Museum of Magic, page 10
“You’re not alone,” he said, not breaking her gaze. “You have me.”
But can I trust you? Emmi wanted to say. She bit her doubts down. She wasn’t sure she could trust him—not ever—but he was here.
And right now, that felt like enough.
“You can’t go chasing every witch killed in England,” Puck continued. “There were a lot. Most of them lost to history.”
That just made Emmi sadder. All Agnes Sampson had wanted was someone to remember her name. Someone to remember that she was more than just a witch, tortured and hung and cast aside into an unmarked grave. That she had been a real person.
The impossibility of it all washed over Emmi. So much had happened in the past that was wrong, but also so much was happening now that was wrong. And she was helpless to do anything about any of it.
Puck pulled his hand from her loose grip. Emmi sat with her legs straight in front of her, her back hunched over, but Puck shifted so that he straddled her, a knee on either side of hers. He bent down so his face was forced in front of hers; there was nowhere she could look to avoid his gaze.
“You can’t save everyone,” he said gently.
“I just want to save my grandfather,” Emmi whispered. But it was more than that. The witches, innocent and forgotten. Even the Cat Sìth, trapped where it didn’t belong.
The only thing Emmi knew for certain was that she wasn’t capable of helping them all.
“That’s why you went tearing off through the sigil to come here,” Puck said, still uncomfortably close. “You thought he was here?”
“Or nearby.” Emmi could feel the tears in the backs of her eyes, threatening to spill out. She shifted and felt the dirt clod wrapped in cloth, tucked into her pocket. Dirt. She had chased her grandfather halfway across the world with nothing more than a hunch based off a lump of dirt.
Puck ducked his head again, drawing her focus. “I’m going to kiss you, Castor,” he said in the most calm, even voice Emmi had ever heard him use.
“What?”
“I am going to kiss you, Emmi.”
She blinked. And then he leaned up, his face centimeters from hers, his warm breath on her lips. But he didn’t kiss her. Not yet. Instead, he said, “You can say no. You can pull away.”
She did neither.
And so his lips pressed into hers. His eyes were closed, but hers were open, burning from unshed tears that were forgotten in the shock of his action. He was crouched over her, but he raised one hand, running his fingers from her back, up her neck, and into her hair, clutching her as the kiss deepened. She slid back, giving in to the moment, closing her eyes. Puck’s hand supported her body as she lay down in the park’s grass without once breaking the kiss. He was fully on top of her now, knees on either side of her hip, his chest against hers, his hands framing her face as her hair splayed out on the grass.
When he leaned up, she let out sigh. Her eyelids fluttered open.
Puck smirked down at her, that gleam of mischief sparkling in his gaze. “Noted,” he said.
“What?” Emmi’s mind still swirled.
“One good kiss drives every bad thought from your head.”
That snapped her fully into consciousness. Emmi shoved Puck off her. “Who said it was good?”
“Your lips.”
Emmi ripped some of the grass up and threw it at him, but he laughed, and that made her laugh, and for that one moment, Emmi allowed herself to hope.
Ten of Pentacles, Transposed
quarrels, family troubles, loss of community, materialism
“So, what next?” Emmi asked, leaning back and looking up at the bright blue sky. Afternoons in Devon aren’t so bad, she thought. Maybe, when this is all over…
She nipped that thought in the bud. When this was all over, there was no chance of Puck casually opening up ash sigil portals for lunch in the English countryside. No, when this was all over, either she would have her grandfather back as well as some semblance of her normal life or…or she wouldn’t. And either way, it wasn’t like Puck was going to stick around and be there for her.
“We could kiss again,” Puck offered. “The option is there.”
“No, it’s not,” Emmi said firmly.
Puck raised his eyebrow, but Emmi ignored him. She needed to focus. They had scant clues—the name “Joan” and a big chunk of Cornwall—but she knew that playing whatever dangerous game Puck wanted to play was just as wrong as trying to find her grandfather in this town.
“The reason I wanted to come here was for Boscastle,” she confessed. “Grandfather intended to go there.”
“If you wanted to go to Boscastle, why didn’t we go to Boscastle?” Puck asked.
“Yeah, I’m starting to wonder that as well.”
“Right, so…” Puck made a motion with his hand.
“It’s probably not the right place,” Emmi said.
“If you had a pull to one specific area, it’s at least worth exploring,” Puck offered. “Better than running around in places you know are wrong. Your instincts are stronger than you believe.”
“Fine.” Emmi nodded her head, mind made up. “Let’s go there.”
Puck gathered together the bits of grass Emmi had thrown at him, some dead leaves, and other detritus. Emmi knelt in the grass, blocking Puck from the view of any stray passersby as he igniting the plant matter, incinerating it into ash. “Boscastle,” Puck muttered as the sparks cooled from red to black. “What else is there?”
Emmi had her phone out. She’d known about the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic there, but hadn’t done much research into it. She showed Puck a picture, then turned to look at the article about the museum. “Oh,” she breathed as Puck piled the ash into a little mound. “There was a witch named Joan. Her skeleton was on display at the museum.” Her eyes widened slightly at the thought. She was used to relics on display, but a real human skeleton?
“You know,” Puck said, “I have a theory about that name, Joan—”
Emmi was willing to kiss Puck but definitely not trust him. She shook her head. “Focus, fae.” She tried to use the same playful tone as Puck used when he called her “witch,” but it came out harsher than she intended. Puck’s eyes flicked to hers, inscrutable, but Emmi didn’t retract what she’d said.
Puck has his own agenda, she reminded herself. He’s concerned about the fae creatures caught in the middle of the witches of the past and the Hunters of the present. But if Emmi had to choose, she would choose her grandfather every time.
Puck drew the sigil in the ash, and the portal opened up. They were in a park; anyone could see them. But just as the Hunter had used magic to make people’s eyes slide past him at Holyrood, no one seemed to notice or care about the portal hanging in the air in the middle of the park.
“Coming?” Puck asked. He was still grumpy, but he held his hand out to help Emmi stand. Together, they stepped through the portal.
Boscastle wasn’t that far away from Bideford, but it seemed a little chillier—certainly more windy. Emmi pulled her loose hair into a ponytail as she and Puck stood outside a big white building. The letters “MWM” were plastered on one wall—the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. On the other wall, a big painted sign showed an older woman selling a knotted rope to men in front of a harbor. Emmi squinted up at the illustration.
“An old belief,” Puck explained, noting her attention. “A witch would tie up the wind into knots and sell it to sailors before they left on their journeys. If the sailor didn’t have good winds at sea, he could untie the knot and a wind would fill the sails.”
“Did that ever work?” Emmi asked.
Puck shrugged. “Not like a sailor could demand his money back when he was in the middle of the ocean.”
His eyes slid past her, and alarm bells rang in Emmi’s mind. There was more to this than he was saying. Before she could quiz him further, Puck strode toward the entrance of the museum.
Emmi raced to keep up. A little bell at the door tinkled—this one was silver, not iron—but it was enough to remind Emmi of her own Museum of Magic. She took a deep breath. There was something different about air wrapped around relics, a musty smell like old books and older smoke.
It was home.
“Hi,” an aggrieved voice said from near the entrance. Emmi turned to see a teenager, probably a year or two older than her. He looked incredibly bored. Emmi could understand; manning the front desk at her museum wasn’t always the most entertaining thing to do, but it was also her home, so perhaps her level of pride in it wasn’t possible to emulate in a kid with a summer job.
Emmi paid for her own and Puck’s admission into the museum. “Have you seen anyone like this?” she asked the boy, holding her phone out to show him a picture of her grandfather.
He shrugged, barely glancing at the image.
“His name is Landon Castor,” she pressed. “He owns a museum like this one, in Massachusetts. America.”
“I know where Massachusetts is,” the boy grumbled.
“He was going to come here,” Emmi continued. “Have you seen him? Is there anyone else who works here that may know him?” She felt odd, basically asking for a manager, but this was important.
The boy turned to a computer near the desk by the door. “I’m the only one scheduled for today,” he said. “There are some volunteers I guess. But…” He tapped at the keyboard. “Looks like the owner emailed with a man named Landon Castor, but that was weeks ago.”
“Is the owner around?” Emmi asked.
The boy shrugged, his default mode of communication, but he grabbed a pamphlet and scribbled an email address on the back. “You can try to message them.”
“Thanks,” Emmi muttered. She used her phone to send an e-mail to the museum’s owner without really looking at the displays around her as she followed Puck deeper into the museum. By the time she hit “send” and looked up, she realized she’d lost track of Puck, chasing shadows rather than him.
The museum back home, made from Elspeth’s old house, was packed full of seventeenth century items, most of which could be directly traced back to Elspeth Castor. There were some bad reviews on the internet from people disappointed in the narrow focus of the museum, actually, but looking around this Museum of Witchcraft and Magic left Emmi’s head spinning. Rather than focus on one witch, this museum had bits of pieces of witchcraft throughout history, throughout England, and even displays from other parts of the world. While Emmi’s home was a microcosm of one witch’s life, this museum was a broad view of witchcraft as a whole throughout all time.
Various displays fought for her attention; the labyrinthine dark rooms were filled from floor to ceiling with artifacts, display cases, art work, photographs, and charts documenting various magical practices.
She focused on a black lump under a glass case. The card beside it called it a “Black Lemon: Cursing Charm.” Emmi peered closer, a tingle going up her spine.
Apparently, if someone took a fresh lemon, pierced it with pins, wove a string around the pins, and then hid the lemon in someone’s house, the person would be cursed, their life fading as the fruit rotted. Whoever had been cursed by this particular lemon must have died horribly, if the curse had worked—the lemon was nothing more than a black lump, more similar to coal than citrus.
“Interesting, no?” an older woman said, stepping closer. She wore a badge on her button-up shirt that said, “Volunteer.”
Emmi’s heart surged. Was this someone who may have seen her grandfather? Before she could ask, the woman said, “Curses like this are surprisingly common. I know some people who still use it, or knots.”
Emmi already had her mouth open to ask about grandfather, but the word “knots” reminded her of Puck looking at the sign outside. “What about knots?”
The old woman reached into her pocket and pulled out a black ribbon. “You tie knots in it to use against an enemy,” she said, tucking the ribbon in Emmi’s palm. “You can bind up their ill will, or tether them to a curse. It’s like the lemon curse, but a little more portable.” The old woman’s eyes flicked to Emmi’s jeans.
Hesitatingly, Emmi moved to put the ribbon in her pocket. The woman nodded in approval.
Puck rounded the corner. He raised his eyebrows, a question in his look, but Emmi shrugged. The ribbon in her pocket felt like a secret.
“Were you looking for anything specific, dear?” the old woman asked her.
“My grandfather.” Emmi held her phone out, showing her a picture. The woman shook her head, not recognizing him.
“Or Joan,” Puck said. He casually draped his arm over Emmi’s shoulders in a move that felt almost possessive. Emmi shrugged, knocking him away.
“Joan?” The old woman laughed. “Well, she’s not here any more, but…” She gestured toward a little set of stairs tucked into a corner. Even from here, Emmi could see a large sign and the words Joan Wytte etched on it in Celtic font. “Our fighting fairy, our white witch,” the old woman said with a smile.
“White witch?” Emmi asked.
“Because of her name. Wytte. White.” The old woman’s face turned grave. “I was here when they decided to take her down.”
Emmi remembered reading the article on the museum, how Joan Wytte’s skeleton had been on display for the public.
“The children made a bit of a mockery of it,” the old woman continued. “I mean, children will do that with anything, but it was disrespectful, wasn’t it? She was a witch, yes, but she was human.”
Beside her, Puck stiffened. “All life deserves respect. All death does, too.”
Emmi looked at him in surprise. Puck was so rarely serious, but his countenance now was grave.
“Aye, I suppose Joan would agree with that,” the volunteer said. “Well, she’s at peace now, bless her.”
“Where?” Emmi asked. “Can we visit the grave?” It could not be a coincidence that she heard the name Joan when holding the dirt clod; she felt pulled now to explore that path more.
“What you’re going to want to do is go to Minster Church, just that way.” The woman pointed despite the fact that the walls blocked a clear perception of where to go. “Joan’s buried outside the churchyard, of course, but you’ll find her tombstone just off the path behind the gate.”
Something about the wording snagged in Emmi’s mind. “And that’s where she’s buried? Just past the church gate?”
The old woman laughed. “Oh, you’re a clever one!”
“She is,” Puck said in a low voice no one heard but Emmi.
“Joan’s not actually buried right at the tombstone. Too tempting for vandals. But if you find the tombstone, Joan’s nearby.”
“Can you tell me where?” Emmi asked. This felt right in the same way that going to Bideford had felt wrong.
But the volunteer shook her head. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I only know the grave is near the stone. Unmarked. Joan deserved some peace.”
The woman left them at that, and Emmi reflected on her words as she followed Puck to the display of Joan Wytte’s information. Joan had been respected as a healer and well known for helping people with her skills, but an abscess tooth had caused her to go a bit mad with pain—impatient, more like, and unable to bite her tongue or play nice. She was jailed for witchcraft after that, died in prison, and her bones were put on display after being passed around. She’d only been in her late thirties.
The display had a recreation of the tombstone Emmi hoped to find at the church. The bottom had the words “No Longer Abused” etched into them.
“It may not even be real,” Puck muttered in a low voice.
“What do you mean?”
Puck shrugged. “During that time, bones of a witch would have been…a novelty. This is the stuff of local legends. The prison she went to—Bodmin Jail—it’s huge. Lots of nameless people, vagrants, beggars and the like, stuffed inside. A jailer wants to make some money, all he had to do was sell a body. Happened all the time.”
“Who would want a body?” Emmi gasped.
“Doctors, mostly. They were still learning how to do surgeries. Better to practice of the dead than the living. Grave robbing could make a man rich.”
“That’s horrible,” Emmi said.
Puck shrugged. “That’s human. Anyway, not the first time some poor woman had her body used for science and display even after she died. Add a local spin, put her in a museum, then you’ve got a prize attraction.”
Emmi felt sick at the idea. The information on the wall in front of her claimed Joan Wytte was well-known as a witch, but Puck was right. Could that sort of thing be verified? She’d died in 1813 and wasn’t buried for nearly two centuries. The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic hadn’t opened until the 1950s. What had happened in the time between Joan’s death and the museum opening? How could anyone even verify that it was Joan in that grave, after being hung on the wall?
Another thought hit her then—if the woman in the grave wasn’t Joan, then her clue was not a clue at all. No matter how right it felt to be in Boscastle and on this trail, it could be another misdirection, more time lost with her grandfather still missing.
Turning from the display, Emmi was prepared to leave. Grandfather wasn’t here, that much was certain, and perhaps Joan wasn’t either. They needed to find out and move on, even though Emmi had no idea where the next step of their journey may take them.
Puck let out a little snort as they passed another display case. “Look at that,” he said, pulling her closer.
A long pin was on display, along with a little card detailing how that pin was used to pierce a supposed witch’s skin. If the wound did not bleed, it was considered proof of her being evil.
More lies, more ways to abuse women. It was an easy parlor trick to not fully pierce the skin or to fake jabbing a person and “prove” they did not bleed when they should.
But Puck didn’t move, even as Emmi tugged at his arm. “It’s brass,” he said in a low voice. “That’s not right.”
