Read Online 09 - Return Of The Witch by Dana E. Donovan - Free Book Online

Nay, Milady. Bridget was my sister, born three and twenty years `fore I.”
    “ Of course. I see the resemblance. Not at first, but I see now. I knew Bridget Bishop. A fine woman she was. Shame they hanged her. Thou doth look as Bridget looked in years of youth. How be it then, thou hath stayed so fair through so many rites of passage?”
    Ursula wrinkled her petite nose and shrugged. “ I have but yet to make first passage.”
    “ I do not understand.”
    “I did it,” I said, buffing my nails on my chest. “I brought her back from a box of bones.”
    The old woman reeled back, surprised. “Aye, the revivification spell. I have heard of it. I have of mind a Georgetown witch did that.”
    “Nope. That was me, a little ol` New Castle girl.” I sniffed and pitched a nod toward Ursula. “I dare say she’s some of my best work.”
    Paige Turner nodded. “Mayhap thy best doth lay before thee now.”
    “How so?”
    “The prophecy.”
    “Yeah, the prophecy. See that’s why we’re here. I believe you mentioned something about that in your blog.”
    “Then ye both must know `tis true, for it has begun.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The great battle, as forewarned by the Pendle Six. Have thee not acquired the quintessential?”
    “I have not.”
    She leveled her stare and studied my face, curious, if not suspicious. “On thy word?”
    I shook my head. “Look, do you think we’d be here if I possessed the quintessential?”
    “ Did ye both not make travel to the dark dimension and back?”
    “ The E.S. Yes. We did, but I’m telling you. I came back empty-handed. In fact, I lost something very dear to me in the process— someone very dear.”
    Paige Turner stood and crossed the room. She retrieved a book from a shelf above a tin-horned phonograph and returned it to her seat. The book looked like a Grimoire, only much older than any I had ever seen before. It was tattered, dusty and exceedingly worn. Clearly, the old girl had used it a time or two.
    She set the book on her lap and laid both hands upon it. “Do you know what this is?” she asked.
    “ Of course,” I said, shooting her an involuntary bite-me look. “I have one, too. Only mine was printed in days of movable type.”
    She cracked her own version of a bite me smile. “Then yours is not complete.” She opened the book to a page previously bookmarked with a black ribbon and read from it.
    “ Lo the darkness what returns, for evil bides within the silent shade of night. She preys upon the weak and naïf when pale becomes the jilted moon. Be thee warned thy Guardians of Four, lest her cunning ways shalt reap what essences thou doth squander. Alas, ye art blind to her wicked deeds, for evil be thy name.
    “ Yet perish not in vain, young souls, thy dust doth scatter here and yon. Behold the Pentacle Prodigy. Forfend she wilt the vile cloud. Dudgeon fuels her battle. Possessed of right and the quintessential, she shalt fear naught and availeth much.”
    Paige closed the book and looked up at me, her hooded eyes awash in the yellow glow of candlelight. “Well?”
    I turned my palms up empty. “Well what? That passage i sn’t in my Grimoire.”
    “I should think not. This is the Demdike Grimoire.”
    “Demdike…Demdike. Where have I heard that name before?”
    Ursula said, “`Tis Elizabeth Southerns. She and Demdike art but one and the same.”
    “ Of course, Lizzy Southerns, the Pendle Six matriarch. You mean to tell me that’s her Grimoire?”
    “It is,” Paige replied. “The prophecy is written within the margins in her own hand, penned the night before her trial. See and bare witness that she speaks of a jilted moon, and of thee, the Pentacle Prodigy.”
    “Me , a prodigy? That’s rich. What are you, high?”
    She stood and c rossed the room, clutching the Grimoire to her chest in one hand and pointing her cane at me with the other.
    “ Thou hast walked the dark dimension,” she said, gritting her teeth. “And in so doing did