Witchtown Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Map

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A Modern Witch’s Primer

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  Singular Reads

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH on Social Media

  Copyright © 2017 by Cory Putman Oakes

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  The illustrations are done in pen and ink.

  Cover design by Jim Secula

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Oakes, Cory Putman, author.

  Title: Witchtown / by Cory Putman Oakes.

  Description: Boston ; New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. | Summary: When they arrive in Witchtown, everything changes for a teenager and her mother, who travel to witch-only communities, lying, cheating, and stealing everything they can—leaving behind only a powerful spell that erases them from the memories of everyone they have ever met.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016014684 | ISBN 9780544765573 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Witches—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Swindlers and swindling—Fiction. | Memory—Fiction. | Community life—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.O15 Wi 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014684

  eISBN 978-1-328-69890-2

  v1.0617

  For Mark, my own personal safe-haven

  A Modern Witch’s Primer

  Chapter 1

  Havens in Historical Context

  Near the beginning of this century, with occultism on the rise around the world, a whistleblower from within the pagan community exposed a secret that had long been protected by witches everywhere. The secret was that in addition to Learned witches, ordinary individuals who studied pagan practices and who could, with practice, learn to channel a small amount of power for their rituals, there were also so-called Natural witches, people who possessed a tremendous amount of inborn power and who required little or no formal training to wield it.

  In response to the public outcry over this “unregulated threat to public safety,” the United States government instituted a National Witch Registry and required all Natural witches, under pain of imprisonment, to submit their name, city of residence, and place of employment to a publicly searchable database.

  There was a good faith movement within the Natural witch community to comply with this registry.

  Over the next few years, in what would eventually become known as the Second Inquisition, the witches who volunteered their identities were systemically ostracized from their social circles, became unable to retain jobs, and in some cases, were hunted down and abducted by private-citizen “safety brigades.” The runaway bestseller The Inquisitor’s Handbook provided these groups with instructions (mostly badly translated from a sixteenth-century copy of Malleus Maleficarum, a.k.a. The Witch’s Hammer) as to the proper method of torture and execution of witches. Law enforcement was slow to recognize these atrocities as hate crimes and generally lackadaisical in its prosecution of the perpetrators.

  The government’s solution was to seize small parcels of (mostly undesirable) land around the country in order to establish witch-only communities known as Havens. This, it was argued, would remove the threat to public safety and the temptation for hate crimes, while allowing both Learned and Natural witches to live among their own kind, keep their traditions alive, and practice magic in safety.

  The greatest of these Havens was a private township created by the late billionaire insurance magnate Reginald Harris, one of the richest and most influential men in the United States and, until his final years, an unregistered Natural witch. Unlike the small, poor, mostly rural communities that established themselves in most of the government-funded Havens, Harris’s town, deep in America’s heartland, was intended to be a pagan utopia: a model of green building, spiritual enlightenment, and, above all, magical living.

  It was called Witchtown.

  Chapter One

  Witchtown looked more like a prison than a town.

  For one thing, it was surrounded on all sides by a three-story wall. The massive structure was overgrown with ivy and moss, but when we got within a few hundred yards, I could see plenty of places where ugly, manmade concrete was peeking through the greenery. The walls were sloped at a steep angle, probably to prevent people from climbing them. That thought brought on unwelcome images of invaders scaling the slippery, mossy surface, armed and planning to inflict untold horror on the people—​the witches—​inside . . .

  I chased the thought away.

  Those times are over, I reminded myself. For the most part.

  She pulled over right beside the sign.

  BURN IN HELL was spray-painted diagonally right across its face, in red. Below that, the phrases SATAN’S SPAWN and EXODUS 22:18 were carved into its surface. The usual anti-witch slurs. Not particularly original. But once I managed to squint my way through all of that, the original lettering on the sign erased any remaining doubt I might have had about our destination:

  WITCHTOWN

  POPULATION 402

  BLESSED BE!

  I straightened up a little and looked across the front seat at my mother.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I asked.

  My mother sipped her coffee and didn’t respond right away. After days of near-total silence in the car, my words felt uncomfortably loud, even to my own ears. I wasn’t sure how long our stalemate had lasted. It’s hard to define days based on rest-stop bathrooms and drive-through meals.

  She took several more leisurely swallows of coffee. Then she asked, “Why would you think I was kidding?”

  “You think now is a good time for this? Now? After everything . . .” I cringed. Even just that little bit of talking had distracted me. Caused me to let my guard down. And the sinkhole of pain I had been keeping at bay reopened itself inside my chest. It felt bigger. Like it had grown stronger. It grabbed me now with an intensity that made it difficult to breathe.

  “That’s all behind us now,” my mother said, but I barely heard her.

  Too soon. Too soon for reality.

  I had to shut it down. I abandoned the conversation, closed my eyes, and sank back down into the passenger seat. I felt for my weathered leather jacket, which I had been using as a blanket, and found it on the car floor. I picked it up and covered myself in it, trying to ignore everything but its familiar scents of sage and something else, something even earthier than sage, as I tried to lull myself back into my silent, senseless cocoon.

  Oblivion. Oblivion. Take me away . . .

  But a hard tug on the jacket brought me back to the here and now. To my mother,
glaring down at me with disapproval.

  “It’s in the past,” she insisted.

  I jerked the coat out of her hand and turned my face toward the window.

  “Not for me.”

  A harder yank pulled the leather from my grip entirely. I sat up in protest. My mother gave the garment a disgusted look and tossed it down at my feet.

  “Let it go,” she commanded. Then she added pointedly, “You know you’re the only one dwelling on it, don’t you?”

  I bit my lip. That was true enough. But it didn’t make the hurt any less.

  The thought brought on a new squeeze of pain, a new struggle to breathe. I retrieved the jacket from the floor again, settled my head against the back of the seat, and closed my eyes.

  My mother sighed. “Fine. Have it your way,” she huffed, and I heard her door open. A gust of cinnamon-scented air flew up my nostrils as she exited the car.

  After a moment, I opened my eyes.

  The annoying thing was I knew, I knew, I was going to follow her out of the car. I could feel it now: the quiet, persistent, unshakable pull she had on me. Calling me after her. Forcing me to see things her way.

  I burrowed my nose into the soft lining of the coat, making one last attempt to hold on to my anger. Part of me wanted to believe that every second I stayed mad at her would give me a tiny bit more power. Which was nonsense. I had never had any kind of power over my mother.

  Nobody had.

  I left the jacket on the seat when I went after her.

  She had popped open the trunk and unzipped the top suitcase. I leaned against the bumper and watched as she rooted through a messy pile of clothes.

  “Here, hold this.”

  She tossed something black and strappy at me. I caught it, instantly wishing I had just let it fall into the dirt instead.

  With only a quick glance at the empty road beside us, she stripped off her T-shirt and jeans. She exchanged her flip-flops for the heels, one foot at a time, gripping one of my shoulders for balance. The blue-gray moonstone she wore on a chain around her neck caught the light of the setting sun as she fumbled with the delicate straps on the shoes.

  She caught me looking at her necklace, and gestured pointedly at the matching one around my neck.

  “Haven’t I always protected you?” she asked. “Hasn’t it always been you and me?”

  I took a breath instead of answering. Separately, those two statements were accurate. But together, they seemed to mean something more. Something that wasn’t quite true.

  She slipped the dress over her tall, slim body, pulled the clip out of her hair, and shook out the ashy blond strands until they bounced, wavy and alive, against her shoulders. You wouldn’t have known she’d been in a car for days.

  I was wearing severely rumpled jeans and a tank top. Neither of us suggested that I change. Or do anything with my own long, dirty blond hair, which was piled in a greasy knot on the top of my head. I could only imagine how I looked, next to her.

  “We’re not ready for this,” I said.

  She put one hand on each of my shoulders. We were the same height, but now that she was in heels, I had to crane my neck up slightly to make eye contact.

  “I shouldn’t have to tell you what this place means to us,” my mother said quietly. “Look at it.”

  I looked. And when I did, I saw a cluster of buildings, so carefully tucked into the shadow of the Witchtown wall that I hadn’t noticed them before. The structures looked temporary—​tents, shacks, and old RVs. They gave me the creeps. Even more than the wall did.

  “This is it,” my mother continued. “Everything we’ve ever wanted, ever dreamed of, is inside those walls. We are this close.”

  She let go of one shoulder and grabbed my chin.

  “But you have to pull yourself together. Right now. Or we haven’t got a prayer. Understand?”

  I nodded, more to show her I was listening than anything else. If she chose to take that as a sign that I agreed with her, that was her problem.

  She tightened her hand, squeezing my jaw to the point of pain.

  “I did it for you,” she said evenly, moving her hands so they were on either side of my face. “You know that, right?”

  I flinched. I was still one big, open wound. Hearing her talk like that, in that casual way of hers, was too much to bear.

  I glared at her. I had seen my mother’s glare many times before. It was beautiful. And terrible. It could make things, and people (myself included), wilt under its power.

  My glare was nothing like that. But I was surprised to discover it had a small effect on her; she dropped her hands from my face and took a step back.

  “Too soon,” she muttered to herself, and went back to the driver’s-side door.

  I walked back to the passenger door, feeling like I had won a tiny victory. I had made it clear that this time, this pain, was not something she could just breeze past, the way she did with most things.

  And yet, even with my small triumph, she had still managed to get the better of me. Here I was, getting back in the car. Without an argument. Just like she wanted.

  I twirled my moonstone around my finger.

  Witchtown. Really?

  Chapter Two

  The road led us to a large gate in the northernmost part of the wall. The sun had started to set, and the harsh lights on top of the gate shone down on a half-dozen men in black fatigues, carrying machine guns.

  Private security. Forget prison. Witchtown was a fortress. Reginald Harris had seen to that when he mapped out the place. I had heard enough stories about the guy to know he had been a nutcase about security.

  One of the guards had a vicious-looking German shepherd on a leash. I was too busy watching the dog sniff every inch of our car to hear what my mother said that caused the guards to fall back and the enormous metal gate to open.

  We were soon surrounded on all sides by trees, but not before I caught a glimpse of what looked like farm fields. It was hard to tell for sure, as the sun was almost completely gone and the thick trees were blotting out most of the light.

  The road changed from dirt to bumpy cobblestones as we approached what I was tempted to call the town square, except it was in the shape of a circle. The space was surrounded by a ring of whitewashed buildings with dark, exposed beams and thatched roofs. My mother pulled the car up in front of one that looked like all the others. The shingle hanging off the front read MAYOR’S OFFICE in quaint lettering.

  A smaller shingle underneath said WITCHTOWN REAL ESTATE.

  “We’re here,” she said, unnecessarily. She turned the ignition off and grabbed my left hand hard so I couldn’t yank it away.

  With her free hand she reached up to touch the headless, toga-clad statuette that was hanging from our rearview mirror.

  “Laverna, bless us,” she said to the figurine, then looked at me expectantly.

  I muttered the same words and reached up with my free hand to brush my fingers against the Goddess. She was marble, but she was never cool to the touch the way marble was supposed to be. She was always kind of warm. Like skin.

  I pulled my hand back from the statuette as soon as my mother dropped hers.

  She opened her car door and gestured toward the almost-empty coffee cup in the holder between us. I handed her the cup. With her right hand still grasping my left hand, she poured three drops of the leftover coffee onto the ground.

  “Darkness and clouds,” my mother said, and squeezed my hand once before letting it go. She unhooked the small figure from the mirror and tucked Laverna carefully into the side pocket of her purse.

  The Witchtown Real Estate office was still open. At the door, we were confronted by a woman with frizzy red hair, a skintight pencil skirt, and a slightly panicked expression.

  “I’m sorry, but there must have been some kind of mistake,” she said bluntly, positioning herself so that we could step just inside the door but no farther.

  My mother frowned. “Oh?”

  The
frazzled woman held up her hand; her fingers were clenched around a cell phone.

  “The guards called to say they let you in, but they must have been mistaken.” She glanced out the office window at our dusty green Volkswagen and bit her lip. “We have no openings at the moment. My apologies, but I’ll have to ask you to leave now.”

  The door to an inner office opened behind her and another woman emerged. She was shorter than the frizzy-haired woman, but I could see she had ten times more gravity. She was wearing a tailored skirt suit and heels. Her white-blond hair, which was cut short, contrasted sharply with the deep olive color of her skin, and she had the slightly distracted expression of someone thinking about too many things at once.

  She took in the scene before her and raised an eyebrow at Frizz.

  “Lois?” she asked.

  “Handled!” Frizz assured the woman, who had to be her boss.

  The blonde nodded absently.

  Lois flashed us a falsely bright smile. “I’m so sorry for the mix-up. If you’d like to fill out an online application, you’ll be entered into the lottery with the other applicants and contacted in due course.”

  She gestured behind us, obviously indicating that we should leave.

  Instead, my mother braced herself against the side of the door so her right hand was at eye level, her knuckles facing the room.

  “I see,” she said, smiling, as though she was not put off in the least by Lois’s rudeness. “And do you have something I might use to write down the website address? I have a terrible memory for such things.”

  She drummed her fingers against the door frame. The gesture was lost on Lois, who turned to rifle through some loose papers on the desk as she presumably searched for a pen. But Lois’s boss paused at the threshold of the inner-office door, her eyes fixed on my mother’s hand.

  Or, more precisely, on her silver ring.

  It wasn’t a very flashy ring. It wasn’t even very attractive. It was just several strands of silver woven together into an intricate double knot the exact shape of two tangled-up infinity symbols. But it was enough to make the blonde in the suit stop in her tracks.