Page 9 of A Lullaby for Witches

“If you want to drop off your stuff in the kitchen, I thought we might start with a tour of the house?”

Augusta hung up her raincoat to dry, stuck her yogurt in the fridge and then glanced around. Besides the hum of the kitchen appliances and a phone ringing somewhere upstairs from the offices, it was silent. Even the traffic was muted from the rain.

“Is it always so quiet on Mondays?” she asked.

“It’s quiet compared to the days when we’re open to the public, but usually Sharon is around. We also have a few other staff members that split their time between Harlowe House and the archives in Boston, so it can get busy if we have a lot of projects going on. Sharon is out today, so it’s just you and me. On Wednesday, you’ll meet all the tour guides.”

After Augusta took a peek at her office—her own office!—Jill started the tour. “We’re really trying to do more to tell the stories of everyone who lived in Tynemouth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not just the upper class, white population. Immigrants were coming from Boston and the population here was incredibly diverse.”

Jill flicked on a light and led her into a surprisingly modern space, complete with gleaming hardwood floors and pristine white walls. “This would have been the ballroom back in the 1800s, but now we have rotating exhibits in this space featuring local artists. Last summer we even had a bluegrass band perform. Our director of community outreach works out of our Boston office, but you’ll see him sometime. He’s responsible for putting these events together, and occasionally he’ll ask for objects from our collection to highlight in the exhibits, usually to draw a parallel between the history of the area and the current art scene.” She gestured to a display featuring a collection of embroidery hoops. “Like this one—we did a spotlight on local fiber artists, and used some of the baskets and embroideries from our collection. Do you think you’d be interested in helping pull objects for exhibits like that in the future?”

“Definitely. That’s amazing.” Augusta leaned over to read the placard on one of the hoops before they moved on.

“Great!” Jill motioned for Augusta to follow her as they left the ballroom. “Just through here,” she said, as they passed through a narrow hall. “Not as modern as the staff kitchen, but I’m kind of jealous of the tiles in here.”

It was easy to see why. Gleaming white tiles with bright, purple ink depicting every manner of country scene lined the back splash and countertops. It was a visual feast, like something right out of a French home-and-garden magazine. “We’ll just scoot through the butler’s pantry,” Jill said, leading the way.

After the light and airy kitchen, Augusta wasn’t prepared for the dark room they entered next. “Watch your step here,” Jill instructed. “We don’t usually take tours in here unless they specifically ask or it’s a VIP, like a descendant. The step is uneven and the lighting isn’t great.”

Jill pulled a string and a single bulb buzzed to life in the middle of the room. “What was this room used for?” Augusta asked.

“We’re pretty sure it was the original kitchen when the house was first built in the seventeenth century, but by the time the Harlowe brothers were living here it had long since gone out of use. It was probably used as extra storage or a pantry.” Jill sheepishly gestured to some bins in the corner. “We, uh, might stash some stuff in here, too, on occasion.”

There really wasn’t much to see in the room. The rough-hewn walls were covered in chipped white paint, and the floor was packed dirt coated in some kind of concrete, like the bottom of an empty swimming pool. At the far end, what had once been a fireplace large enough to stand in was now just a gaping recess.

“How are you with spiders?” Jill asked. “Because we have a lot of them in here.”

Augusta shrugged. “They don’t bother me.” She had done some pest management at the Old Jail which involved setting out sticky traps and tracking and recording all the insects in them. It had forced her to get over any squeamishness in a hurry.

“Well, I’m not a fan,” Jill said with a shudder. “Let’s head upstairs.”

Augusta was just turning to follow her when a wave of dizziness overcame her. She shot her hand out against the wall to steady herself before she stumbled. Cold from the wall seeped into her skin and rooted in her bones. Closing her eyes, she cursed herself for not eating a better breakfast.

When she opened her eyes again, she was still in the same dark room, but sensing something above her, she looked up. Bunches of dried plants and flowers hung upside down from the ceiling beams, quivering in the still air. She could smell their dry sweetness, could make out every brittle leaf and petal. The formerly empty fireplace now glowed with use. From somewhere beyond her sight came the sound of a woman’s voice, humming.

What the hell was happening? Some museums employed holographs or 3D projections to replicate historic settings, but Jill had been quite clear that this wasn’t an exhibit space, and Augusta was pretty sure that she would have mentioned if Harlowe House had that kind of technology.

The roots of her hair lifted, and she was excruciatingly aware of every inch of her skin prickling in response to the closeness of the humming. Slowly, she turned her head, certain that she would see the source of the sound. There was someone there—someone who wasn’t Jill. She could sense their presence, smell the sweet, floral scent of their perfume and the salty tang of perspiration under it. But then, just as suddenly as the room had changed, it was all gone again, leaving her in the musty darkness. The dried herbs and flowers that just moments ago had hung above her had vanished, and the humming had stopped.

She shot an alarmed look at Jill to see if she had noticed the dramatic change, but Jill was already ducking back through the low door and moving on to the next room.

Augusta looked back over her shoulder again; everything was back in its place, from the plastic bins to the electric light. Shaking her head, she hurried to catch up with Jill. She really should have eaten breakfast that morning, more than just a glass of orange juice and a slice of unbuttered bread. She had a job, responsibilities, and she had to make sure she was taking care of herself. But even as she forced herself to follow Jill, she had a sinking feeling that the hallucination hadn’t had anything to do with calories, or the lack of them.

“So.” Jill plopped a stack of books and binders onto the table. “This is totally not required, but it’s probably a good idea to read through some of these and get a sense of the history of Harlowe House. You’ll pick up a lot as you work, but this will provide a good baseline.”

Jill had insisted on picking up lunch from the sandwich place down the street, and they were sitting in the small staff kitchen eating while Augusta flipped through binders. The rain had tapered off, leaving heavy humidity and an overcast sky in its wake. Since her strange episode that morning, Augusta hadn’t felt any more light-headedness or had any disturbing hallucinations, but she still forced herself to bite into her sandwich, chewing slowly.

“This is really the only thing I would ask you to read,” Jill said, tapping the cover of a slender folder. “It lays out the family tree and who was who. It will be helpful to get a grasp of what generation owned what things in the house.”

Augusta flipped it open, tracing her finger down the sprawling tree, starting in the 1600s and going all the way to the present day. “So there still are living descendants?”

Rolling her eyes, Jill licked some mustard off her finger and put her sandwich down. “Yes, and you didn’t hear it from me, but they are theworst.They show up unannounced all the time, looking to take friends on ‘behind the scene tours’ and expect us to drop everything. They have a picnic at the house once a year, but the public isn’t invited. I guess since we don’t have royalty in America some people like to imagine that they’re above everyone else because of their bloodline.”

Augusta nodded absently as she studied the chart. It was an impressive tree, with so much information corresponding to each name, and she felt a pang of jealousy that anyone could claim ancestry going back so far. She was an only child without much extended family and had grown up knowing little about her own family history.

Her finger stopped on a name, and a jolt of recognition passed through her, even though she was sure she’d never seen it before. Unlike the others in its generation, this one didn’t have any information—no birth date, no death date, nothing. “Who was this?” she asked.

Jill leaned over to look. “Margaret Harlowe,” she said. “She was the only sister of the three Harlowe brothers. We don’t know a lot about her, or even if she really existed at all, since she doesn’t show up in any censuses.” Jill shrugged. “Unfortunately, that’s kind of the case with a lot of women in the historical records—they got married and took new names, moved away, or they just slipped through the cracks. We do have a portrait in the dining room that we think is her, but we aren’t even sure about that.”

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