Read Born Wicked: The Cahill Witch Chronicles, Book One: The Cahill Witch Chronicles, Book One for Free Online

fingers twist in her lap. “I don’t understand why she didn’t trust him,” she says finally. “I wish I did. I wish Mother were here.”
She turns back to her piano, finding some solace in her sonata. I pick up the post from the tea table. There are a few bills for Father, a letter from his sister, and—to my surprise—a letter with no postmark, in an unfamiliar looping script, addressed to Miss Catherine Cahill. Who would write to me? I’ve fallen behind on correspondence with Father’s side of the family, and Mother has no living relatives.
    Dear Cate:
You don’t knowme, but your mother and I were once very dear friends. NowAnna is gone, and I, who ought to be there to guide you in her absence, can be of no help besides this: look for your mother’s diary. It will contain the answers you seek. The three of you are in very great danger.
Affectionately yours,
     
Z. R.
     
The letter flutters from my fingers to the floor. Tess plays on, heedless of my terror. I don’t know Z. R., but she knows us. Does she know our secrets?

CHAPTER 3
I HAVE NEVER FOUND IT EASY TO sit still during Sunday school. Some of my earliest memories are of squirming on the hard wooden pews. I suspect the Brothers had them constructed this way on purpose, lest we get too comfortable.
    It’s called Sunday school, but we are required to attend twice weekly: on Sunday before regular services and again on Wednesday evenings. There are two separate classes: one for children under ten, held in the classroom down the hall, to teach them basic prayers and the tenets of the Brotherhood’s beliefs, and one for girls aged eleven to seventeen, to teach us about how wicked we are.
    The air in here is stifling, though the wind blows cool and fresh through the trees outside. The Brothers never open a window. Lord forbid we get distracted, even by something as innocuous as the September breeze tickling over our skin.
Brother Ishida, the head of the Brotherhood’s council here, teaches our class today. He is not a very tall man, only perhaps my height, but up on the dais he looms over all of us. His face is hard, and his mouth perpetually tilts down, as though he’s used to frowning his way through life.
“Submission,” he announces. “You must submit to our leadership. The Brotherhood would lead you down the path of righteousness and keep you innocent of the world’s evils. We know you want to be good girls. We know it is only womanly frailty that leads you astray. We forgive you for it.” His voice is full of fatherly compassion, but his eyes are contemptuous as they rove over us. “We would protect you from your own willfulness and vanity. You must submit to our rule, even as we submit to the Lord. You must put your love and faith in us, even as we put ours in him.”
Maura and I exchange scornful glances. Love and faith, indeed. Back in Great-Grandmother’s day, the Brotherhood burned girls like us. We are not without our faults, to be sure—but neither are they.
“We will never lead you into sin and temptation. Indeed, we will do everything we can to keep you from it. When the witches were in power, they did not encourage girls to take their rightful place in the home. They cared nothing for protecting girls’ virtue. They would have women aping men— dressing immodestly, running businesses, even forgoing marriage to live in unnatural unions with other women.” Brother Ishida allows himself a shudder of disgust. “Because of their wickedness, they were overthrown. It was the Lord’s will that the Brotherhood take their place as the rightful rulers of New England.”
I stare at the pew in front of me, at the blond curls dripping down Elinor Evans’s neck. Is he right? Almost one hundred twenty years ago, in 1780, angry mobs stirred by the rhetoric of Brother William Richmond burned the temples up and down the coast—often with the witches still in them. Ultimately, the witches’ magic wasn’t enough to subdue their subjects—not