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Henry. He needed to know more about this spell.
    Under most circumstances he never would have gone to Tarijanna so early in the morning. On the best of days she was difficult, even ill-tempered. She had few friends and though she tolerated Ethan because he was a speller and also because they shared a deep and abiding hatred of Sephira Pryce, she probably didn’t like him any more than she did anyone else. But he had to know if he had dreamt that spell or truly felt it.
    Making his way to Janna’s home, Ethan passed the old Granary Burying Ground and King’s Chapel, where his friend Trevor Pell served as a minister under the authority of the rector, the Reverend Henry Caner. Once beyond the chapel, Ethan cut south to Newbury Street, where homes and shops gave way to open pastures and wooded country estates. Sugar maples and white-barked birch trees lined the road and grew in clusters along the edges of fields and grazing tracts, their leaves, shading toward orange and bright yellow, rustling in the wind.
    Tarijanna lived at the southern edge of Boston, near the town gate, on a narrow strip of land known as the Neck. She owned a run-down tavern called the Fat Spider, and lived in a small room on the second floor of the building. Most of those who frequented the Spider were themselves conjurers or people who came to Janna seeking her services as a spellmaker. She served food and drink in her tavern, just like the proprietor of any other publick house. But she also sold herbs, oils, and talismans. And she peddled her services as a conjurer. She specialized in love spells, which she used to find love matches for her clients. The sign outside her tavern read “T. Windcatcher, Marriage Smith. Love is magick.” It might as well have said, “A speller lives here!”
    Spellers were feared, even hated. Most people mistakenly equated conjuring with witchcraft, and though it had been the better part of a century since witch trials led to the execution of twenty men and women in nearby Salem, Massachusetts, suspected witches were still put to death throughout the province. Janna didn’t seem to care.
    Reaching the Fat Spider, Ethan knocked on the tavern door, expecting that he would have to rap on the gray, weathered wood for several minutes before hearing any response. He was wrong.
    At the first knock, he heard a strong voice call out, “It’s unlocked!”
    Ethan pushed the door open and stepped into the dark tavern. As always, the air within smelled strongly of cinnamon, clove, roasting meat, and ale. Janna sat in a low chair by the fire, a cup in her hand, filled no doubt with watered Madeira wine.
    Janna hailed from one of the Caribbean islands, though because she was orphaned at sea as a young girl, she didn’t know which one. She also didn’t know her exact age, or her family name—she chose Windcatcher because she liked the sound of it.
    Her skin was a rich nut brown, and her hair, which she wore shorn almost to her scalp, was as white as bone. But though her thin, wrinkled face made her appear ancient, her dark eyes were as bright and alert as those of a child. If she had asked Ethan how old he thought she was, he wouldn’t have known what to say.
    “Kaille,” she said upon seeing him, her mouth turned down in a scowl. “I shoulda known it was you. First person to come through that door, and you ain’t gonna spend one pence. You like a bad omen comin’ at this hour.”
    She said much the same thing whenever he came to her tavern. In fairness, she had a point. He rarely bought anything from her; he sought her counsel when he had questions about spells, because no one in the city knew more about conjuring than she did. The truth was, Ethan might well have been as close a friend as Janna had in Boston. He chose to believe that she greeted him this way because she liked him. Others she simply would have ignored.
    “Nice to see you, too, Janna.”
    The scowl deepened. “What d’you want, anyway?”
    He crossed to