The Witch Hunter (The Witch Hunter #1)(55)

“How did you become a healer?” I say instead.

John carefully sets the jar he’s holding—sheep intestines—on the shelf and turns to me. “My mother was a healer,” he says. “She ran an apothecary near our house in Harrow. When my father wasn’t dragging me out to sea, I would help her. Sometimes my sister would help, too, but she was usually too busy getting into trouble with Fifer to be of much use.” He smiles a little at that.

“Anyway, when I was about nine, she suspected I had the magic to be a healer, too. So one day she took me to her shop, told me to make potions for two of her patients. One had green fever, the other pemphigus. A very unpleasant skin disease,” he adds in response to my raised eyebrow. “And then she left.”

“She left?” I feel my eyes go round. “What did you do?”

“Panicked, of course.” He smiles. “I’d been helping her for years, but I’d never made a potion on my own before, and never anything that complicated. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t reach the upper shelves without a ladder. I didn’t even know how to light the furnace. I thought for sure I’d burn the shop down, or, failing that, I’d turn a potion into poison and kill her patients and I’d have to live with that forever. But then…” He trails off, glancing at the ceiling for a moment as if lost in thought.

“What?”

“I just knew what to do.” He looks down at me again, his eyes bright. “It’s hard to explain. But there was something about the shop, the smell of the herbs, the way the light filtered in through the windows, all dusty, all the jars and books and the tools.” He gestures at the shelves in front of us. “The magic took over then, and it told me what I needed to do.”

I’m quiet for a moment, enchanted by the idea of something stealing over you, settling into you, and telling you, with absolute certainty, who you are and what you’re meant to do.

“That sounds lovely,” I say, and I’m surprised to find I mean it.

“I don’t think it looked lovely, though.” He laughs a little. “The shop was a disaster. There were herbs and roots and powders on the counter, the floor; I broke at least three flasks, so there was glass everywhere, too.… My sleeve caught fire when I lit the furnace, so I doused myself with rosewater. I was covered in wet petals.… I must have looked like a lunatic.”

I start to laugh, too.

“And now it’s just me,” he says, and I stop laughing. “I thought about quitting, but magic isn’t something you can just quit. Besides, someone had to carry on after she…” He turns away then, busying himself with the jars again.

I’m quiet for a minute, unsure of what to say.

“George told me what happened,” I finally manage. “I’m so sorry. I know how you feel.” And I do. I wish there were something I could say to make him feel better. But there’s really nothing. I could tell him what’s done is done, but I know that would never be enough for someone like him. John’s a healer. He knows the difference between a bandage and a cure.

John turns back to me and nods, as if he knew what I was thinking. For a minute we look at each other, neither of us saying a word. The thrill I felt earlier comes rushing back. I should move. George would want me to. I should want to, too.

Except I don’t.

I hear someone clear his throat and I turn around. Humbert is smiling at us, but Fifer is glaring and George just shakes his head.

“I need a drink,” he mutters.

Humbert steps over to the flask with the orange liquid and unhooks it from the stand. “I’ve got just the thing.”





THE NEXT DAY PASSES WITH no word from Peter. I’m anxious to begin searching for the tablet—rather, for the thing that will lead me to the tablet—but Humbert is dead set against our wandering around without Peter’s protection. He’s worried about the guards; he’s worried about us, me in particular—“the frail little thing,” he calls me.

I don’t push it. Not because I’m worried but because I don’t know what to do. I spent the morning with John walking Humbert’s property, poking through his endless number of rooms, but came up empty.

I don’t think whatever I’m supposed to find is here, at least not in this house. It’s not that simple. If it has to do with Blackwell, it can’t be. Either way, I won’t find it with Peter and the others trailing behind me. I’ve got to find a way to search on my own.

That evening after supper we move into Humbert’s sitting room. He summons a musician from somewhere, possibly the last century, by the look of him. Skeletal, wispy white hair, bony hands clutching a lute. He perches on the edge of a chair and begins to warble out a dusty tune.

George and Humbert, absurdly, start dancing. Fifer paces in front of the window, watching the spook lights I saw the evening we arrived, only tonight they’re green instead of red. Every now and again she’ll glance at John, mutter under her breath, and then turn back to the window again.

The musician plucks away, hitting more wrong notes than right. I glance at John, sitting in the chair across from me. His head is tipped back, eyes closed, a look of intense pain on his face. Finally, he looks down and sees me watching him.

Help, he mouths.

I press my hand to my mouth, stifling a laugh. He grins and points at the door. I nod. He uncrosses his long legs, rises from the chair, and slips from the room. I wait as long as I can stand, thirty seconds, maybe, then do the same. He waits for me down the checkered hall, in front of a set of wide double doors inset with stained glass panels. The library. It’s the only room we couldn’t visit this morning, closed for cleaning and reshelving.