There were so many women in love and in trouble in the city of Manhattan that Maria hadn’t time for all who came in search of a charm or a cure. Often a dozen or more waited in the garden, some disguised by shawls or cloaks, others so desperate they didn’t care who might spy them visiting the witch’s house. What was a witch if not a woman with wisdom and talent? Here in New York, such things were not a crime. Maria’s clients perched on benches or sat in the dewy grass counting out pieces of silver, removing wedding bands, reciting small prayers that Maria Owens might help them find health or solace or love. When she looked out the window to see how many women were in need, she was overwhelmed. A woman who had renounced love should not be so close to so much emotion. It would surely affect her. Love was contagious, it passed from soul to soul, it woke a person up and shook her even when she wanted to be left alone. There were times when Maria looked in the black mirror to search for a client’s fate and all she could see was Samuel Dias. She had no heart, she was sure of it, and yet something inside of her ached.

“I could be your assistant,” Faith said as they looked out the window at the women waiting there. “In Brooklyn, people came to me to be healed.” She had recently learned how to construct figures out of the bark of the black hawthorn; when melted over a fire the love for the wrong person would melt as well and a client would be freed of foolhardy desires.

“Well, that was in Brooklyn,” Maria responded. “They should not have gone to a girl.”

“I know more than you think I do,” Faith insisted. She knew the expression on a woman’s face when she realized she had only a few more breaths to take in this life, she knew that when she was in a cemetery at night she could hear the heartbeats of the dead, she knew that a girl whose father doesn’t want her will be both stronger and weaker than she might have been had he ever loved her. “I’ll take the ones seeking revenge,” she chirped.

“We don’t do that here,” Maria said.

“You do all sorts of things,” Faith said archly.

“For the benefit of those in need.”

“Maybe you don’t think I have the power.”

“That’s not true. I believe in you. You’re just not ready.”

“I have been ready since I was six years old and you left me.”

Maria stepped back as if slapped. “I told you I never wanted to leave you. I had no choice.”

“I thought we all had choices,” Faith said, her gaze turning to ice. “If you hadn’t gone to Massachusetts, none of it would have happened.”