She remembered little of arriving in Salem when she was a babe, only the bumpy carriage ride and the deep forest and the trees with black leaves that were strewn along the path to an imposing house with diamond-patterned glass windows. The docks were quiet now because of the storm, and Faith’s red boots made a clicking sound on the ice. She went to a tavern where there were sailors who were more raucous than usual, trapped on land as they waited for the ice to thaw and their ships to set sail. When Faith took a table, no one disturbed her as they might had she been another girl who had wandered in unaccompanied. They were wise enough to let her be, for she had a protector who lay at her feet, his eyes glinting. Not one of the men in the tavern had ever seen a dog that looked like this one. The girl and her beast appeared as a single creature that had been joined in some wicked way, she in her black cape, he with his long black fur. A young serving maid was told to wait on her, for the older server could already tell this red-haired girl was trouble.

Faith asked for two bowls of stew, one for herself, one for Keeper, and a pot of boiling water for her own brew. Tea was dear and often unavailable; and so Faith carried her own Courage Tea. She placed a tarnished silver coin on the table. She could see the serving girl’s hunger, as well as a silence she had been trained for. The girl was being mistreated on a regular basis. Across the room, the owner of the tavern was watching them with a lazy eye. He had the nerve to nod at Faith.

“Is he the one?” she asked the girl.

The maid was quick to look over her shoulder and even quicker to turn her gaze away. “I don’t know what you mean. He’s nothing.”

“If you say he is, I should believe you.” Faith knew from her own experience there were times when it was impossible to do anything other than lie. “I want to find a man named John Hathorne,” she went on to say. When there wasn’t a flicker on the serving maid’s face, Faith set another coin on the table.

The server swept the silver into her hand before anyone could see. “You’d do better to stay away from the magistrate,” she murmured. She confided that a cousin of hers had been brought up on charges and was awaiting trial. Her only crime was to have taken a walk with another woman’s betrothed. She’d been accused of witchery shortly thereafter. “Most of us don’t dare to say his name aloud.”