Chapter 77

• Zack had walked down the hallway and was now standing in front of a collection of newspaper clippings that had been pinned to a notice board. They had their crimes hidden in plain sight. Anyone passing by would assume genuinely that those clippings were notices but they were article clippings about missing people, all young.
• “Why do they need to do this?” I asked. “Aren’t witches immortal?”
• “Not these ones,” Zack mumbled, pointing to one article that differed from the others. This one was not about missing persons. It featured a photograph of twelve girls, all screaming , their faces contorted. The heading read: The Twelve Crones of Thistle-woods. I read further. The caption said: Twelve witches react in horror when sentenced to death by senescence for crimes against their coven. The thirteenth witch involved is still at large. The thirteenth witch, photographed alone, was the Coven Mother! I scanned the article itself.