By the year 1692, which would become infamous for reasons that had nothing to do with the actual witches and everything to do with the fear of them, the coven had grown to nineteen members. This was problematic for several reasons, not least of which was that thirteen had been the traditional number since Lilith's time, and expanding beyond that felt like tempting fate.
"Fate is already tempted," Constance said, looking out over the village of Salem from the hill where she had built her small house. "Fate is tempted, tempted back, and currently filing a restraining order. The number doesn't matter."
"It matters symbolically," said Tabitha, who was in her second incarnation and still adjusting to the lack of indoor plumbing. "Thirteen is a coven. Nineteen is... a crowd."
"Nineteen is necessary," said the newest member, a woman who had been born with the name Deliverance but who preferred to be called Del, which she felt was more modern and less puritanical. "The work has expanded. The teaching has multiplied. We need more hands."
The work, as Del called it, had indeed expanded. In the three centuries since the plague years, the coven had established cells in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. They had infiltrated convents and universities, merchant houses and royal courts. They had taught women to read, to heal, to calculate, to navigate by the stars. They had planted the seeds of what would become the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the various movements toward human rights and equality.
And they had been hunted. Burned. Drowned. Hanged. Pressed to death under stones. Accused of consorting with devils, of flying through the air, of souring milk and causing stillbirths and all the other petty crimes that frightened villagers attributed to women who knew too much.
"Seventeen of us have died in this century alone," Constance said, not turning from the window. "Seventeen deaths. Seventeen reincarnations. Seventeen times of being born, growing, learning our purpose, and being killed for it. The arithmetic of damnation is simple: we teach, they fear, they kill, we return. Repeat until the lesson is learned."
"And when will that be?" Del asked.
Constance finally turned, and her eyes—those ancient, tired eyes—held something that might have been hope. "Soon. I feel it. The meeting is happening. The business plan is being presented. The old order is... negotiating."
"Negotiating with whom?"
"With the one who made us. With the one who walked with us. With the prodigal son who has been waiting for six thousand years to come home."
The other women in the room—Magda, newly reincarnated and still learning to walk; Tabitha, bitter and brilliant; Beatrice, old and wise; and the others, each with their own histories, their own deaths, their own patient persistence—looked at each other. They had heard this before. They had hoped before. They had been disappointed before.
But there was something in Constance's voice. Something new.
"What do we do?" Magda asked. Her voice was high and clear, the voice of a child who remembered being an adult, who remembered being old, who remembered being dead.
"We do what we've always done," Constance said. "We teach. We prepare. We get ready for the moment when the world is finally ready to learn. And in the meantime..." She smiled, and it was a terrible smile, full of teeth and time. "We cause a little trouble."