“Understood, Thomas. Come with me.”

Putnam followed Wardwell to a full-length mirror on a wrought iron frame filigreed with leaves and wrought iron black birds. Beside the mirror, smoke rose from pitch fires in pots. “Gaze close into the looking glass, Thomas.”

“I only see my reflection. So?”

“Stare longer, harder. Seek in the looking glass your answer.”

“I see nothing.”

“Close your eyes, man, and think on your suffering, your hardship.”

Putnam did as told.

“Think on all the horrors you’ve shared with me here. Think, man, think.”

Putnam’s eyes were closed, but fearful Wardwell meant him some harm, he peeked from time to time as the blacksmith increased the smoke billowing about the mirror.

“Now open your eyes and see—see into the invisible world to behold the devils let loose to harm you and yours, Thomas, and to see who has brought misery upon ye and ye family.”

Putnam gulped and opened his eyes on the mirror where he saw shadowy figures trying to form into whole from the broken, curling threads of smoke like fog trying to find a hold, trying to find rule and order.

“Drink this,” Wardwell said in his ear. “This may take some time but the tea, it will help. Drink . . . drink up.”

Thomas, thirsty from the trip, eagerly gulped down the warm tea, and then he again began studying the curling smoke and his own reflection in the mirror, and he thought if he concentrated that he saw other faces peeking about in the mirror, one set of eyes on his left shoulder, perched there, but then they dissipated, but other shapes wanted forming. Wardwell refilled his warm, herbal tea as he called the bitter drink.

“Takes time this,” muttered Wardwell. “Be patient and you shall see for yourself.”

Thomas drained the second cup of tea. “What am I looking for? I only see me.”

“Exactly what they want you to see and believe! That you are the root cause of all your own problems, thereby casting off any suspicion that that root stems from another source, you see. Clever are the minions of Satan.”

“I see.”

“Yes, you will with patience, if you will only stare hard enough and long enough in the mirror.”

“I am.”

“I know you are trying but it takes some working of your inner mind, man.”

“I have no imagination for such games and parlor tricks, sir.”

“You will! Will it, man, the faces of your deadliest enemies. Not the ones bent on spitting after your heels but those bent on harming you beyond all reason.”

“Those who would murder my progeny, yes.”

“Exactly. Thomas, you and you alone can bring this about. I cannot.”

“But then why did you have me go and return on this day?”

“You alone can see the images of evil here . . . tonight . . . on this the seventh day of our covenant.”

The word covenant made it clear, that he was in league with Wardwell, and God knows who else by virtue of Wardwell’s unusual covenants. A covenant begot a covenant. Then Thomas began seeing movement in the smoke and mirror, a kind of life there, sometimes spherical, sometimes wormlike but all of it moving, swirling, casting ethereal shadows where there ought not be any.

With the drugged tea and in due time, Wardwell had Thomas Putnam seeing what he—Thomas—wanted to see and believe all along, right here and now inside the smoke and inside the looking glass as Thomas’ features coalesced into those of his enemy in slow, sure succession.

In fact, Thomas Putnam was face to face with those who’d murdered his children, and those who’d put an affliction on his womenfolk today back in Salem.

# # # # #

Thomas set to building a fire, not wishing to wake anyone in the house, as for the first time in recent memory, all was quiet and peaceful on his return from Andover and the wizard. But when he lifted a log from the woodbine, a frog croaked up at him and leapt out at him, its eyes wide and accusing. If the thing had had fingers, it would have been pointing at him. It seemed a demonic, ominous omen, this creature that’d gotten into his home, a possible familiar sent to spy on them, as a familiar’s eyes, read by a witch, could see all and all that the creature, be it frog, mouse, or lice had recorded in its eye.

Putnam stumbled back and fell on his rump, and the frog leapt forward between his stockinged feet.

“My God! Wardwell said they’d send their familiars.” Wardwell had warned of spiders, vermin, such things as flies, centipedes, lizards, or toads. “Any one of which,” Wardwell had insisted, “could be acting as eyes and ears for the evil ones—spying on you and yours.”

The green animal housing a demon certainly acted like a witch’s familiar; it was quite well known and documented that witches not only communicated with such vermin and low forms of life, but that they directed their movements. It was reason enough to stomp a spider, or in this case a frog whose fishy eyes blinked at him a moment before it again croaked as if trying to speak Thomas’s name.

Thomas pulled himself together and crawled to his knees. The log he’d lifted lay beside him. “Too much to drink,” he tried to tell himself, “on top of whatever was in Wardwell’s tea.”

Ever so slowly, gently, he lifted the splintery log, thin enough to get a single hand around, and he brought it into his body. He raised the log overhead, preparing to bring it crashing down on the bulging eyes as the spirit continued to stare as if placing a curse on him. It made him wonder if it were possible for jailed witches such as Goode and Osborne—one of whom he’d helped corner and haul to jail—could do as Goode said to him—take the form of a creature like this and give him the evil eye through a toad.

Thomas let the log fall, and a loud gunshot-like sound replied as it smacked the wood floor. He lifted the log and to his astonishment no smashed green thing lay below it. It was as if the toad had vanished and magically so. He imagined old Goode in her cell at this moment cackling at his fear.

A single candle lit the room, leaving most of it in shadow and sharp-cut, black corners. Where has the evil thing got off to? Where if not back to its conjurer?”

Again it croaked, mocking his efforts. He found it somehow behind him, leaping toward deeper shadow. Putnam moved the candle with it, following the creature’s shadow reflected against one wall, the reflection looking indeed like a crawling shape, like that of a woman the size of Goode. This made Thomas start and his hand holding the log shook for fear of missing yes, but also for fear of hitting his mark.

The frog leapt twice more as if it’d determined a destination. It seemed bent on his wife’s room.

Putnam stalked on hands and knees closely now, and once within range, he bolstered all his courage for Anne’s sake, and he lifted the firewood piece again for the kill. How much drink have I had tonight, he again wondered—wondered if it were all a drunken man’s nightmare. He had crawled beneath the table, his hand on the table leg when the toad leapt back toward him and landed on the table leg at his fingertips so close he felt its warm breath here.

Got you, he thought, and Thomas struck full force. The result was excruciating pain and a yelp out of Thomas as the log smashed into his other hand—fingers flattened between wooden leg and wooden log. He howled more in a scream of terror and pain, waking his wife and the children in the loft.

More light flooded the room, Mrs. Putnam entering with her whale oil lamp. The overhead trap sent light down as well, Mercy holding a second lamp high.

In the middle of the floor, Thomas rocked with the pain in his hand, moaning, tears freely coming.

“What happened?”

“The witch’s familiar came for you!”

“Where, where?” Mother Putnam cried out.

The children joined in, chanting, “Where, where?”

“What familiar?” pressed Mrs. Putnam.

“A toad! A toad with human eyes in the back of its bloody head.”

She examined his hand, saying, “I see no toad, but I smell rot gut whiskey enough.”

Mercy and Anne had come down the stairs, and they made a search for the toad, but none could be found.

Mrs. Putnam wrapped his hand in bandages, as Thomas lamented, “I almost had it. I almost crushed the damnable thing, I tell you—drink or no drink. Anne, it was her, that witch we jailed—Goode, I tell you sent it. Give me the evil eye, it did.”

“Almost killed it, did you?” She finished off the bandage.

“For you, I meant to kill it for you. ’Twas heading for your bedchamber, Goodwife.”

“Yes, dear. I’m sure.”

“Best give your room a thorough search, too,” suggested Mercy.

Anne Junior stood nodding beside Mercy. “Yes, Mother, it wouldn’t do to not be thur-thur—what Mercy said.”

“God blind me, then! Go ahead, children. Give it a look.”

Thomas whispered to his wife where they remained at the table, “I have something to tell you and you alone.”

Anne sensed the urgency in his tone to mean now. For any modicum of privacy, she’d have to send the children back to bed first. When Mercy and Anne Junior could find no sign of the frog, she pointed to a knot hole in the floor and lied. “I saw the fool thing skitter out here. Now the two of you, back up and to bed!”

The children obeyed and Anne remarked to Thomas how dutiful Mercy had become since her and Anne’s recent afflictions. “Somehow these attacks they’ve suffered, I suppose, has taught them that all our teachings and those of the minister are not simple clap-trap and talk from old people. Now . . . what is it on your mind, now that you’ve wakened the house?”