A Lesson in Vengeance(37)

Never mind that some townspeople testified they’d seen the girls holding bacchanals in the woods, drunk on cherry wine and consorting with devils—this wasn’t Salem. Nor was it Norfolk, Virginia, where Grace Sherwood survived the water test and was acquitted of witchcraft; or Annapolis the year following the Dalloway trial, where Virtue Violl was similarly found innocent. The town leaders were educated and wealthy, not Puritans; they did not believe young girls were capable of such satanic cruelty.

Or perhaps they were just afraid of Dalloway’s then headmistress, the daughter of the Salem witch.

If being Deliverance Lemont’s daughter had saved Margery from the stake, it hadn’t kept her alive for long. And if the town’s leaders were too scholarly to believe in magic, well, that did not apply to the common folk who relied on healthy crops and cattle to survive. If the girls at the school were witches, and if they were to turn their evil eyes toward the fields and farms, the town could not endure. Normal hardworking people can’t live off tuition and inheritance money, after all.

At least, that is what historians commonly believe happened to the girls. Fevered and idiotic mobs out for brutal justice.

And so one by one the Dalloway Five died—each in mysterious circumstances, each horribly. Flora Grayfriar’s ritual murder was avenged with their blood.

These are the deaths Ellis wants to recapture. These are the deaths she insists weren’t caused by magical means, although I still don’t understand what she thinks is the alternative. I don’t get the sense she buys the mob account, either.

I want to interrogate the concept of the psychopath, Ellis had said.

Maybe she believes Margery is responsible.

It’s what I believe, too. She confessed, according to later records, once the trial was complete. She confessed. Angeline Wilshire, the baker, claimed that Margery Lemont boasted about murdering Flora as the devil’s sacrifice while buying bread one Sunday. Allegedly, Margery had said that she was possessed by a spirit, or a demon. And if Margery was responsible for Flora, then why not the rest of them, too?

The demon part is what used to suspend my disbelief.

Yet Alex and I were there the night Margery Lemont’s ghost stepped out of legend and into the real world. I invited her into our lives, and I kept her here against her will. I still feel her fingers tangled up in the threads of my fate.

If Margery really had been possessed…if the girls had failed to close the séance, if they’d trapped a spirit in our world who would not rest until all of the participants were dead…

Who is to say she hadn’t done the same to us?

How long will you punish me? I ask the ink that inscribes Margery’s name.

But that’s not why I’m here. Or at least, it’s not the only reason.

I pull out my notebook and turn to the list of references, cross-checking the values against the tome open on the desk before me. I take notes for Ellis—anything that could conceivably be relevant, anything that suggests Margery’s guilt, paired with book and page numbers in case she wants to come herself.

When I’m finished I return the trial record to its glass case. I should leave. I’ve done what I came to do. There’s no need to look at any of the other books.

But I can’t stop looking at the spellcraft tome in the case nearest the door. It’s bound in a blue so old it appears nearly gray, the cover stained dark where some ancient witch spilled her wine while reading.

My hands clench into fists. I really shouldn’t. I can’t. If I start with this again, I’ll never be able to stop.

On the other hand…On the other hand, it was so difficult to get in here. I can’t be sure I’ll ever have a chance again. And what if Ellis could use some spells for her book? It might be helpful.

In for a penny, in for a pound—

I open the case and take out the spell book, carrying it quickly to the reading table. Irrationally, a part of me thinks magic won’t infect me if I don’t touch it for long.

My mouth has gone dry as I stare down at the book. And it is just a book. It holds no special power. It can’t hurt me if I don’t let it.

The leather bends easily as I open the cover, worn soft by a hundred years of hands. The thick parchment paper is scratchy against my gloved fingers when I turn the pages.

This book has more than one author. The handwriting is all different—sometimes steady and slanted, sometimes erratic. Sometimes the ink is thick and black; other times it’s a pale red brown so faint I can barely read it at all.

I flip over my notebook and uncap my pen again. My own calligraphy is shaky—blotches welling at the tail of each letter, jagged cross-strokes—as I copy down a spell for banishing evil spirits. But Ellis might want it.

And me…I won’t use this incantation. But I’ll have it, just in case.

I turn the page again, and abruptly it’s hard to breathe. The air has gone heavier, wetter, like I’m choking on tar.

A full illustration consumes the verso, a young woman kneeling, nude, at the feet of a tall figure with a bone-white face. The mask is gaunt and elongated, with curving horns and black pits where the eyes should be, its nostrils sharp and jagged: a goat’s skull. The figure reaches out one spindly arm, dripping blood, to paint a sigil on the woman’s brow.

Initiation.

Members of the Margery coven don’t talk about it often, not outside the rituals. Even Ellis probably doesn’t know initiation exists. The secrets of Dalloway are given only to a select few: those of us thought worthy, those of us strong enough to survive our fear. But behind closed doors, in secret gatherings of two or three girls from each house, some of us lean into the dark.