A Lesson in Vengeance(39)

“Magic isn’t real,” Ellis says.

“You don’t know that.”

She sighs. “I suppose, if you’re the kind of person who also chooses to be agnostic as to the existence of deities or fairies in the garden. Yes, there’s always a chance it’s real. But is that what you really believe?”

My jaw hurts from gritting my teeth so hard. “You know I do.”

“I told you that I’d prove there was no magic involved in the Dalloway Five’s deaths. There’s no magic, period. We can make our coven as magical as you like, but no demons will rise from the underworld to meet us. And besides…this could be precisely how the girls are killed in my book. The Margery character needs to lure her victims away from safety. This is how.”

I think that once we’re out there in the forest, under the moonlight, she’ll see things differently. Who knows what lurks in the woods, which beings rule the cold space beneath the trees?

Still, perhaps this is harmless. Perhaps I’m overreacting: maybe Ellis’s presence alone would serve as a shield, her rational mind stalwart against the insane. I spend the rest of the night thinking about it: planning what spells we could try, how we could adapt magic that might have worked three hundred years ago for the modern day.

It isn’t until the next night that my fear surges back like a briny sea, my body frozen at the door of my bedroom with my shoes on but my coat still clutched in both hands.

Something about this feels wrong. I promised I wouldn’t do magic anymore; all those fantasies from last night about bonfires and bacchanals reveal their sharp edges when dusk falls.

I’m afraid that if I take this leap, there will be no coming back. I’ll free-fall forever.

But that’s why you have to do it, a voice whispers in my head, one that sounds suspiciously like Ellis Haley.

I need to be able to touch the dark without being consumed by it.

We had sent the invitations as three notes, handwritten on paper Ellis tore out of the backs of books she doesn’t like and slid through the uneven cracks beneath the Godwin House bedroom doors:

Meet me here at midnight. Tell no one you’re coming. Then a set of coordinates, signed with Ellis’s name.

The times Ellis gave were staggered, to ensure that no one runs into each other as they leave the house—every one of the Godwin residents thinks she is coming alone.

I exhale and make myself open the door. Ellis is waiting for me downstairs, already masked. She emerges from the poor light like a slim black bone, inhuman and hollow-mouthed. It’s difficult to imagine a soul exists behind the void of those empty eye sockets. In the Margery coven they told us that when the initiated wear the mask, their spirit departs their body; we are possessed instead by the ghost of a Dalloway witch. One of the Five.

I press my hand against my chest, and my heart thumps against my palm. My heart?

Or someone else’s?

This is a mistake.

What if this is what Margery wants? Her spirit could be watching me, waiting patiently for my willpower to snap. She could possess me while I’m vulnerable, one foot already stepping into the night. She would force me to dance on her strings. To kill until the dead are satisfied. To perish so that her ghost can rest.

Perhaps I was never haunted. Perhaps this whole time Margery knew, and Alex knew, they wouldn’t have to chase me.

They knew I’d come looking.



* * *



—

The darkness lends a sense of intimacy, of import. We move through it like specters, silent—we become part of Godwin House, sprouted from the uneven floor and shadowed corners, descendants and daughters of witches who died centuries ago.

And then we’re outside, we’re in the forest, following the witches’ footsteps deep enough that the house vanishes into the night’s open mouth, until the dark space beneath the trees hangs heavy enough that even our breath sounds muffled. An owl hoots somewhere nearby, warning of our passing. The Greeks believed witches could transform themselves into owls to stalk their prey. I can’t stop thinking of the figure Ellis saw in my teacup: the bird, dangerous situations.

“They aren’t coming,” I say after we reach the clearing. The forest seems to close in around us, sharp-toothed and hungry. I take off my mask; I can’t stand feeling half-blinded, unaware of what lurks just out of sight, in the corners of my eyes.

“They’re coming,” Ellis replies.

I don’t believe her, but I get ready anyway. My bag has everything we need, materials retrieved from the hole in my closet wall: candles and herbs, a vial of goat’s blood I bought from the butcher in town.

When a twig snaps I lurch upright, half expecting to see her, Alex. But it’s just Kajal emerging from between the trees, a smudge of dirt on her knee and a scowl on her face.

“Morrow,” she says. “What are you doing here?”

I know the moment she spots Ellis, from the way her spine stiffens, the reflexive half step back and away. I turn to look just as Ellis is lifting the goat’s-head mask away from her face.

“It’s me,” she says.

“What the fuck, Ellis!”

Ellis draws a cigarette case out of her pocket. She pauses long enough to light one and blow smoke toward the stars before she says: “I’ll explain when the rest arrive.”

I’m caught there between them, Ellis pale and serene, Kajal shifting her weight from foot to foot as she clearly debates running back to Godwin. But she doesn’t. She stays, watching in wary silence as I finish building a circle out of candles and black tourmaline. Ellis might be right—we aren’t in any danger from Margery or her kin—but the protection of the crystals make me feel better all the same.