A Lesson in Vengeance(44)

I’ve never felt like this before. The Margery coven was different—constructed for alumnae connections and nepotism, not sisterhood. This…this is real.

“What happened to the goat’s blood?” Kajal says.

“It’s a poetry reading.” Leonie has clearly spotted the book in Ellis’s hand. I half expected it to come out sounding derisive, but it doesn’t. There’s an upward tilt to the words, delight making music of Leonie’s voice.

Ellis lifts Averno and smiles.

“It seemed appropriate,” she says, “given our name.”

We stand in a circle around the fire and read—Ellis first, then she passes the book to Clara, who takes over. Around the circle two times, thrice. Ellis unearths a flask of bourbon from my bag, and we drink that, too, choking down the bitter liquor and telling ourselves it doesn’t taste like gasoline. By the time we have read the last poem, my mind feels pleasantly liquid, my thoughts floating on the surface of a golden sea. Clara clasps both my hands in hers and smiles like a child, Kajal dances in the bracken and Leonie lies on her back, dirt forgotten.

“Look how easily they give over to emotion,” Ellis murmurs, her fingers slipping into my hair, her lips whisper-cool against my ear. “No drugs or magic necessary. Couldn’t the Dalloway Five have done the same?”

But if this is magic, it isn’t the kind the Five practiced. I’m sure of it. For once, the forest is empty of ghosts, the sky clear and glittering. Nothing evil can touch us like this. We’re dryads cavorting in autumn, wood spirits breathing out starlight.

Eventually, though, even dryads must sleep. We stagger home in single file, bramble-cut and smelling of campfire smoke. The next day Ellis tears a poem out of Averno and pins it to her bedroom wall and tells me this is it, the beginning of everything, the first page of our story. A story that has no dark corners, just us, just happiness and freedom.

Strangely, I believe her.



* * *



—

Sunday, Ellis and I go down to the lake. Ellis has brought a picnic basket with cheeses, cranberry juice, fennel crackers, and a map of the surrounding terrain.

The lake glitters gold in the early-morning sunlight, its surface calm and even. I know Alex’s body isn’t in there—the silted floor was searched by divers, every cave scoured along the shore—but I can’t help shivering.

“What’s this?” I ask, pointing to the map.

She unfolds it across the grass and gestures to the lake with her cheese knife. “The lake,” she says. “And here”—she points a half mile east, on Godwin grounds—“is where Cordelia Darling’s body was found.”

So that’s what this is, then. Another murder, dissected and resolved.

“With water in her lungs,” I murmur. Cordelia Darling had drowned on dry land, reason enough for some to suspect witchery.

I just wish Ellis had brought me here to discuss a different Dalloway Five death. Anyone’s except Cordelia’s.

Ellis has assembled a little sandwich of cheese between crackers; she offers it to me, and I take it just to have the distraction. The taste is sharp and peppery all at once.

“You can see where Cordelia was found from here,” Ellis says, and she touches my chin, gently directs my face toward the sunrise. “Look.”

Yes, I can see it. The patch of grass is as indistinguishable as any around it, especially from this distance. Godwin rises above Cordelia’s temporary grave on its wooded hill, shuttered windows and uneven gables: a shadowy tombstone.

“I know what you’re going to say,” I tell her. “Someone drowned Cordelia, or she drowned on her own, and then she was carried a half mile that way. Mystery solved.”

“Mmm, yes, the answer is rather obvious, isn’t it?” Ellis says with an arched brow; I can’t tell if she’s making fun of me.

But this time, it’s my turn to have the upper hand. “The lake didn’t exist in the early eighteenth century,” I say. I tap the map. “This was just a valley. The lake itself was man-made as a flood prevention measure in 1904. There was just the Hudson, and it runs narrow through here.”

Ellis’s brow furrows, and she hunches over the map again, presumably to examine the little topographic lines that show the steepness of the cliffs and depth of the valleys around Dalloway School. “Really?”

I take another bite of cracker. “Really.”

“Curious,” Ellis murmurs, and I can’t help but feel somewhat gratified that I’ve finally said something to throw her off balance. It feels like winning.

“Besides, even eighteenth-century bigots knew that it’s not impossible to carry a skinny teenage girl half a mile across land,” I say, “soaking wet or otherwise.”

Ellis looks up. “Yes. But we also know that it doesn’t take that much water to drown a person, considering. You could drown in your bathtub. You could drown in a shallow puddle of rainwater.”

“You could,” I agree, “but then why not leave the body in the bathtub to be found later? Why take her outside? That only makes you more likely to get caught.”

It’s enough to make Ellis fall into pensive silence for the next several minutes. I occupy myself with the cheese and crackers, and drink a long swig of sour juice straight from the bottle. Ellis squints out across the lawn toward where Cordelia’s body was found. The way her face scrunches up cuts a wrinkle right below the single freckle on her cheekbone.