“Help me,” Ellis says. “I want to reenact the Dalloway murders. Not for real, of course—but we could figure out how they were done. Because it wasn’t magic, no matter how impossible they seem. Maybe someone wanted to frame them, to persecute the Dalloway girls for the crime of possessing their own agency. It would have been easy, back then, to convince people that five odd, educated girls were witches. We’ll go through each death, one by one, and figure out how they were accomplished without the use of magic. And of course, it will be good for me to understand the mechanics of it all, for my book.”
A ridiculous proposition. I know that. I know it. But Ellis watches me with eyes lit from some arcane internal light, one long strand of black hair fallen into her face. All I want is to compulsively tuck it back behind her ear—it’s intensely distracting—but I find myself saying: “Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Fine. I’ll help you. We’ll…” A giggle rises in me, helpless; I’ve never been a giggler. “We’ll re-create the Dalloway murders, and you’ll write your book, and then we all live happily ever after. Not the Ellis Haley ending I expected, but I can appreciate a plot twist as well as the next person.”
Ellis rolls her eyes, and I spare a thought to wonder if I’m the first person who has ever managed to make Ellis Haley do something so pedestrian as roll her eyes.
“This will be good closure for you,” she says, rising to retrieve the broom to clean up the broken pottery. “Trust me.”
“I don’t,” I tell her, but we both know that makes little difference.
Whether I trust Ellis or not, I need to do this. I need to understand what happened the night Alex died. I need to know if some shadow of Margery Lemont has curled up in my heart, guiding the movements of my hands and the words in my mouth. The ghost raised by the Dalloway Five didn’t rest until all of them were dead. I need to know if I’m cursed by that same fate. If raising Margery’s spirit in our unfinished ritual cursed me and Alex. If it killed her.
I need to face whatever caused the broken ceramic shards on the floor, the misty handprint on my window.
I need to face the truth.
I don’t tell Wyatt I’m researching the witches again.
Maybe it’s because I know what she’d say. I can visualize the precise character of the disappointment that would settle over her features. I can even imagine her deciding to call my mother, who would call Dr. Ortega, who would ask if I’ve been taking my medication.
Better to wait, to prove I’m healthy—stable—before I tell Wyatt the truth.
And there’s research to do, not just for myself now, but for Ellis as well if I’m going to help her write this book. I reread my old notes a dozen times, but they’re full of references to primary source material, questions scribbled in the margins that I meant to answer later, when I could go back to the occult collection.
There’s no other option. I need to access the original sources before I can get anything else done. Wyatt gave me a signed permission slip last year, which is what it takes to get into the occult library as a student. They say it’s because the books are old and rare, but really it’s because the administration is afraid more students will turn out like me. I have no idea if my old permission slip will still work, but I smile at the front desk librarian anyway as I pass it over with my student identification card.
“Good evening,” I say, and I notice even as I’m speaking that my voice has taken on crisper enunciation—my mother’s accent, laden with all its connotations of privilege and power. “I need to access the occult collection. Felicity Morrow.”
The librarian examines the slip and then scans my card. She shakes her head.
“I’m afraid your permission to view this collection has been revoked,” she says, passing my ID back across the desk.
Of course it has.
“Are you sure? Can you check again?” I ask.
The woman just spins her computer monitor to show me the screen, where it says my name and, in bright-red font, disallowed.
I know for a fact that Ellis has been going into the occult section; that’s where she got the book on tasseography, after all. Still, something in me balks at the prospect of asking her to go for me. I don’t want to open up the possibility for questions I can’t answer.
So I return to Godwin House and pack myself a sandwich and a water bottle, then go back to the library and claim a carrel on the fifth floor—the emptiest floor, housing the school’s encyclopedia collection. I occupy myself by reading the rest of my latest Shirley Jackson book, then type out a few new paragraphs of material for my European History essay.