And so help me, I don’t care what Dr. Ortega says anymore. The legend is real.
At the very least, Ellis should know about the Margery coven. She should see if she can be initiated.
“It’s magic,” I tell her. “Or the Dalloway Five believed it was. Doesn’t that run contra your entire thesis?”
But Ellis is still pacing the narrow kitchen, the soles of her Italian leather shoes clicking against the stone floor. “Not at all. It’s no different than the spiritualist séances of the Victorian era—people went wild over the idea of mediums who could commune beyond the grave. It was occult as entertainment, nothing truly paranormal. Who says the Dalloway girls couldn’t have enjoyed the same kind of fun?”
“This was 1711, not 1870,” I say. “That kind of fun would get you killed.”
She stops pacing and turns to smile at me, a scant foot away from where I stand. She lifts a hand and trails it along my temple, tucks a stray lock of hair behind my ear. I barely remember to breathe.
“No, this is perfect,” Ellis says a second time. “I promise. But who cares about those posh modern girls and their party coven. Let’s make our own.”
My air comes back all at once; I choke on it. Ellis pats my back as I cough until my throat is raw.
“I beg your pardon?” I croak at last.
I wanted Ellis to join the Margery coven. I wanted her to wrap herself up in the shroud of their dark games—not drag me down with her. The Margery coven felt safe. They didn’t practice real magic—their craft was all about aesthetics and pretension, the foolish games of wealthy girls who wanted to feel powerful, who wanted to touch the hem of night’s cloak but nothing further, nothing real.
“Real magic is something different. Real magic has risks.”
Ellis lifts one shoulder and drops it. “Let’s make our own coven. Why not? If I’m to do this properly, like a real method writer, I should explore the same pastimes the Five explored. Even if they didn’t die by magic, some still believed they practiced it.”
My palms are clammy as I press them to my face and suck in several hot, recycled breaths. I’m well aware of my own hypocrisy: I try to get her to join a coven, and then I balk at the very idea. But Ellis doesn’t understand—even if she can flirt with devils, I can’t. I can’t.
“Some things shouldn’t be toyed with, Ellis. Magic is dangerous.”
“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: