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.
Clara and Leonie arrive over the next fifteen minutes, Leonie appearing perfectly coiffed and all but presidential, as if she were somehow transported to the middle of the woods by hired car rather than by traipsing over twig and stone. Clara looks rather worse for wear, but she doesn’t complain. Perhaps she’s pleased to have been invited at all.
Ellis stands at my side, her fingers pressing against the back of my elbow: careful, steadying. I doubt she knows how much I need that anchor right now.
Leonie recognizes Ellis’s mask. I can tell from the way she hesitates but doesn’t flinch when she sees it—the goat’s skull is less horrifying if you’ve seen it before. Perhaps she’s one of the Margery coven’s newest members, inducted while I was rotting away in a hospital bed.
Does she know, then, that I was once a sister too?
That I was excommunicated?
“Ellis,” Leonie says slowly, carefully, “what is that?”