The Witch Haven

by Sasha Peyton Smith

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Do you remember in the letter you wrote me, you said you went to the police station every Sunday at ten a.m. to ask about Will’s case?” He looks down at his shoes. “I went a couple of weeks ago. I should have done it sooner, but I finally felt ready, and I wanted to see you after—” He sighs. “Well anyway, you never came, and when I asked an officer about you, he told me what happened. Some story about the owner of your shop being found dead and you getting diagnosed with tuberculosis all in the same day. Quite the story.”

  “Rotten luck,” I mutter.

  “You seem well enough now.”

  “I snuck out.” It’s a terrible lie. He doesn’t believe me, and I don’t blame him.

  He takes a steadying breath. His hair is dark, wet and stuck to his forehead. I swear he’s grown again. “It’s the strangest thing—I tried to write to you, but no one could tell me the address. I wrote a dozen letters addressed to you, sent them around to every sanitarium in the state just to be thorough, but it doesn’t seem you received any of them.”

  “You—you wrote me letters?” I ask. A small voice in the back of my head, the one I try to ignore, understands what he truly means: he tried to find me.

  “Of course,” he whispers.

  And the way he says it makes me feel like I’ve been put into the ring again—emotions raging, raging like a church bell ringing in a storm. I don’t have time for this, to sort through what it means. Instead, I shrug my shoulders. “You know how the mail can be,” I offer as an excuse.

  He narrows his eyes. It hurts to be looked at by him with so much skepticism, even though I deserve it. “Why are you here?” he asks.

  “I was invited here by a friend. It was probably foolish to have come,” I say.

  He frowns. “Was it Finn?”

  I let myself imagine for a moment that he’s jealous of me spending time with a boy who isn’t him. “I didn’t realize you two were acquainted.”

  “I don’t know him well enough to speak badly of him. I never understood why your brother seemed so taken with him and his friends. Perhaps they were more exciting than me.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me until this moment that Oliver may have been hurt by William’s obsession with the Sons of Saint Druon and his new job with them as much as I had been.

  “So why’d you come here tonight?” I ask. Even in the dark of this rain-soaked street, the bruise blooming around his eye is visible. He always seemed so confident, so untouchable. Seeing him this lost makes me want to cry.

  “The Commodore Club is where my father’s gentleman’s club meets. I was invited here tonight to meet with them. I thought perhaps he finally believed I was old enough to join them without embarrassing him. One moment I was drinking a scotch, the next I was being shoved into that basement, and—I feel like I’m losing my mind.” He tips his head up to the sky, and lets the rain fall over his fine features, bruised now from the fight. “You did something in there. It was like… magic. That man inside called it magic.” He can barely choke out the word.

  “You didn’t know?” Between his father and William, I’m shocked Oliver has been left in the dark about all this. It must have been very lonely.

  Oliver shakes the rainwater from his hair. “I’m beginning to think I don’t know anything. The stupid thing is, I knew my father loved Will more than he loved me. But I was still so jealous he found him a position with the Sons, when he wouldn’t even let me enter the building. Said I was too young to join, and didn’t listen when I reminded him Will was only three months older than I was. But he was right. Will was better equipped to handle all this than me. He had a higher tolerance for the absurd, said it was annoying that I always needed things to make sense.” Raindrops drip from his fingers, hanging heavily at his side. “I think I probably need to go home and vomit.”

  “I wish I had the right thing to say.” I gesture to the air, as if my whirling hands could possibly communicate what I’m thinking. “You’re not crazy; you’re not seeing things.”

  “So it was magic?” Oliver sounds pained.

  I shrug. “If that’s the word you want to use.”

  His facial expression changes—like he’s seeing me for the first time. It’s enough to make me stumble backward.

  “I’m sorry, Oliver. I wish I could stay, explain…” My voice trembles only slightly. I won’t let my feelings get the best of me. Not when Maxine and Lena are waiting, if they haven’t left yet, that is. God knows what trouble we’ll be in. “I really do have somewhere to be.” My boots squelch against the wet sidewalk as I turn and leave him alone for the second time in months

  “I’m sorry, Frances,” he calls after me. I’m so far down the block, his voice is barely audible over the rain.

  “For what?” I shout. It’s a moment that aches.

  Oliver shrugs his shoulders. His tuxedo is soaked through. “Everything.”

  My heart beats wildly against my rib cage. I know what he means.

  * * *

  I run the twelve blocks to the Methodist church where the suffragette meeting is being held.

  By the time I arrive, my hair is a soaked matted mess at the back of my head, and the hem of Maxine’s beautiful dress is ruined with mud. I hope she will forgive me. I hope I can fix it.

  The street is quiet, the rain dissipating by the second.

  I step into the damp basement where women still mill about speaking to each other in small groups.

  I catch bits and pieces of conversation as I pass them: “strikes,” “sit-ins,” “marches.”

  Maxine’s eyes widen with horror as she sees me walk in.

  “What on earth happened to you,” she asks through her teeth.

  “I was caught in the rain.” I smile sweetly because Helen is glaring at us from across the room. But I don’t think she means the rain; I think she means my mottled-purple eye socket.

  Helen marches over at the sight of me. “Where have you been, Frances?”

  I will myself to tear up, and it isn’t difficult after the night I’ve had. I recite the story Maxine, Lena, and I came up with two days ago when we planned this deception.

  I tell Helen I missed my friends at the shop so desperately, I couldn’t help but leave the meeting to go see them.

  “Your friends must not have been glad to see you.” She eyes my swelling face.

  “I tripped. The rain made the sidewalk slick.”

  “I can’t say you didn’t deserve it. No matter, we have larger matters to attend to.”

  She approaches the tall blonde I spoke with earlier. “Ethel, are you ready?” she asks in a low voice.

  Ethel gulps. “I suppose as ready as I’ll ever be.”

  With Ethel at her side, Helen leads us outside to where the ambulance is parked on the curb.

  Even with Maxine up front, the back of the ambulance is awfully crowded with one more body.

  “Sorry about your tuberculosis,” Lena says to Ethel.

  “Helen told me where we’re off to. A professional courtesy.”

  “Well then I’m sorry about your magic.”

  Ethel sniffs. “Go on a hunger strike, come out with magical powers. I do feel bad about the guard, though.”

  “Don’t.”

  The rest of the drive back to school is long and oppressively silent.

  Helen seethes in the driver’s seat, angry with me for disappearing during her carefully planned field trip.

  Maxine seethes in the front seat, probably angry with me for ruining her dress.

  Lena seethes in the back of the ambulance, rightfully angry with all those closed-minded suffragettes.

  Ethel may be seething. I don’t know her well enough to tell.

  And I feel terrified, and terrifying.

  My brain is at war with itself, unable to process all the things I learned about both magic and myself tonight. I can still feel the echo of it, how big it made me feel. I crave that feeling again already. It’s intoxicatin
g. But then I think of the crunch of the whisky bottle as it crashed into that man’s skull, and the raw fear in my opponent’s eyes as I seized his body, and I recoil. Tonight I was forced to confront magic’s ability to do harm. And I was good at it. What does that say about me?

  Boss Olan’s offer to join them nags at the back of my mind. Would running away from Haxahaven to join a man who has made big promises make me exactly like my mother? Or would harnessing my power keep me from making her same mistakes?

  Finally, we return to school. The gravel crunches as the ambulance slows to a stop. In the dark, the white columns of the school look blue.

  Helen jumps out of the car.

  “Frances, you’re on kitchen duty for the next two weeks. Report to the dining hall at five in the morning tomorrow.” As if I’m not worthy of another second of her attention, she stomps into Haxahaven without a look back, poor Ethel at her heels.

  “See, I told you so,” Maxine says. “Now you need to tell me everything that happened tonight.” She drags Lena and me to her suite on the second floor.

  I startle upon seeing a redheaded girl sitting on her canopy bed in a nightgown.

  “I’m so sorry, darling, not tonight,” Maxine says.

  The girl’s face crumples in disappointment, but she walks out the door without protest.

  “Who was that?”

  “May.”

  I drop it. We have more important things to discuss.

  I pad across the lush navy carpet to Maxine’s dressing table still covered in haphazardly placed necklaces and silver hairbrushes. There are magazines too, open to dog-eared pages of men in dandy’s clothing, candy colored suits and striped neckties.

  Like a magpie unable to resist shiny things, I run my fingertips across the cool rivets of a sapphire brooch.

  “I’ve told you to take whatever you want.”

  Maxine’s voice snaps me out of my trance.

  “Any brooch you want, any dress, whatever strikes your fancy.” Her voice is cold. “It’s all useless. I’ll be wearing this cape until the day I die.” She sinks onto the bed, looking so exhausted, I don’t remind her she’s not actually wearing a cape at the moment.

  I want to be out of this heavy, soaked mass of a ruined dress so badly I nearly take her up on her offer, but she begins speaking again before I can ask her to undo my buttons.

  “So, Hallowell, what the hell happened tonight? I felt the magic do… something.”

  There is relief in telling Maxine and Lena. The story comes spilling out of me so quick, I’m tripping over my own words. I can’t even look them in their shocked faces until I’m finished.

  Lena stares at me, mouth agape. “Why didn’t you just leave?”

  I don’t have an answer that makes sense. I don’t think I could explain the responsibility I felt for Oliver, the weight of Finn’s gaze, or worst of all, the exhilaration of using my magic.

  “I don’t know.”

  The look on Maxine’s face is hard to decipher. She’s pacing the room, pulling her hair out of its bun.

  “What I felt…,” Maxine mutters. “I couldn’t breathe, like someone had seized my chest.”

  “I don’t know how I did it,” I say. It wasn’t much different from our practice in the woods, but it was more, like someone let a stopper out of a bottle that was only leaking before. For the first time I felt the true magnitude of this power. What I don’t tell them is the terrible satisfaction it gave me. I still feel a little intoxicated. I can’t tell them how hungry I am for more.

  Finn was right. This magic is dangerous.

  I’m afraid all of Maxine’s pacing might wear a hole through the carpet.

  “Frances, you can’t let anyone find out about this. We take this to our graves. If Vykotsky were to learn about this…” Maxine trails off like the consequences are too terrible to speak aloud.

  I shoot her a glare. “Oh yes, Maxine, Mrs. Vykotsky was the first person I thought I’d tell about our forbidden spells, and a magical bare-knuckle boxing match.”

  “Shut up.”

  My nerves are scraped bare after everything tonight; I’m not in the mood to tolerate Maxine’s usual jabs. “I don’t understand why you’re being mean to me about this!” I shout too loud. The room goes silent as all three of us listen for someone stirring. The last thing we need is a knock on the door from whoever is patrolling the halls.

  After a tense moment, Maxine sighs heavily and looks up at the ceiling. “I’m not trying to be mean,” she whispers. “I just wish it were me.”

  It’s as vulnerable as Maxine has ever been with us. I’m shocked to hear of all things, she’s jealous.

  “If I could give this power to you, I would,” I reply, but I don’t know if it’s the truth. If it gets me one step closer to the resurrection spell, finding what happened to my brother, I would never give it up, not for a second.

  Lena hardly speaks during the whole exchange. She just looks at me, her eyes narrowed, fiddling with a piece of dark hair that’s come undone. Her unending stare is more unsettling than Maxine’s frantic pacing.

  When Maxine is convinced I can give her no more answers, Lena and I climb the stairs to our room together.

  I’m frustrated and hurt. I needed to feel their support tonight; instead I feel chastised.

  “Are you all right?” Lena asks me as I reach the door.

  She looks like she needs a hug as badly as I do. “No. Are you?”

  She frowns. “No.”

  I pull her into my arms, and it’s awkward. I’m too angular and she’s too tall, but it makes me feel a little better.

  We exchange sad smiles and go quietly into the darkness, careful not to wake up Ruby and Aurelia.

  I’m still uncomfortable from my conversation with Maxine. I’d pity her if I weren’t so annoyed. It feels typical she’d find a way to make this about her.

  I fall asleep quickly, the magic having burned through my energy like a flame on a wick.

  I dream I’m standing in the lush field of the Blockula. Finn is waiting for me. The meadow is awash with tiny crimson blooms, as if the grass has been splattered with fresh blood. The light bends wrong here.

  His white shirt is unbuttoned around the neck. A crescent of mottled purple is sketched beneath each of his eyes. I wonder when the last time he truly rested was.

  “Hi, Finn.” I wonder distantly if I could control his body in this dream landscape.

  He fiddles with his fingers and casts a glance at the ground. “I never should have taken you. You could have died.”

  “But I didn’t die.”

  Finn scrubs a hand across his jaw. There’s something tortured in his eyes as they take me in. “Does your eye hurt?”

  I bring the tips of my fingers to my eye socket. It’s tender, here in the dream, but not unbearable. I’m not sure how real-life-pain translates into dream pain. His eye is swollen too, from where he got socked trying to stop them from dragging me into the ring.

  “Does yours?”

  He shrugs. “I’ve had worse.” He takes a breath. “What you did tonight was… extraordinary.” His voice is thick with awe. He’s gazing at me like I’m magic itself. “Boss Olan invited you to join us, didn’t he?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I just know him. He collects people with extraordinary power the way ordinary men collect stamps.”

  It’s the exhausted way Finn says it that makes me wonder if that was what happened to him. A child with a broken leg taken by a man he didn’t know across a great wide ocean to an unfamiliar city, he must have been terrified.

  “Why would he need me? It seems the Sons have plenty of magic without me.”

  “All magic is complicated and individualistic. We have our own Finders, and clairvoyants, and mind readers. But we don’t have anyone who can manipulate like you other than Boss—he’s been looking for a protégé, but none of us are powerful enough.”

  Powerful enough. The thought is thrilling and nauseating. I can�
��t admit the truth to Finn, which is that I’m not convinced I have any particularly special power—I think Maxine or Lena or any of my classmates would have reacted the same as I did in that ring.

  He chews on his lower lip. “So, are you going to accept his offer?”

  “Has a witch been invited to join before?” The thought of leaving Haxahaven makes me uncomfortable. For all its flaws, it has become a sort of home, and after what I saw tonight, the Sons don’t necessarily seem a better option than the one I currently have.

  He furrows his brows. “Not that I know of.”

  “Do you want me to join?” This question makes me most nervous of all.

  Finn thinks for a moment. “Of course I do.”

  “What if I don’t feel like leaving quite yet. The food here is good.”

  Finn frowns. I thought he’d laugh. “What if leaving made it easier to find out what happened to William, to the other boys?”

  I should have known he’d use this. The one bartering chip he knows I can’t turn down.

  “I’m not convinced of it. Not yet.” I don’t know how to explain it to him without sounding weak. “Perhaps I’ll feel different when I’m less bruised. Say what you will about the witches of Haxahaven, they’ve never punched me in the eye.”

  Finn exhales through his teeth. “I’ll make them pay for what they did tonight.”

  I want to ask how he plans on exacting his revenge, but I doubt he’d take kindly to my condescension. It was made clear tonight just how little sway Finn holds within the Sons. “It’s not worth it.”

  “Whatever it is you choose, we’re in this together. I’ll see you soon, Frances.” Something violently real flickers in his hazel eyes.

  My clever retort gets stuck in my throat.

  I blink awake. My eye socket throbs.

  Terrified and terrifying.

  * * *

  Before dawn, when the light is still purple, I wake for kitchen duty. I’m exhausted and frustrated with myself, but as punishments go, it’s benign, so I button my cape, braid my hair, and sneak quietly out of the room so as not to wake my still-sleeping roommates.

  Florence meets me at the door, much like the night when Maxine, Lena, and I first snuck out to meet Finn.