The Witch Haven

by Sasha Peyton Smith

  “Then we run away?” I quickly offer, my back straightening. “I’ll help.”

  She shakes her head. “Vykotsky would find us.”

  “So we ask her. We explain.”

  “I’ve tried. She’s told me I’m mad and not yet prepared to return to the stresses of everyday life.”

  “Does Maxine know?”

  “Yes. She has her own reasons she can’t leave.”

  The dining room feels very small. The walls are closing in on me. The walls outside have never looked higher. The place I once thought was my salvation is turning into a prison.

  “You deserve a better world than this one, Lena. But I’d walk to the ends of it with you, barbed wire and all.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Vykotsky is nothing if not a master of punishment. The morning of the fundraiser she informs me at breakfast I am to borrow a dress from Ruby’s closet, and I need to ask Ruby for it myself.

  There’s little I dislike more than needing to ask for things from others, but asking for something from ice queen Ruby herself is a special kind of torture.

  I find her after lunch sitting in the sunroom, holding court with a gaggle of fawning girls.

  When I ask to borrow a dress, she snickers audibly and says, “You know I’d really rather not.”

  I snort. This is what I get for asking instead of just stealing it.

  “I need it for an event I’m attending tonight… at Mrs. Vykotsky’s request.”

  Ruby looks at me out of the corner of her eye and says, “Fine, just not the pink one.”

  “Understood.”

  Lena and Maxine meet me in my room a few hours later to help me dress. Maxine selects a dress of Ruby’s for me, insisting she has better taste than I do. It’s midnight blue with a golden sash around the waist and delicately embroidered constellations along the fluttering sleeves. It takes me an hour to tack up the hem and take in the shoulders in a way that will be easy to unpin later. The wide boat neck reveals a swath of my chest that feels scandalous. The satin is cool against my legs.

  Lena pins my hair into a twist, and Maxine produces a golden diadem to place on my head.

  I look like a lost princess. It is preferable to looking like a very scared witch. I wonder what William would think of his sister if he saw me now.

  I glance at Maxine in the mirror. “My mother sent it on my fourteenth birthday,” she tells me. “It looks better with your dark hair.”

  I wish more than ever that I could have my friends by my side tonight. When I walked into the basement of the Commodore Club alone, I was uncertain of my power but sure of my own judgment. Now I have a more secure grasp on what it is I’m capable of, but I’m nothing but a child in this war with players and conflicts much more complicated than I understand.

  I borrow a small evening bag from Maxine and place the blue mittens Finn knit me inside, which is silly, but they make me feel safe.

  Lena and Maxine walk me to the foyer, where Helen is waiting for me. She’s wearing a simple high-necked black gown and a single ostrich feather tucked into her slightly-poufier-than-average bun.

  With a sharp nod, she greets Lena and Maxine. “Girls.”

  Maxine squeezes my hand just once before I walk through the door and out into the bitter evening.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I’ve lived in New York City my entire life, but I’ve never been inside the Hotel Astor. I never thought I’d climb the white marble steps in a ball gown, gold woven in my hair. Then, I never thought I’d be a witch, either, so I am learning to temper my expectations of what this life is turning out to be.

  It’s frustrating to be this close to my brother’s grave. Mere blocks away lies the graveyard dust I so desperately need, but Helen’s leash is tight tonight and sneaking away will not be possible.

  Silent men open the glass double doors as we approach, but before we enter, Helen stops me with a cold hand on my bare arms. “Tonight, your name is Juliet, and I am your aunt Gertrude. We are guests of Assemblyman Bush of Elmira. Understood?”

  “Understood.” I say through gritted teeth. I’m so nervous, I’m about to crawl out of my skin, but Helen doesn’t need to know that.

  The music of a string quartet envelops us as we walk inside, and a white-gloved hand appears from nowhere to hand me a flute of champagne. I down it almost immediately. It burns, but less than whatever was in the kitchen jar Maxine once stole. That night in the field feels like it happened to a different person.

  Sparkling chandeliers clink above our heads. The lobby is abuzz with women in silk gowns and their tuxedo-clad escorts, and I have to weave between them and porcelain vases the size of children to traverse the room. The whole place smells like old flowers and new money.

  Helen and I are ushered through the halls of the first floor until we reach the Grand Ballroom.

  The cavernous space is packed to the brim with the highest echelons of New York society. Stepping into the ballroom is like stepping into a bottle of lukewarm champagne, all fizzy and golden, but off somehow.

  I stand in the doorway for a moment, struck with the stark contrast of this electric-lit room and the apartment building I lived in for so long, not far from here, where my former neighbors are sitting this moment, fighting off cockroaches in the candle-flickered dark before their evening meal.

  The ballroom could hold one hundred of my old apartments. The soaring ceiling is set with a honeycomb of glass and modern steel beams, and the room is decorated in dark wood, date palms, and heavy gold mirrors. I could probably steal a pewter salt and pepper shaker and feed my old neighborhood for a week.

  Helen gives our false names to a large man standing guard at the door to prevent any riffraff from coming in. Then she tugs at my dress, a strained smile on her face. “Come now, Juliet.”

  The cool silk of the dress and the tightly laced corset make me stand up straighter than I ever have in my life. This is women’s armor. Metal boning, slick ribbons, and an unwavering smile.

  Shiny guests mill around a maze of round tables draped in white tablecloths. Helen and I find the place cards marked GERTRUDE GELDING and JULIET GELDING. We smile politely at those who pass by us and make quiet conversation with each other. Helen leans over to me and whispers as old men and their young wives float past.

  “That’s Mr. and Mrs. Goodhue Livingston, they must be back from their home in New Orleans. Miss Anna Douglas Graham, about to be married off to some English duke with a crumbling castle desperately in need of her father’s money. Over there in pink is Mrs. Chisholm, wife of Hugh Chisholm.…” I tune out her drawling; I’ve never understood why the society section of the papers exists. Why should I care if a family I’ve never met has let a house in the Hamptons for the summer? This room is like the society pages come to life, but I can’t politely tell Helen I simply don’t care, so I nod along silently.

  The diamonds around the necks of the women look like trapped rainbows, they blur as I pull my eyes in and out of focus. I stop as a tall figure draws my attention.

  The sight of Oliver Callahan from across the room sends a shower of nerves careening through my body. Of course he’d be here. It’s just my luck.

  He’s in the corner standing by his mother, a haunted look in his eye and a champagne flute in his hand. It takes him a moment to notice me staring, but when he does, I resist the urge to look away. I meet his eye boldly. He takes a step toward me, but I shake my head almost imperceptibly with a nod toward Helen. He seems to understand, because he steps back and returns to speaking with his mother, but anyone watching closely would see the way he keeps glancing at me. He doesn’t drink the champagne.

  Oliver is tall and broad shouldered in his tuxedo. His spine is so much straighter than it was the last time I saw him, terrified in the basement of the Commodore Club. He looks at home here among these powerful people with their money. If the world were different and he were just a judge’s son and I were just a madwoman’s daughter, he would never walk into a place like thi
s with me on his arm. It’s not his fault, but it’s easier to be angry with him than feel anything else. Anger, at least, I understand.

  Dinner is served by white-gloved men who move in perfect synchronization, but the food goes to sawdust in my mouth. Men with identical faces get up at a podium and give speeches about the need for a thriving and safe city. These men look nothing like the city I know, which is confusing because they repeatedly claim to represent us all. When they speak of thriving industry, they speak of the money to be made in factory advancements, not of those losing their limbs working the lines. When they speak of growth, they speak of their own bank accounts, not of the opportunities for those whose hands built this from stolen marshland into the shining something it is today. The crowd applauds and toasts them. The longer it goes on the sicker I feel.

  We’re less than two miles away from the apartment I spent nearly all my life in, but I’ve never recognized New York less.

  At one point a man with a white mustache large enough to make up for the lack of hair on his head, drags his date up to the podium. “Gentlemen, would you look at her!” he exclaims. The gentlemen laugh and jeer like it’s the funniest joke they’ve ever heard. The poor woman has the kind of smile every other woman in the room recognizes. One that says, I want you to leave me alone, but think it was your idea. I am a pleasant thing, unworthy of this kind of focused attention. It’s a magic trick that seldom works.

  The women in this room exist only in their relationship to men: mothers, daughters, wives. But the men are simply men, and their power is never stronger than when they give themselves a fancy room, a podium, and a seemingly endless supply of cash.

  Finally, the speeches are done, and Helen leans over and whispers to me, “It’s time.”

  I give her a nod, and she smiles more for the sake of those at our table than for me. “I’m going to point out Commissioner Murphy. You’re going to be very charming, and you are going to get him to go to room two ten with us, where we will make him sign the necessary paperwork. Do you understand?”

  Be very charming? I’d laugh if I weren’t so revolted. No one has ever once looked at me and thought, What a very charming girl. “What do you propose I say?”

  “Just tell him you’d like a word with him in private,” she says with a tight smile. Disgust rolls through me at her implication.

  We don’t make it more than four steps across the ballroom before an old woman in a pale blue gown grabs Helen by the elbow.

  “Gertrude Gelding? Is that you?”

  Helen smiles warmly and attempts to ignore the woman. The woman refuses to be ignored. “Gertrude, it’s me, Dottie Maynard!”

  Helen turns. “Oh yes, hello, Dottie, it is good to see you. If you’ll excuse me…”

  Dottie Maynard has a bouffant that looks more like a bird’s nest than human hair, and it serves as an appropriate home to her tiara set with sapphires the size of robins’ eggs.

  “Gertrude, I haven’t seen you since Mr. Gelding and Albert passed. How long ago was that?”

  The tight smile on Helen’s face disappears. “Thirteen years.”

  “Good lord, has it really been that long?” Dottie exclaims. She reaches out and grabs both of Helen’s hands in her old wizened ones. “And now you’ve reappeared! There hasn’t been this much to talk about since Mrs. Howland Randall threw that fancy-dress party at her house on Madison Avenue during Lent. Of course that was idle gossip, and your situation is a family tragedy, but…”

  A tap on my shoulder makes me jump.

  Oliver stands behind me.

  “Another field trip?” He raises his brows. Helen is still trying to get rid of the insatiably chatty Dottie, who is now asking if Helen has been at the family estate on the Cape and that’s why they haven’t seen her around town in so long.

  “I’m here on sanitarium business.” I know it’s a stupid response, and by the look on Oliver’s face he does too.

  “I wasn’t aware sanitariums had much business at political fundraisers.”

  “Well… they do.”

  His confident mask falls. “Frances, please, just tell me what is going on,” he implores. “I can handle it. Whatever it is.”

  I shake my head; Maxine’s borrowed tiara is giving me a headache. “Don’t say things that aren’t true.”

  “I’m not—” He turns his head up at the sparkling ceiling and shoves his hands in the silk-lined pockets of his tuxedo pants. “I don’t know how else to say it. I failed William. I won’t fail you, too. I couldn’t live with myself.”

  I find the strength to look up at him, and the emotion in his green eyes makes something in my chest spark awake. For a moment I think it’s the magic—the fizzy warmth is similar—but this is something different. So I do something stupid. I decide to warn him.

  I take two steps closer to him and lower my voice so that only he can hear. “Oliver, I need you to listen to me carefully. There may be someone who is targeting young men connected to the Sons of Saint Druon… your father’s social club, I mean.”

  He looks down at me; there is more curiosity than fear in his eyes. “How do you know this?”

  “I don’t for certain. It’s just a hunch.”

  “Seems like you’ve had a lot of time at the sanitarium to… think.” I swear I can hear his heart thudding through the jacket of his tux. It’s been years since I’ve been this close to him.

  He’s daring me to tell him the truth, but I don’t take the bait. “Not much to do but keep up with current events.”

  “So if someone is targeting the Sons, what should I do?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Be safe. Don’t go anywhere with anyone you don’t know. Don’t walk alone. Carry a blade.”

  At the last suggestion Oliver laughs a little. “You really think I have it in me to stab someone, Frances?”

  I resist a smile. “Perhaps not.”

  He shakes his head. “Absolutely not. I once fainted at the sight of a classmate’s bloody nose.”

  “I remember.” I know exactly the seventh-grade fight he’s talking about. Oliver and I share a past tightly braided together, so many memories intertwined. “But you seemed at least a little tough in that basement.” It’s foolish of me to bring it up, but I relish the way he narrows his eyes at me like I know a secret he desperately wants to know too.

  “Me? A man punched me in the eye, and it took all I had not to cry. But you…”

  I bite my lower lip so hard it stings.

  Oliver leans down even closer. I smell mint and laundry soap. The glint in his eyes is a question I can’t answer. “Please, Frances,” he whispers.

  “I can’t.” My neck hurts from gazing up at him. The panicked noises in my head drown out whatever I’m feeling. “I couldn’t explain it even if I wanted to. You can’t protect me from this, Oliver. Please don’t try.”

  “Frances—” he begins, but we both simultaneously jump apart as a new figure approaches us.

  Suddenly Finn in all his finery and unruly hair is standing beside us, and the nerves come careening once more. I feel a sickening wave of guilt at Finn witnessing me so close to Oliver. It feels like something I should apologize for. I want to explain to him that it wasn’t what it looked like. But what did it look like?

  If Finn is upset by what he saw, he doesn’t let on. His face is as open and friendly as it always is. “Hiya, Frances. Fancy meeting you here. And Oliver Callahan, once again.”

  Oliver is the kind of boy who looks as if he was born in a white button-down shirt. Finn, on the other hand, looks more like a snake donning camouflage.

  I probably deserve this, the nausea and vague, pointless guilt at the sight of the two of them together.

  Oliver extends a hand. “An unexpected pleasure.”

  They hold each other’s hands too tight and too long. Finn’s knuckles are bruised.

  “What’s wrong with your hand?” I ask under my breath.

  “An accident.” He smiles, looking at Oliver, not at me.
>
  My head throbs where the combs of the tiara dig into my temples, or perhaps it’s the champagne or the dread that has wormed its way into every part of my body.

  As if to have an excuse to break eye contact with Finn, Oliver takes a glance at the watch in the breast pocket of his jacket.

  My heart stutters a beat as recognition hits me like a punch to the chest. I would recognize that tarnished gold chain anywhere.

  “Was that William’s?” I ask. I make an effort to keep my voice steady. I’m suddenly angry again, at all the things Oliver has made me feel.

  I raged when my mother wouldn’t tell me where the watch had gone after William died. “What use do girls have for watches?” she asked me. “To tell the time,” I replied. It was one of the last times we spoke.

  I thought perhaps she’d sold it. To see that she gifted it to Oliver behind my back hurts more.

  “Ah, yes. My most prized possession.” He beams.

  As if possessed, I reach for it. For as long as I’ve known about the Resurrection, one thing has nagged at me. I didn’t know where to find an object of my brother’s. I wasn’t completely without ideas, but none of them were good. My newest was to break into our old apartment and cut out a square of wallpaper.

  But this watch, gleaming inches from me, is perfect. The graveyard dust is blocks from here. Then we’d have everything we need. Suddenly it’s within my grasp. I’m near giddy with the knowledge.

  I just need Oliver to—

  I jump, snapped out of my trance. Helen, having extracted herself from Dottie, appears at my side and grips me tightly by the elbow.

  Oliver flips the front of the watch closed and places it back in his breast pocket.

  “Frances, tell your friends goodbye. We really ought to be going,” Helen clucks.