The Witch Haven

by Sasha Peyton Smith

“Goodbye,” I call over my shoulder as she drags me across the ballroom like an unruly child. I leave Finn and Oliver staring wordlessly at each other, their perfect mouths in straight lines.

  “I didn’t realize you’d have friends here,” Helen quips.

  “In my defense, neither did I. Is your real name Gertrude?” I snipe in return.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  I smile serenely so that anyone who sees us in the ballroom would think us an aunt and niece having a lovely evening, but my response comes through gritted teeth. “And you didn’t think it was important to tell me?”

  Helen, calm as ever, replies, “No. Now please focus on the task at hand.”

  Commissioner Murphy is a slip of a man with a pointy face and fluffy white hair that sticks out from his head as if he’s been struck by lightning. He’s standing by the podium next to Boss Olan, Governor Dix, and James O’Gorman, the candidate for Senate.

  From the perimeter of the room, Helen and I watch them like snakes in the grass. It’s a small relief to be a predator instead of the prey. “Just wait one moment,” Helen tells me. She’s right. One moment is all it takes before Commissioner Murphy steps away from his companions and toward the buffet on the back wall.

  “Smile pretty, Frances,” Helen whispers.

  With Helen at my heels, I wander as casually as I can muster over to the buffet. I don’t want to extend my hand to the man, but I do. Brushing my fingers against the twill of his coat feels like plunging my hand into a nest of spiders.

  The magic in my chest scratches like a caged animal. It has been reined in so long, and here, with so many people to take hold of, it begs to be let loose. I tighten my grip on it.

  Not yet.

  If I fail at this, I will be punished by Mrs. Vykotsky, but what’s worse is I will be found out by every single fish-eyed man in this room. It’s been a while since men like this have had a witch to burn. I wonder how desperately they hunger for a new one.

  “Hello, Commissioner Murphy.” I do my best impression of Ruby.

  “Well, hello miss, I do not believe we are acquainted.”

  “Frances Hallowell, sir. You’re needed.” I’m afraid my smile looks more like a grimace.

  “Needed on what business?”

  I have only one card to play. “A request of the Sons.”

  He doesn’t bite. “Now’s not the best time, sweetheart.”

  “It will only be a minute, Commissioner.”

  He looks to his companions, then back to me. “I’ll tell you what. You meet me in the lobby tonight around ten, and we’ll discuss whatever it is you need then, darling.”

  Darling, sweetheart. I truly hate this man. “Ten won’t work, I’m afraid. It has to be now.”

  He narrows his eyes in suspicion. “Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  I use the trick Finn used on me in the basement of the Commodore Club, and with a few well-planned steps Commissioner Murphy doesn’t realize I’ve blocked his tiny figure from the view of his companions. He’s backed up against the wall.

  I’ve learned spellwork at Haxahaven; I’ve learned advanced magic with Finn. But I learned in the basement of the Commodore Club that the magic to manipulate others doesn’t respond to simple words. It responds to feelings deep in my soul. I channel the deepest river of emotion, the part of my soul that feels most and least like me. I close my eyes for a fraction of a moment and picture what it is I need Commissioner Murphy to do. With new clarity, I open them and take hold of his body. I don’t have time to feel guilty for the flash of fear in his eyes.

  Fighting the men in the Cath Draíochta was messy. This use of the magic, making Commissioner Murphy take measured steps and weave through a crowd, is like attempting to do surgery with a dull ax.

  The commissioner is graceless as I force him to walk in front of me. The ladies he bumps into gasp a little but brush off his rudeness and blank face as drunkenness.

  Helen follows as I walk the commissioner out of the ballroom, up the stairs, and onto the near-abandoned second floor.

  Helen waves her hand in front of room 210, and the lock unlatches with a click. She magicks the door open, and the three of us step inside the hotel room. The room looks like it was built for a French king, decorated with heavy carved furniture, an imposing canopy bed, and plush deep red carpet. In the corner of the room there is even a knee-high marble statue of a cherub.

  “That could have been more subtle, Frances,” Helen scolds me.

  I unleash Commissioner Murphy and heave in a breath. My chest is sticky with sweat; the world around me sways. I sink down onto the bed and put my head in between my knees.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Commissioner Murphy exclaims the moment I let him go. He slams down a Bible resting on the black marble sideboard for good measure. The noise makes me flinch.

  Helen riffles through her handbag, drawing out a contract and a fountain pen “You know what this is about, Paul.”

  “What are you witches doing in Queens?” the Commissioner replies.

  “We’ve been in Queens for over two hundred years.”

  “And what have you accomplished? Tax fraud? Etiquette lessons? Pseudoscience?”

  “Safety.”

  The tiny man laughs cruelly. “You know what true safety is? It’s power. It’s money.”

  “We didn’t come here to ask for your advice,” Helen snaps. “You’re going to sign the contract. You aren’t leaving this room until the ink is dry.”

  “And your tiny puppet master is going to make me?” He gestures to where I sit collapsed on myself.

  I try to shoot him a menacing glare, but with my face as green as it is, I’m not sure I cut a threatening figure.

  Helen jerks her chin at me, telling me that, yes, using her “tiny puppet master” is exactly what she intends to do.

  “It doesn’t look like she’s up to manipulating much of anything right now. Even if she could manage it, I’ll claim it’s a forgery.”

  “And we’ll claim that you’re a liar. Or that you were too drunk to remember signing. We could put every last one of your verifiable signatures into question, all while systematically destroying your reputation. Unless you’d like to tell the public we forced you to sign with magic?”

  “Why won’t you sign it?” I ask, still hunched over and breathing heavily. Mrs. Vykotsky made it sound like it had never been an issue before. I didn’t expect the magical underworld of New York City to rely so deeply on paperwork.

  “Boss’s orders.” He huffs. “Under strict instruction not to cooperate with the witches. They have something he wants, something Ana Vykotsky won’t give him.”

  Am I the thing she won’t give him? I didn’t even know they spoke.

  The thought makes me feel sick. I sit up a little straighter and turn the focus of my power to Commissioner Murphy. The magic, usually hot like a spotlight, flickers with no more power than a candle contained within my rib cage. I’ve never pushed it this far before.

  With the set of his jaw and his scowl at Helen, I know we’re not going to make any progress talking. It’s time to get the signature and leave. With all the noise he’s making, I can’t imagine we have long before others come looking.

  I raise my own right hand, and his rises along with it. It’s a little like looking in a mirror.

  I hold his arm, but I don’t have the strength to control his whole body, so, with his arm still raised, he stumbles to the door.

  Helen steps in front of him “Frances!” she screams.

  Speaking a single word is a herculean effort. “Can’t—” I choke.

  “Frances!” Helen shouts once more as the city commissioner reaches for the doorknob. His hand never reaches it, but the door flies open anyway, revealing a stunned Finn.

  To his credit, he shoves the skeletal commissioner back through the doorway and slams the door behind him.

  “What’s going on?” he exclaims at the same moment Helen screams, “Get out!”


  Finn looks from me to Helen to the commissioner, then back to me. “What is this, Frances?”

  The commissioner takes advantage of the chaos to lunge for the door.

  “No!” Helen shouts.

  Finn blocks the doorway with the expanse of his shoulders. I rise from the bed, and with all my concentration, I hold the commissioner’s body still.

  “Helen, now,” I say through my teeth. Finn just watches the scene wide-eyed and still.

  Every muscle in my body screams as I force the commissioner to walk over to the sideboard to sign the hospital charter.

  Controlling his legs feels like one of those dreams where I’m trying to run away, but my body won’t obey me.

  He fights against the pen Helen shoves into his unwilling hand, but still I hold him. Helen and Mrs. Vykotsky’s plan was poorly thought out, or they overestimated my ability, because I cannot make him sign the document. I don’t know how. I could manipulate his hand, but all I would manage to get is a scrawl of ink across the paper. Not the commissioner’s verifiable signature. Perhaps this was simply an exercise to scare me, or to scare him.

  Carefully, like I’m slowing down the cranking of my sewing machine, I loosen my hold on him. I do my very best to free just his right hand from my control, but I don’t quite know how.

  It all happens in a flash. Helen’s scream pierces the room before I see the fountain pen sticking out of her arm. The commissioner stumbles backward toward the door, but the wisp of the commissioner is no match for the bulk of Finn’s chest.

  I stand from the bed and seize the commissioner’s body with my power, but I can’t hold him for long.

  My hold on him snaps like a fraying thread.

  The commissioner wheels around to face Helen, who is still staring, a little dumbstruck, at the fountain pen sticking out of her bicep.

  The dagger the commissioner produces from his breast pocket glints like the crystals on the chandeliers in the ballroom below.

  Finn and I gasp.

  The commissioner lunges at Helen, but his empty fist falls harmlessly with a dull thud against her breastbone. The dagger he held just moments before floats above his hand, pointed at Helen’s heart. Before the commissioner has time to take another breath, Helen uses her magic to spin the dagger in midair and sink it into the hollow of his sternum.

  Dark blood blooms on his crisp white shirt. He looks down at it, a curious expression on his face. He collapses on the floor and coughs hollowly again and again. The three of us watch in silent horror as he gasps in one final gurgling breath and then, like a sigh, life exits his body.

  It’s physically painful to watch. I stumble to the bed, sitting on the edge and dropping my forehead to my knees. The bed sinks as Finn sits down next to me. The hissing of Helen’s curse words make me think she’s just yanked the pen out of her arm.

  I can’t bear to look at her or the body in the middle of the floor, so I keep my head down as I choke, “You killed him… you killed him… you didn’t say we’d kill him.”

  Finn rubs my back in soft circles and mutters, “There, there, you’re all right now,” under his breath over and over. Which doesn’t help, because it only reminds me that I’ve made myself look weak and incapable in front of him.

  Helen kneels before me and places her non-bloody hand on my knee. “Frances, compose yourself. Listen to me very carefully. We need to leave this room. Now.”

  Next she turns to Finn, whose hand has gone still against my back.

  “And if you think I don’t know who you are, Mr. D’Arcy, you are mistaken. You seem fond of Miss Hallowell. I’m sure you’d hate to see her in trouble. You aren’t going to tell anyone about this, are you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Helen smiles sweetly. The blood from her stab wound runs down her arm, dribbling through the gaps in her fingers. “Of course you aren’t. Be a good lad; grab that carpet there,” she commands him, pointing to where the commissioner lies very still, his blood leaking out of his chest into a puddle around him.

  Finn gets to work rolling the commissioner’s body up, while I put my head back down and try unsuccessfully to steady my breathing.

  “Why didn’t he stop you?” I ask Helen after a moment.

  “He doesn’t have magic,” Finn huffs from where he’s crouched on the floor. “The Sons value power. There are so many different kinds. Some wield… political influence.”

  From the bathroom, where Helen holds a towel over her bleeding arm, she snorts.

  “What do we do now?” I ask.

  Helen peers at Finn. “He looks strong. How far are the docks?”

  Getting Commissioner Murphy’s body out of the hotel is a challenge. We don’t want the elevator operator to see the carpet in Finn’s arms. At best, he’ll think us carpet thieves. At worst, he’ll notice the obvious shape of a body.

  Helen creeps down the hall, leaving Finn and me sitting in silence with the body.

  After a moment, she rounds the corner, declaring she’s found the service stairs. It doesn’t take us long to haul the body down one flight and out into the alley.

  The hotel room was never rented under our names, and the bloody carpet, the only evidence of the killing, we take with us.

  On our way to the river, we give Commissioner Murphy a funeral march through the streets of the city he once ruled.

  On a Saturday night in New York City there are stranger sights than two women in ball gowns and a young man in a tuxedo carrying a rolled-up carpet over his shoulder. We don’t draw much attention. We only need to make it six blocks; the docks are a straight shot down West Forty-Fifth. Finn knows the way.

  We pass young men in dingy coats, coins jangling in their pockets, en route to the nickelodeons in Times Square. Past them rush more young men in top hats on their way to see Gibson girls or picture shows. Jolly piano music pours from the open doors of theaters, harmonizing with the wailing of feral cats.

  Helen, Finn, the body of Commissioner Murphy, and I turn the corner toward the docks. The smell of rotting fish guides us like a compass. None of us speak.

  My face is still swollen and pulsating after my crying jag, and judging by Finn’s concerned glances in my direction, I look as upset as I feel.

  Helen doesn’t look at either of us. She just keeps marching on, her eyes on a singular target, the dark water ready to swallow our victim.

  The docks aren’t empty, but the women leaning against the brick walls and their companions don’t pay us much attention as we duck behind a dry dock, blocking ourselves from view.

  Finn dumps the carpet with a huff, and Helen unrolls it with a kick, revealing the commissioner’s lifeless body. His mouth lolls open, but his eyes are closed, thank God.

  Helen pulls the commissioner’s bloodstained dagger out of her beaded handbag and crouches down.

  It takes me a moment to realize what she’s doing, taking the dagger and sawing, sawing, sawing at his wrists.

  It’s ugly work, cutting through sinew, veins, and milky-white joints.

  She’s cutting off his hands.

  I turn around and vomit champagne into an overturned crate.

  “Don’t be dramatic, Frances,” Helen says, not letting her eyes leave her work. “The last thing we need is the police identifying his body quickly. Removing his hands will stop them from using his fingerprints.”

  Finn places his hand firmly on my shoulder, and we share a knowing glance.

  So this is it, the confirmation I need. All the news articles of the boys on Sheepshead Bay come rushing back to me in a torrent.

  The blood on her hands is slick and dark. I’ve never heard anything worse than the snapping of skin and bone.

  She makes quick work of it.

  Like a skilled surgeon.

  Like someone who has done this before.

  Helen nods to Finn, and he helps her roll the commissioner’s body from the dock into the water, while I stare at the dark horizon and ask the stars to give me a different life.<
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  The body that was once Commissioner Murphy plops as it hits the water. I dart my eyes down just quick enough to see a pale handless arm sinking into the dark water.

  I swallow down the sob and the bile in my throat, but the image is one I’ll never be able to scrub from my brain.

  They dump the carpet, too, then the hands, individually. They hit the river with two small splashes.

  When Helen is finished, she wipes her hands with a handkerchief and tosses that into the river as well. It floats away, a specter on the water.

  We walk away much quicker than we came, now that we’re unencumbered with the body, but my guilt feels just as heavy.

  At a street corner two blocks from the river, Helen turns to Finn and says, “You understand if you say anything about what happened tonight, you will do irreparable harm to the tenuous peace that exists between our two organizations. There are players much older than you who have been doing this for a lot longer. Don’t try anything tricky. You’ll fail.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Finn answers.

  “Good.” Helen nods.

  The farther we walk from the docks, the more people crowd the streets. It’s brighter here too, illuminated with flickering gas lamps. I feel like an imposter, walking among normal people going about their evenings like I didn’t just dispose of a body.

  “Finny!” a male voice shouts from across the street. I’m so on edge, I just about jump out of my skin.

  From the corner of my eye I see a short blond boy, perhaps nineteen, bounding across traffic, dodging a horse and carriage, a wide smile on his face.

  Finn slows his pace. He’s just ahead of us, so we slow to match it.

  “Finny boy, there you are! We’ve been looking for you! We were just headed back to the club. Patterson swiped a bottle of whiskey off the bar, and we still have so much planning to do for the—”

  “Ah, of course!” Finn stops the boy. He doesn’t acknowledge Helen or me. It’s probably not wise for him to be seen by other members of the Sons cavorting with witches.

  I step to weave around him, but his shoulder slams into mine, causing me to stumble. I drop my beaded bag.

  “Oh, miss, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there!” Finn exclaims. We both bend down to pick up the bag. Crouched on the ground, he leans in so close, only I can hear him. “I’ll be waiting outside the gates tonight. Please be careful.”