A Special Place for Women

by Laura Hankin

  Two of the figures appeared in front of me and pulled the hoods back from their heads, revealing one head of straight auburn hair and one with wild, dark curls. Caroline and Margot. “Welcome,” Margot said, “to our coven.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Okay. What? Hadn’t Caroline and Margot hated the casual references to witchiness that some of the members made, pressing their lips together whenever other women went on and on about crystals? Margot had said that she’d made a mistake, joking that Nevertheless was a coven in that interview. Type A, corporate Caroline had practically bitten off the head of that member who proposed a Spell Your Success workshop. But now, they were wearing full-on floor-length black robes made of velvet, taking it way further than those other women ever had.

  I searched their faces for a hint of embarrassment, an acknowledgment that they knew they were playacting. But they were contained, sincere, as the other women removed their hoods. Vy was there, and Iris, along with four others whom I recognized from the clubhouse but whose names I didn’t know, all of them luminous, their bodies alert with anticipation. Vy bent down to the wood in the center of the stone circle, pulled out a lighter from her pocket, and lit a fire. As the flames began to crackle, they sent dancing shadows over the faces of the women before me.

  “Coven?” I asked.

  “Mm-hm,” Margot said, a smile curling on her lips.

  “Like everyone talks about in the clubhouse?” I asked haltingly. “Like, rah-rah, love my witches, we’re totally a coven?”

  “Not quite,” Margot said.

  “For those members who want to talk about spells and such, it’s just a fun fad,” Caroline said. “Some casual appropriation. Up here, it’s different.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Simple,” Margot said, and smiled at the women flanking her before turning back to me. “Because we actually do magic.”

  “Um,” I said. I waited for someone to flip on the lights and for them to shriek with laughter, for them to point at my face and crow about how I was so fucking gullible. But they just kept looking at me, even and appraising.

  “What kind of magic?” I asked, trying to maintain a mask of impressed sincerity. Most of me was trying not to shriek with laughter myself, although another, smaller part half expected Margot to whip out a wand and transform Vy into a cat, for Caroline to peel off her skin to reveal a crone’s face beneath. “The magic of sisterhood?” Maybe saying that they “actually did magic” was like when I said that I could “literally eat a horse”—I felt like it in the moment, sure, but I knew it wasn’t really possible.

  “No, real magic,” Caroline said.

  “Right, okay,” I said. “Like Harry Potter? Enchanting mirrors and hanging out with dragons?”

  “Of course not,” Caroline continued. “I told you, real magic. The kind where we make things happen.”

  “With every spell we do, we’re influencing things, carving grooves in the world so that the water flows where we want it to,” Iris said.

  “Like, for example, I wanted to focus on my career for as long as possible before settling down,” Caroline said, “but I also didn’t want to wait too long to start a family, so the day I turned thirty, we did a summoning circle to find my husband. I met him the next day. A man who checked all of my boxes.”

  “And she had a lot of boxes,” Margot said.

  “I had an average amount of boxes,” Caroline said.

  “When that troll ruined Vy’s art installation,” Iris said, “we did a blocking spell so that the police wouldn’t look too hard into who had vandalized his home. And they never even brought anyone in for questioning.”

  Or, the voice inside me snarked, Caroline glommed on to the next attractive man she met, and the police left you alone because you had money and power.

  The other women, the ones I didn’t know, began to speak too, introducing themselves—Tara, Ophelia, Gabby, and Nina. They each told their own story, the ways in which this coven had protected and promoted and shaped their lives, and the whole time I just kept waiting to wake up.

  “And, well, we’ve done bigger things too, in service of some larger goals,” Margot said. My ears perked up, but Caroline cleared her throat, so Margot didn’t elaborate. She just leaned over the altar and began to light the candles on it.

  So this was the big secret. That they were absolutely nuts.

  “Wow,” I said. “Were you really into Wicca in high school, or—”

  “This isn’t Wicca,” Vy said.

  “Although it might look that way at first, from the outside,” Margot said.

  “It’s not some hobby,” Caroline said. “And we’re not going to move to Salem and open up a witch store to sell candles. It’s sacred, and it’s secret.”

  “Our great-grandmothers started it,” Margot said. “Mine and Caroline’s. Almost a hundred years ago, they began to meet in this building. It was just an old abandoned button factory at the time, with three women sneaking in to start a fire.”

  Three? I wondered as Caroline took over the story. “Back then, hardly anybody came out this far west. That changed over the years, of course, thanks to us practicing here. We basically made this neighborhood.”

  “I’m sorry, are you saying that you made the West Village—” I began, but Caroline was still talking.

  “They passed it down to their daughters. My grandmother bought the building and invited in more members. Then our grandmothers passed it down to their daughters too. The Coven seemed like it might die with our generation. When Margot’s mother . . . well. I thought maybe it was antiquated and unnecessary anyway. But after 2016, I saw that it wasn’t, that we could use our magic in the service of a new goal—” Caroline cut herself off, then shook her head. “Anyways, we found our way back to each other.”

  What goal? I wanted to ask, but Margot had jumped in.

  “At first it was just me and Caroline,” Margot said. “Then we tracked down some of the daughters of women who had belonged over the years.” Margot looked at Vy, who gave her a nod. “And then we started the club.”

  “Wait, so Nevertheless itself is just a beard?” I asked.

  “No!” Caroline said. “Sure, we’re doing the real work up here. But I knew there could be a way to help other women in the process, to give them community and connection while we drew inspiration from them on the other side of a door. That’s why I said that we should start it.” She tossed her head, making sure she got the credit, still a little passive-aggressive even in what, for her, seemed a holy space.

  “And besides,” Margot said, “now we keep an eye out for members who have an extra power inside of them. A . . . potential. Those are the ones we bring in here. Most of them haven’t ever realized the extent of what they could do, haven’t ever thought of themselves as witches, at least not in a serious way. But when we all worship together, our magic can be unlocked.”

  What the ever-loving fuck. Magic was not real. This madness was not what I had signed up for. I just wanted to write an article and move the hell on.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in,” Margot said, touching my hand gently. “This part is always strange for the initiates.”

  “I almost ran away when they first told me,” said one of the women—Tara, she’d said her name was.

  “But soon,” Caroline said, “everyone believes. Do you have more questions?”

  A million fought and jabbered inside my brain. “Why?” I asked.

  “Why what?” Caroline asked.

  “Why do we do this?” Margot asked, and I nodded. She straightened her shoulders. “Because of power and sisterhood. Because to be a woman in this world is to know that you’re never truly equal, even when you put in ten times the work. Because it scares the men who want to keep us quiet, those who want to control us.” I thought of the pictures of Margot with her ex-boyfriend, who made her look small.
Now, in the darkness, in this pocket of forest in the middle of the West Village, as tree branches rustled around us and firelight danced on her wild mane of hair, she seemed ten feet tall. “Witches used to be respected, used to heal and help until men decided to take their power away, to burn them, to call them hags. But in here, in the dark, we clasp hands and make things happen, and we will be equal despite them, or we’ll be better.”

  The other women watched Margot, rapt, as she spoke. But something flickered on Caroline’s face along with the firelight, a kind of envy at the speech. She swallowed again. Maybe it wasn’t envy, but discomfort.

  “So, no offense to your picking methods and obviously I’m honored and everything, but . . . why me?”

  “You’ve known hardship and come out the other side. Your words have the power to take down a powerful man.” Margot paused, then smiled, radiant. “And, beyond that, your tarot reading predicted you’d be here.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The Three of Cups, the sisterhood card. You only would have drawn that if you’d truly belonged.”

  With a quick jolt of fear, I remembered the card I’d turned over before the Three of Cups, the card I’d hidden in my pocket and then buried in my drawer. The Ten of Swords. Betrayal. Clearly their “magic” didn’t extend to knowing that I’d lied about that. All during the reading, I’d assumed they were playing a mind game with me. But it had been so much more.

  “No one had drawn it for so long, not as their future card,” Margot said.

  “We’d been waiting years, and then, within a month, two of you did it,” Caroline said.

  “Caroline thought it would be poetic justice to have Roy Pruitt’s daughter involved,” Margot said, and a flash of annoyance or regret passed over Caroline’s expression. “But you proved that you were the one who would be loyal, who was willing to do what needed to be done for the good of the Coven.”

  “So we invite you in. Join us, Jillian,” Caroline said.

  “Join us, Jillian,” the other women echoed, these women who took taxis and went to yuppie juice shops and who, now, were chanting my name, shrouded in mystery and darkness. And here I was, standing among them in my pajamas, not knowing where to put my arms.

  “Are you ready?” Margot asked, holding out her hand.

  Fuck no. I did not want to entangle myself in this. I’d come to find out what they’d done to Nicole Woo-Martin, not to get myself trapped in some mass delusion. Clearly things would only get more dangerous and unstable from here on out.

  But . . . this was a story too. The elite of New York City, drawn into a cult of the occult, so drunk on their own power that they’d lost touch with reality. And they’d made other things happen, Margot had said with that mysterious smile. Did they believe they’d magicked Nicole out of office? If it was all connected, my God, the waves this reporting would make. I couldn’t get this far only to run away in fear.

  “Are you ready?” Margot asked again, and it wasn’t a question.

  I placed my hand in Margot’s. “I am,” I said.

  The women let out a breath as one, a soft sighing noise.

  “Then let’s start the ritual,” Margot said.

  By now, the flames were crackling higher in the stone pit, hissing and spitting. Maybe I was still dreaming. Maybe they were still screwing with me. Caroline turned and walked to the altar, picking up a bundle of herbs and the silver-handled knife that lay there. She passed the herbs to Margot, who placed the bundle in her right palm.

  Margot closed her palm into a fist and held it out over the fire. “Once we do this, you won’t be able to share the details of what you’ll go on to learn here with anyone outside the Coven,” she said. “Not a partner, not a best friend. We’ve all had to make that sacrifice. If you break the circle, there will be consequences.” Cool, so this was like a magical NDA, where instead of sending fancy lawyers after me, they’d send Satan? Thank God I didn’t believe in this. (I was more afraid of rich people’s lawyers than some demon from hell.)

  Murmuring something soft, words that weren’t in any language I knew, Margot crumbled the leaves into the flames. I kept one eye on her but I trained my other eye, obviously, on the freaking knife. It was smaller than a butcher’s knife but larger than your average silverware, and I was getting the discomfiting sense that it would play a starring role in this ritual.

  Caroline unsheathed the knife and held it delicately, revealing its smooth, sharp edge. “Your blood is mine, and mine is yours,” she said, and in one swift movement, dragged the blade down her left palm. Okay, they weren’t screwing with me. Shit.

  The incision she made was about a couple of inches long, shallow. I winced as a line of red sprung up on her skin. Caroline turned her hand over the fire, letting the droplets of blood seep into the flames, which sizzled and smoked in response. “So mote it be,” she said, then straightened up, her smile more blissful than I’d ever seen it, her shoulders loosening as if she’d just taken a Valium. From her robe she pulled a jar of some kind of ointment and rubbed it over the cut. Margot took a strip of cloth from her pocket and tied it around Caroline’s palm. Then Caroline passed the knife to Margot, who dug it into her own palm and repeated the same words.

  Again, the sizzle as the flames absorbed her blood, and then she passed the knife on down the circle to Iris, who took her turn and sent it down, getting ever closer to me, as the women who’d opened themselves bound up one another’s wounds.

  Nope. Nuh-uh. I didn’t even like going to the pharmacy for a flu shot, so I wasn’t about to plunge an actual knife into my skin. Also, had these women been tested for STIs recently? I thought we all acknowledged nowadays that mixing blood with strangers wasn’t generally a great idea. I’d never shared a hairbrush at sleepovers back in the day because of lice, so clearly I was too neurotic to be a witch, and I should just gracefully bow out and let them carry on with their spell-casting and bloodletting without me—

  Vy placed the knife in my palm, interrupting my thoughts. Its handle was heavier than I’d expected, with a raised pattern of vines and fruit on it. I stared at the vines, hesitating. “What are you waiting for?” Vy asked.

  The flames, the smell of the herbs, the tang of the blood—all of it mixed in the air, a cloying, suffocating scent that made me light-headed. Nausea roiled in my stomach. My face was reflected in Vy’s eyes, and I could’ve sworn that for a moment, amid the smoke, the image twisted and turned into that of a gull, batting its wings to stay above the waves.

  I pressed the blade into my skin, at the base of my thumb, chewing on my lip to stifle any whimpering. The sharp pain of the knife as it bit into me was what finally convinced me that I wasn’t dreaming, and then my skin split, my dark red insides revealed to the air. “Your blood is mine,” Margot prompted.

  “Your blood is mine,” I said, “and mine is yours.” I held my hand out. My fingers trembled as the blood began to trickle down my wrist, staining the sleeve of my cotton shirt. I turned my hand over and watched the blood run into the fire, the rest of my body starting to tremble too. “So mote it be.”

  “So mote it be,” the women repeated, and repeated again, over and over, a kind of monotonous chanting. Caroline took the knife back from me and placed it on the altar. Margot dabbed the ointment onto my hand—it was cool, smelling of some herbs I couldn’t identify. She bound up the cut. Then the women all reached out and clasped hands in the circle, Margot taking my right. Vy’s calloused hand gripped my left palm, and I recognized it—she’d been the one who’d held her hand over my mouth when I’d woken in the dark that night, lifetimes ago.

  We circled around the fire, and the women all began to take deep, slow breaths. “Breathe it in,” Margot said to me, so I followed their lead, my stomach expanding and contracting, the dizzying scent of the fire flooding into my nose and down my throat, a tingling within me spreading and spreading as, distantly, a church bel
l began to chime, twelve times. The final chime lingered and faded, and when it was gone entirely, Margot released my hand.

  “We are bound together, our secrets safe within this circle,” she said, her voice ceremonial, her eyes closed, lashes fluttering. Then she opened her eyes and smiled. “Now for the fun part.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  The fun part?” I repeated dumbly.

  “Each new initiate gets a spell,” Caroline said. “To welcome them to the circle.”

  “Something we can do for you, something you want,” Margot said.

  “What should it be? Oh, I know.” Caroline clapped her hands, the most efficient witch I’d ever seen. She turned to the altar and opened the drawers, which contained jars and herbs and also, incongruously, a few cans of LaCroix. “Success for your novel.”