by Kate Brian
“What do we do?” Eliza asked as Theresa made a move for the book.
“We can’t just do it now,” Theresa replied, flipping quickly through the pages. “There are special supplies. And we’ll need the entire coven.”
“What?” Eliza asked, devastated. “But I thought—”
“Special supplies?” Alice interrupted. “You’re not . . . you girls aren’t actually planning to . . . to bring her back?”
“Why do you think we carried her all the way back here?” Theresa demanded.
“I thought we were just bringing her out of the woods,” Alice said, her bottom lip trembling. It seemed she was unable to face reality. “Bringing her home.”
Theresa slapped a thick page down. “Here it is. The Life Out of Death Spell.”
Eliza rushed over to peer over Theresa’s shoulder. A shudder went through her at the sight of the awful skull, and she wrapped her arms around herself as the cold air of the chapel started to slither around her wet limbs. She averted her eyes from the drawing and concentrated instead on the words, clinging to them like a mantra.
Life Out of Death. Life Out of Death.
“No. We can’t do this,” Alice said, backing toward the stairs. “It’s unnatural.”
“What’s unnatural is a sixteen-year-old girl falling to her death in the middle of the night in the woods because of a stick of sulfur,” Eliza replied, glancing up from the list of instructions for the spell.
“I can’t be a part of this,” Alice said, shaking her head. “I have to go.”
Then she turned on her heels and raced up the stairs, her tiny feet making scrambling sounds until the door had slammed behind her. The sound echoed down the stairs, and Eliza shivered, feeling suddenly closed in, closed off, buried alive.
“And so we are down to two,” Theresa said wryly.
Eliza took a deep breath and tried to ignore the foreboding feeling that swirled through her.
“Three,” she corrected, glancing at Catherine.
She looked so peaceful now that she was inside and out of the mud. The branch that had fallen on her had left not a scratch on her face. From the right angle, she looked as if she was merely sleeping peacefully—as long as one didn’t get a glimpse of the awful wound on the back of her head.
“Right. Three,” Theresa replied. She pointed to the list of ingredients needed for the spell. “We’re going to need some time to gather these things. The spell can be done anywhere up to forty-eight hours after the subject’s death. We need to move fast.”
“But we have classes tomorrow,” Eliza said, pacing away from the pedestal and toward the wall. “How are we going to explain Catherine’s absence?”
Theresa bit her lip. Eliza had never seen her look so uncertain, and suddenly she felt an odd connection to Theresa. They were in this together now. Together—for Catherine.
“We could tell them she received an urgent message from her parents. That a coach came in the middle of the night to take her home.”
Eliza leaned one hand against the cold clay wall and nearly froze. She pushed herself away again, pacing the periphery of the room to try to warm herself from the inside.
“It won’t work. All messages have to go through Miss Almay.”
She thought of the Spell of Silence. “Is there anything in that book we can use? Something that will make them think they see her, even though she’s not there?”
Theresa shook her head and flipped a few pages, frustrated. “Nothing. And believe me, I know. I read through the entire thing earlier tonight, remember?”
“I do,” Eliza said, her heart twisting in agony. Tonight she had been sitting just there on the right side of the room with Catherine. If she concentrated hard enough, she could see her friend bent over the book across her lap, studying for an exam she would never take.
“Wait a minute,” Eliza said, a rush of realization running through her. “What if we made up a spell on our own?”
“Can we do that?” Theresa asked.
“Why not? We can word it like the Spell of Silence, but make it so that none of the adults miss her.” She walked over to the book and flipped to the beginning, where the more basic spells were written. “Wherever we go, wherever we might, let us walk in silence as the night,” she read, contemplating the words.
Eliza stared at the wall, rhymes floating through her mind. Perhaps something about keeping adults in the dark? Or making them forget Catherine ever existed? But then how would they explain who she was when she came back? Unless they made the spell last for only forty-eight hours . . .
“What about something like . . . ‘Wherever we go, wherever we breathe, let others see Catherine where she might usually be’?” Theresa said, walking around to the front of the pedestal.
Eliza blinked. “Theresa, that’s amazing. We should write it down,” she said, picking up the pen on the pedestal. “In case it works and we need it again.”
Theresa flipped to the center of the book, where the spells ended and the blank pages began. Eliza handed over the pen.
“Here, you should do it,” she said. “It’s your spell.”
“All right,” Theresa said, the pen hovering over the blank page. “But what shall I call it?”
Eliza’s brow knit. “How about the Presence in Mind Spell?”
Theresa nodded. “I like that.”
She wrote the title across the top of the page in large letters, then scrawled the words beneath, separating the lines as if the spell was a stanza of poetry. Finally she placed the pen down and, much to Eliza’s surprise, took Eliza’s hand. “Come. We’ll say it together.”
“No. Wait,” Eliza said, gazing down at the body of their fallen friend. “We should hold Catherine’s hands too.”
Theresa shuddered. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” Eliza said. “The spell will be stronger if we’re connected to her.”
“Why? How do you know?” Theresa asked her.
“I just feel it. We must be connected to her when we say it,” Eliza replied. She walked over and knelt next to Catherine, trying not to look at her face. “What are you so skittish about, Theresa Billings? You carried her all the way back here.”
“All right, all right.” Theresa knelt next to the body as well and took Catherine’s left hand in hers. Eliza held Catherine’s right hand, which was now as cold as ice, then reached across her torso for Theresa’s hand. They looked into each other’s eyes and nodded.
“Wherever we go, wherever we breathe, let others see Catherine where she might usually be.”
The dizziness wasn’t as nauseating this time, but Eliza wasn’t sure what that meant. Was she getting stronger—more resilient? Or was the spell not strong enough? She opened her eyes, and a pathetic flutter of wind tossed the pages of the book, lifting Eliza’s hair briefly from her shoulders.
“Do you think it worked?” Eliza asked, still holding hands.
Theresa gazed down at Catherine’s serene face. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Theresa,” Eliza said tentatively, feeling a flutter of nervousness in her stomach. “I think I . . . the other night I . . . I dreamt about this.”
Theresa’s face snapped up. “Dreamt about what?”
“About Catherine dying. The dream, it was . . . it wasn’t exactly as it happened tonight, but she died the same way. In the woods, falling into a deep hole.” Eliza saw no reason to tell the other girl that in her dream, Theresa and Helen had pushed Catherine to her death. She knew it would only anger and upset her.
“Are you saying that you saw the future?” Theresa asked. “I don’t know.
I didn’t think so at the time, of course, but now . . .” Theresa sighed and looked down at Catherine’s body. “A month ago, I never would have thought something like that was possible, but I’d believe it now.”
“But that means . . . that means I could have stopped this,” Eliza said, her eyes filling with tears. “If only I’d told her about the dream, she
might have thought twice about following you into the woods. She might have been more careful.”
“There’s no way you could have realized, Eliza,” Theresa said with surprising force. “Besides, she would have followed me anyway. That’s Catherine. Always trying to protect everyone.”
“But I—”
“Eliza,” Theresa cut her off, squeezing her hand. “What’s done is done. And by tomorrow, it won’t matter any longer,” she assured Eliza, looking her firmly in the eye. “Tomorrow night, we’ll bring Catherine back.”
Agreed
“What are we doing here? Why are you two acting so mysterious?” Clarissa asked, sitting on Theresa’s brocade settee in her single room.
The chamber was larger than any of the rooms the other girls shared—large enough for the entire coven to gather comfortably— with two huge windows that looked out across the darkened campus. Lightning flashed in the distance, illuminating the underbelly of the gray clouds and casting odd shadows over the trees and buildings. Theresa closed the door quietly and stood next to Eliza. The two girls had washed and changed their clothes, then gone from room to room, waking the others and telling them to come up to Theresa’s. But Eliza could still feel the rain on her skin, the grime under her fingernails, the weight of Catherine’s body straining her arms. The seven girls gazed back at them, each clad in nightclothes. Only Alice was not among them. She had refused to come.
“And where are Catherine and Alice?” Clarissa added.
“Girls, we’ve brought you here to tell you some disturbing news,” Eliza began. Her heart felt as if it was made of pins and needles, jabbing outward at her chest with each breath.
“What is it?” Bia asked from the edge of Theresa’s bed, the color draining from her face. She reached for Viola’s hand and drew it into her lap.
Eliza looked at Theresa for help—something she had never thought she would do. Theresa cleared her throat and rested her hand on the back of her desk chair.
“After she walked Eliza home earlier tonight, Catherine took a path through the woods on her way back to the chapel,” Theresa began, as thunder clapped outside the window. “She got lost and she . . . she fell.”
Viola gasped, covering her mouth with her free hand.
Lavender pushed herself away from the closet door. “Is she all right?”
“No,” Theresa said, tears suddenly filling her eyes. “Catherine is dead.”
Bia stifled a scream and hid her face against Viola’s shoulder. The other girls gasped and covered their mouths, looking around as if someone else might explain this away. Marilyn gripped Genevieve’s hand and stepped forward.
“Where is she? You have telephoned the police? You have told Miss Almay?” Marilyn asked.
“No. No one knows but us,” Eliza said, her own tears spilling over onto her cheeks. “Us and Alice, who’s back in her room.”
“What happened?” Clarissa asked, sitting forward. “I don’t understand? Who would wander in the woods alone on a night like this?”
Eliza and Theresa exchanged a glance.
“She had a sulfur stick and was trying a spell to make it light,” Eliza said, withdrawing the stick from her pocket.
“But why didn’t she return to the temple first? Why didn’t she wait for us to go with her?” Clarissa demanded. “Why would she go into the woods alone?”
“We don’t know why. She just did,” Theresa snapped.
Clarissa blinked and sat down again. Lavender wrapped her arms around the girl’s back in a comforting way.
“I’m sorry, Clarissa,” Theresa said, rubbing her brow. “I’m just exhausted. I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Why haven’t you told anyone, Theresa?” Jane asked, her bottom lip trembling as she looked up at Theresa.
“Because,” Eliza said, “we’re going to bring her back.”
“What?” Viola, Genevieve, and Marilyn said at once. Bia’s sobs grew louder as she clung to her sister’s side.
“There’s a spell—the Life Out of Death Spell,” Theresa explained. “We’ve already laid Catherine in the temple so that we can use the spell on her and bring her back.”
“But we’re going to need all your help,” Eliza added, trying to look each one of them in the eye. “The entire coven needs to be present for the spell, and we’re going to need to spend the day tomorrow gathering all the ingredients.”
“And if we succeed, if we can do this spell properly, we can make her alive again?” Marilyn asked hopefully.
“But this is impossible,” Genevieve said. “No one can bring someone back from the dead.”
“It’s not impossible,” Theresa replied firmly. “Two weeks ago would you have thought it possible to change the color of someone’s dress at whim? To give a boy boils? To take someone’s voice? No. If we can do all that, we can do this, too.”
“We have to do it,” Eliza said, her heart feeling heavy. “We must, at the very least, try.”
“I’m willing,” Clarissa said, standing.
“Me, too,” Lavender added, rising next to her.
“If it will bring Catherine back, I’ll do it, too,” Viola said.
“Bia?” Bia nodded mutely, sniffling against Viola’s shoulder.
“Jane?” Theresa said.
“I’ll be there,” Jane said resolutely.
“Marilyn? Genevieve?” Eliza prompted.
The two girls looked at each other, communicating silently the way only lifelong friends can.
“We will do it,” they said in unison, facing Eliza.
“Then we are agreed,” Eliza said, stepping forward so that the group formed a true circle around the still seated Viola and Bia. “Tomorrow night, we all gather at the temple to bring Catherine back.”
She reached for Clarissa’s hand, then Theresa’s. Theresa hesitated but a moment, then clasped Eliza’s fingers. Suddenly, her locket felt warm against her skin. Slowly all the girls grasped one another’s hands, and Eliza felt as if she could sense their strength coursing through her. With her friends, her sisters, her coven, anything was possible.
Roll Call
The next morning, ten girls walked from breakfast to McKinley Hall together in a state of solemn silence. Lavender and Viola supported Bia between them, and every now and then Bia would sniffle and hold a handkerchief to her face, but otherwise, there was no sound from them. All ten of them had suffered nervously through morning services and their meal, waiting for Miss Almay to ask where Miss White was, to demand an explanation, but Miss Almay had been too distracted by a heated conversation with one of the teachers to acknowledge any of the students.
Yet now would come the real test of the Presence in Mind Spell. They were about to attend classes.
Jane pulled out the list of ingredients Theresa had jotted down for the Life Out of Death Spell. “We can gather most of this in the garden and the fields,” she whispered. “But what about the fig oil? That can only be purchased in a store.”
“And I hardly think the general store in Easton carries it,” Marilyn added.
Eliza turned around and everyone stopped. “We cannot talk about this now. After lunch we’ll meet under the elm tree. But right now there are too many ears.”
She slid her gaze from the left, where Miss Almay was talking animatedly with Helen and Mrs. Hodge, to the right, where two of their teachers were about to mount the stairs to McKinley Hall. The other girls nodded or hung their heads. Eliza looked at Theresa, and together they walked inside.
Most of the girls slipped into the French classroom, while Genevieve and Marilyn bid them good luck and headed to conversational English, a course established for all the foreign students, of which there was a grand total of four. Eliza was heartsick as she sank into her usual chair. She tried not to look at the empty seat to her right, but she couldn’t help it. Catherine should have been there, but instead she lay all alone in the chapel basement.
She’s gone and it’s my fault, Eliza thought. And if we are ca
ught right now, that will be my fault as well.
“It’s going to be all right,” Theresa said as she sat down at Eliza’s right.
Eliza felt a grateful pang for Theresa’s confidence. Not once had they mentioned their argument of the night before, and the word Harrison hadn’t been uttered between them. Eliza felt as if they had some sort of unspoken agreement to focus only on Catherine. Today, and for the next few hours, nothing else mattered.
Then Miss Tinsley walked into the room, and Eliza clutched her desktop. The Presence in Mind Spell had to work. It simply had to.
“Bonjour, classe!” she intoned.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Tinsley,” the girls replied, less than enthusiastically.
Just then, the door opened again and in walked Helen Jennings with a tea tray. She set it down on the teacher’s desk and went about pouring out a cup for Miss Tinsley. As she did, her eyes darted around the room and paused when she saw Catherine’s empty seat.
Eliza’s stomach sank through her toes. Helen saw that Catherine wasn’t there.
“Veuillez repondre quand je dis votre nom!” Miss Tinsley picked up her class roster and looked up at the room as Helen replaced the teapot on the tray. “Alice Ainsworth.”
“Presente,” Alice replied, sounding ill.
Helen stepped back against the wall and hovered there, waiting. But for what? Why didn’t she just go? Eliza clutched the desk harder.
“Jane Barton,” Miss Tinsley read.
“Oui, mademoiselle,” Jane said weakly.
“Theresa Billings,” Miss Tinsley said, looking right at Theresa.
“Presente, mademoiselle,” Theresa said rather loudly.
As the teacher read through the rest of the list, Eliza held her breath. She was last in alphabetical order, with Catherine right before her. There was a stillness in the room that she could hardly stand, and it felt as if all the oxygen had been removed, leaving behind a thick, wet cloud that choked her senses. She couldn’t stop staring at Helen, willing her to just leave. But Helen stayed where she was and stared silently back.
“Clarissa Pommer?” Miss Tinsley said.
