The Book of Spells (Private 0.50)

Catherine struggled, but Theresa and Helen were too strong for her. Eliza tried to take another step, cringing as her bare sole came down on a broken skull. The skull turned to ash beneath her foot, and she fell face-first against bony terrain.

“Please. Please help me,” Catherine begged.

Eliza stared at her, tears of desperation filling her eyes. Even if she could get up, even if she could traverse the perilous landscape, the hole still separated her from Catherine. Eliza looked left and right, trying to discern a bridge, a felled tree, a rope, any means of crossing it, but there was none. There was nothing she could do but stay where she was and watch. Watch and beg for her friend’s life.

“Theresa,” she whispered. “Helen. Please.”

Helen looked up at Eliza then, peered directly into her eyes, and spoke ever so calmly.

“This is all your fault, Eliza. You should have turned back.”

Eliza’s blood went cold in her veins as Helen and Theresa flung Catherine over the edge. Her friend’s scream echoed against the never-ending walls of the hole, ricocheting back to Eliza like a reproach.

“No!” Eliza

screamed.

She sat up straight in her bed, her nightgown soaked through with sweat. In the bed across from her was Catherine, her eyes wide with fright.

“Eliza? Are you all right?” Catherine asked.

Gasping for breath, Eliza pressed her hands into the mattress beneath her, touched her blankets, touched the cold wall beside her bed. She had to assure herself that she was there, that this was real, that Catherine was alive.

“I just . . . I had a nightmare,” Eliza replied, the awful images racing back into her head and swirling all around her. She reached back and lifted her hair from her neck. It was so wet, she might have just emerged from the ocean.

Catherine sat up a bit more. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Eliza looked at her friend, but all she could see was terror—the terror Catherine had felt in her dream. The pleading way she had looked at Eliza just before she’d been tossed to her doom. Eliza’s heart pounded desperately, and she had to look away.

“No. Thank you, Catherine,” Eliza said, trying to blink the images from her mind.

“Try to get some sleep, then,” Catherine said. “Just lie back and think about a happy memory. You’ll be fine.”

Eliza settled back, grimacing as her body hit the sweaty sheets. Catherine quickly dozed off again, but Eliza knew she was done with sleep for the night. She feared that if she closed her eyes, her friend would not be there when she opened them again.

Friends and Enemies

Eliza closed her journal with a sigh on Monday afternoon. It was no use trying to make sense of her thoughts about the coven and the awful nightmare she’d had the night before. She’d pushed them from her mind as best she could. She got up to pace at the parlor windows. The roofs and spires of the Easton Academy campus were just visible behind the trees, and suddenly her heart was full of nothing but Harrison Knox.

She’d had her moments of distraction, like that morning’s impromptu fashion show after Theresa had received a trunk of new dresses from her father. But now the girls were in the midst of their free time, and while everyone else was occupied with studies or music or sewing or spells, Eliza could not stop thinking about Harrison, wondering how and where they would meet. Wondering if he was thinking of her, too.

“Eliza Williams, would you please stop that incessant pacing?” Clarissa demanded, letting her hand fall across her French text. “I’m trying to write out this translation, and I can’t concentrate with you walking back and forth like a caged animal.”

“I’m sorry, Clarissa,” Eliza replied. She turned reluctantly away from the windows and looked toward the far side of the room, where Catherine was reading the coven’s divination book, which she’d tucked inside a history text, and Theresa was scribbling out more of her correspondence. Eliza was desperate to get Catherine alone, but she couldn’t do so without enduring questions from Theresa.

Catherine lazily turned the page, and Eliza was hit with an idea. Perhaps a bit of magic could be useful here. Having long since memorized the list of basic spells, she had a few dozen tricks at her fingertips. She held out her hand discretely at her side, palm toward Catherine’s books.

“Gravity potens,” she whispered.

Both the divination and history texts flew out of Catherine’s hands and hit the floor. A few of the girls gasped at the noise, and Catherine looked up, startled, right into Eliza’s eyes.

“Catherine!” Theresa said, hand to her heart. “You just made me scribble all over this note!”

Eliza tilted her head toward the door, silently beckoning Catherine to follow her. She walked out past Helen Jennings, who was stationed near the door, and endeavored to ignore the girl’s steady stare. From the foyer, Eliza glanced back inside, hoping Catherine had understood her.

Catherine hesitated, then spoke. “I’m sorry, Theresa. I must have dozed off for a moment there.” She got up to gather the books. “I think I’ll go upstairs for a bit and lie down.”

“And I suppose I’ll just start this all over again,” Theresa groused, crumbling up her letter.