The Book of Spells (Private 0.50)

“And you, Catherine White!” Theresa spat, whirling on her. “You are no longer my friend! Both of you stay far, far away from me from now on!” Theresa started to stalk past Catherine, but Catherine reached for her as she went by.

“Theresa, stop! Please!” Catherine said, throwing her arm out.

The moment she did, the sulfur stick suddenly let out a huge spark. Theresa shouted and jumped back in surprise as the spark hit a thick tree limb directly above Catherine’s head. Instantly, the branch severed, the cracking noise so loud, it drowned out the wind and rain. Eliza looked up as the branch began to fall. Her heart flew into her mouth.

“Catherine! Watch out!”

Catherine looked up, her eyes wide with fright. Theresa grabbed for her, but it was too late. The limb came crashing down. Catherine’s body crumbled like a rag doll’s, and she tumbled backward into the chasm.

Dead

“No!” Eliza shouted.

She collapsed at the edge of the ravine; Theresa did the same on the other side, like a mirror image. They stared wordlessly into the chasm.

Catherine lay at the bottom, rain pelting her broken body. Her gray dress was so soaked, it looked black. Her dark hair fanned out around her head in wet clumps. Her ice blue eyes were wide, her mouth frozen open. It was almost as if she was trying to call out to her friends, but the unnatural bend in her neck meant she would never speak again.

“Theresa! There you are!” Alice came tromping up behind Eliza, her light blue dress clinging to her body. “I sent everyone home like you asked me to. Did you find Catherine?” She stopped next to Eliza. “What are you doing here, Eliza? Why are you staring down into that—” Alice looked over the edge of the ravine and screamed. “Catherine! Oh my . . . Is she . . . ?”

“She’s dead,” Eliza said. She could barely choke out the words. Her mouth felt as if it was full of cotton. Her dream, at least part of it, had just come true before her eyes. The locket weighed heavy around her neck, cold as a stone in winter.

“She can’t be dead!” Alice wailed. “She simply can’t be!” She turned around and got on her hands and knees, backing herself toward the edge of the ravine. Eliza stared at her for a moment in catatonic wonder. Demure, girly Alice on her hands and knees in the mud. But then she realized what her friend was doing, and she sprang to her feet.

“Alice! No!”

But it was too late. Alice was already lowering herself down into the chasm. She clung for a moment to a tree root that stuck out of the dirt wall, then let herself fall the last couple of feet. As soon as she recovered herself at the bottom, she got up, wiped off her hands, and began trying to remove the tree limb from across Catherine’s chest.

“It’s too heavy! I need help!” Alice called up to them. “Theresa! Eliza! Come help me!”

Eliza’s and Theresa’s eyes met across the ravine, and suddenly it was as if the life had been breathed back into the both of them. Eliza slid forward and lowered herself exactly as Alice had. A branch caught her ankle and left a deep scratch in her skin, but she barely even noticed. She slid the last few feet, her fingers clinging to the dirt wall to slow her descent, and fell to her knees at the bottom of the ravine. Theresa alit on the other side, and all three girls grasped the branch, with Alice at the center.

“On the count of three,” Theresa instructed. “One, two, three.”

Eliza braced her feet against the slick, muddy ground and dug in, pulling with all her might. Theresa let out a grunt as the branch finally freed itself. The three girls stumbled backward and dropped the limb at Catherine’s feet. Eliza climbed over the branches and twigs and leaves and fell to her knees once again, this time at her friend’s side. The back of Catherine’s head lay atop a jagged rock. It was covered in blood and matted hair. Next to her on the ground was the bright yellow sulfur stick, its tip singed to a dingy black. She looked into Catherine’s wide-open, lifeless eyes, and finally the tears came.

“What happened?” Alice cried, taking up Catherine’s lifeless hand. “What happened to her?”

Eliza looked up at Theresa, her vision blurred.

“She fell,” Theresa said, her voice high and breathless. “She was trying a spell and it went wrong and the branch snapped. She fell. She fell, and there was nothing we could do.”

“Poor Catherine,” Alice said, kneading the girl’s hand within her own as tears sluiced down her cheeks. “Poor Catherine.”

“We have to fix this,” Eliza said, wiping the back of her grimy hand across her nose. She looked at Theresa. “We have to fix this.”

Theresa stared back, her jaw working, and Eliza knew that she understood. This was no accident. This was their fault. Catherine never would have been out in these woods on this night if it hadn’t been for their own selfishness, their stupid feud.

“She’s right,” Theresa said, shoving her soaking wet hair behind her ears.

“Fix it?” Alice wailed throatily. “Catherine’s dead, Eliza! There’s no fixing this! She’s dead!”

“All right, Alice, that’s enough,” Theresa snapped.

Alice’s mouth hung agape as she gasped over and over again, struggling for breath through her surprise and grief. “That’s enough? Theresa, she’s dead!”

“I understand that she’s dead,” Theresa said, hovering over all of them. “The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

Eliza’s head whipped around as she looked up at Theresa. Suddenly an image flitted through her mind: a drawing of a skull with roses growing out of its empty eye sockets. The Life Out of Death Spell. The page that had so frightened Eliza that night in the temple.