Helen removed a handkerchief from the pocket of her nightgown and handed it to Theresa in a perfunctory way. Theresa cupped the fabric over her mouth, closed her eyes, and breathed.
“Think of your own mother, Miss Eliza,” Helen said. “Would it be more humiliating for her to say you’d simply fallen in love and followed your silly little heart, or to tell the world that you’d become obsessed with witchcraft, lost your mind to it, and subsequently killed yourself?”
Eliza’s mind went suddenly gray. Now she clung to Theresa’s arm to steady herself. “She committed suicide?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Helen said flatly. “She threw herself off the roof of the Easton Academy chapel, but I don’t think she knew what she was doing when she did it.”
“How is this possible?” Theresa looked around in confusion, as if hoping Caroline would step out of the trees and explain it all away.
“Why did she do it?”
Helen sighed.
“It was Caroline’s older sister, Lucille, who originally found the books. She started her own coven, and she invited ten other girls to join, just as you did. Even though I was only thirteen years old, I was one of those she invited. Caroline was not,” Helen said.
Eliza narrowed her eyes. “She invited a maid, but not her own sister?”
The moment the words left her lips, Eliza felt ashamed.
“I think that was why she did it, Miss Eliza,” Helen said. “I believe that by asking me, she was taunting her sister.”
“That does sound like Lucille,” Theresa admitted. “She always left Caroline out.”
Helen nodded. “Every time our coven would meet, Caroline would follow us. She would hover upstairs in the chapel, and occasionally she would beg to be let in, but Lucille always shunned her. She would laugh about it, like it was all a joke to her. It made some of us uncomfortable. But you didn’t argue with Lucille.”
Eliza looked at Theresa, wondering if she saw the parallels to her own position at Billings, but Theresa’s attention was trained on Helen.
“Everything we did back then was in good fun, or so we thought,” Helen said. “It was much like I’m sure it’s been for you. We cast fun little spells, helped the girls pass tests, helped them attract certain boys. They even cast a spell to get me out of scrubbing the floors when I had a cold.” The moon broke from behind a cloud, bathing Helen in milky light.
“And?” Theresa prompted. “What happened?”
“One night Caroline’s frustration got the better of her,” Helen explained. “She snuck into Lucille’s room and stole the books. She told her sister she would burn them unless Lucille initiated her. So we did. We took in a twelfth. And that, we all later believed, was our mistake.”
Helen turned and began walking again, her steps hurried, as if she wanted to get away from these memories. Eliza gripped Theresa’s hand, clinging to her as they rushed to catch up.
“What do you mean, your ‘mistake’?” Eliza asked.
“Caroline was never invited to join the coven. She forced her way in,” Helen told them. “We didn’t choose her, the way Lucille chose us. She wasn’t meant to be a witch . . . and she couldn’t handle the power.”
“And that’s why she died?” Theresa asked.
Helen nodded. “All Caroline wanted was to be like her sister, so she cast several spells. One to change her hair color, another to make her taller, another to make her smarter, a better musician, a finer artist. All just to be like Lucille. But it was too much. She didn’t know what she was doing. And she lost her mind.”
Helen paused as they reached the edge of the woods, looking out over the Billings campus. Every window was dark, yet the moon cast its solemn glow over the troop of girls moving swiftly toward Crenshaw.
“After she died, we tried to burn the books—and that was when we realized Caroline’s original threat was empty, though she had no idea at the time. When burning them didn’t work, we locked them in the chapel basement, then buried the map along with the locket Lucille had commissioned for herself as the leader of the coven,” Helen said. Her eyes flicked to the gold locket around Eliza’s neck. “The locket you now wear, miss.”
Eliza’s hand fluttered up to touch the gold trinket. Suddenly it felt heavier than it ever had before.
“If you thought the books were so very dangerous, why bury the locket and the map right there in the garden where anyone could find them?” Theresa asked. “Why make a map at all?”
Helen took a deep breath and blew it out audibly. “The map was Lucille’s idea. She said the books were too precious to be lost forever. She said that some future Billings girls would find them, and maybe they would know how to harness their power better than we did.” She cast an arch look at Theresa. “Really, I think she couldn’t let go. As for the burial spot, it wasn’t a garden then, and we were all too terrified to venture back into the woods at night to bury it there.”
Eliza looked at the dark windows of Crenshaw House. She wondered which room Caroline had lived in.
“Caroline’s last words were what convinced us that we never should have let her force her way in to the coven,” Helen said, gazing off into the distance.
Theresa gripped Eliza’s hand tightly. “Why?” Eliza asked. “What did she say?”