“But Eliza, I thought you said—”
“I know what I said, but I was wrong,” Eliza sobbed. “Please, Harrison, just go. Just go to your fiancée.”
Harrison still didn’t move. Eliza couldn’t take the pain in her chest for a moment longer. She ducked under the lowest branches and ran for Crenshaw House, shoving the heavy door open. Nearly blinded by tears, she ignored Mrs. Hodge, who called after her, and ran up the stairs and into her old room, slamming the door behind her.
This, she realized instantly, was a mistake. Catherine’s things were still there. Her dresses still hung in the closet. Her books still stood on Eliza’s shelves. Her quilt still covered her bed. This was the last place Eliza wanted to be right then. The last place in the world. But as she turned to go, there was a knock on the door.
“Miss Williams?” Mrs. Hodge said tentatively. “Catherine’s father has sent some men to pack up her things. May I let them in?”
Eliza’s heart pounded. Without thinking twice, she dropped to the floor, yanked Catherine’s case of magical items out from under her bed, and shoved it under the one she had slept in. Then she stood up, dried her eyes with her fingertips, and took in a long, ragged breath.
“Come in,” she said.
Mrs. Hodge opened the door. The two young men in plain, gray flannel jackets doffed their caps at Eliza but said nothing. They simply went to work, transferring Catherine’s clothes from her bureau to her trunk. They plucked her toiletry items from the shelves, removed the linens from her bed, and finally removed the fleur-de-lis from the wall, tossing it on top of everything else. The whole while, Eliza stood in the hall with Mrs. Hodge, at a respectful distance but watching their every move. She held her breath the whole time, waiting irrationally for one of them to spot Catherine’s box, to realize that it belonged to her deceased friend and not to her.
“Good day, miss,” one of the two men said to Eliza as they carted the trunk out between them.
“Good day,” Eliza managed.
Mrs. Hodge gave Eliza a sympathetic smile. Eliza was surprised and touched to be the recipient of such kind emotions from such a hard woman.
“Is there anything I can get you, Miss Williams?” Mrs. Hodge asked.
“No, thank you,” Eliza replied, stepping into her old room, now eerily empty. “I’d just like to be alone for a while.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Hodge said.
The maid reached for the handle and closed the door, leaving Eliza on her own. Trying not to start crying all over again, Eliza sat down on the edge of her bed and stared at the blank side of the room that was once Catherine’s.
“I wish you were still here, Catherine,” Eliza said aloud. “I wish you were here with me right now.”
There was, of course, no reply. But Eliza felt a strange warmth over her shoulders, a glimmer of peace inside her chest. Somehow, she felt as if Catherine was there. And that she was wishing she could be with Eliza, too.
It wasn’t until the men and the trunk were long gone and the house had gone still that Eliza lay back—and in doing so, caught a glimpse of her bookshelf. Her heart caught and she smiled, for the men had accidentally left her Catherine’s most prized possessions: her books.
Wiping the last stray tears from her eyes, Eliza shoved herself up and pulled out the blank book her mother had given her. She opened it to the first page and ran her eyes down the list of girls she, Theresa, Catherine, and Alice had chosen to be members of the “Billings Literary Society.” Then she turned to the next page, the one on which each of the girls had personally signed her name. Her fingers grazed Catherine’s signature, and her heart caught miserably.
Eliza took a deep, broken breath and sat down at her old desk. She took out a pen, turned to the first clean page in the book, and began to write. Slowly, methodically, she recorded every detail of the past few days. The story of Caroline Westwick, of her sister Lucille, of Helen’s involvement in the original coven and Caroline’s suicide.
Then she tearfully recorded all that had happened with Catherine—her dream about her friend’s death, the actual accident, the ritual and the thing it had brought back, and finally the curse. As much as it broke her heart to recall the details, she knew she had to record them—just in case any future Billings girls ever stumbled across the books again. They would have to be warned. They would have to be protected.
Catherine would have wanted it that way.
Help Them
“Why must Miss Almay keep such a close eye on everyone?” Theresa asked Eliza as they sat on the wrought-iron bench alongside the Crenshaw garden on Wednesday afternoon following classes. “Does she think we’re all going to wander off and meet our doom in the woods?”
“No,” Eliza replied, watching as Miss Almay paced the flower beds planted alongside the house’s foundation. “She knows something is wrong. She can tell.”
“How could she not know?” Helen asked. The maid knelt in the garden a few feet in front of the two girls, pulling out weeds—all the better to hide the fact that the three of them were conversing. “Look at them.”
Eliza scanned the area. It was free period, and several of the younger girls had started up a game of jump rope on the lawn. Their laughter and shrieks of joy were in stark contrast to the attitude of the girls from the coven. Alice sat under cover of a wide-brimmed felt hat, reading her Bible diligently, as she had been doing ever since she’d learned that Catherine was dead—again. Jane reposed on a bench opposite Eliza’s and Theresa’s, staring listlessly into space as she toyed with her hair. Lavender, Bia, and Viola sat together on a picnic blanket not talking to one another. Marilyn and Genevieve were ostensibly watching Petit Peu play with a stick, but they hardly seemed to notice him at all. Clarissa was squirreled away in the library, ignoring the existence of everyone else.
“Well, we’re still in mourning,” Theresa said. “Of course we’d be listless.”
“It’s not just listlessness,” Eliza said. “It’s guilt.”
Theresa’s head snapped around, and Helen stopped weeding abruptly but didn’t turn.