Then, from out of the darkness, a voice whispered in Eliza’s ear.
“Turn back.”
Eliza stumbled. Catherine bumped into her from behind. Theresa swore under her breath.
“Eliza! You need to warn us if you’re going to do that!” Theresa admonished.
“Did you hear that?” Eliza said, her breath ragged.
“Hear what?” Catherine asked, her voice thin and high.
Eliza looked past her at Theresa, who shook her head slightly as if she thought Eliza was going insane.
Perhaps I
am
going insane,
Eliza thought tremulously.
Hearing voices that aren’t there.
“It was nothing. Probably just an odd creak,” Eliza told them, with more confidence than she felt.
“I can’t see you anymore!” Alice cried out from above. “Are you still there?”
“We’re fine, Alice!” Catherine shouted back. “Calm down!”
“I can’t calm down! What if you don’t come back?” Alice whined.
“We’re coming back,” Theresa said through her teeth. “Now kindly shut up!”
Alice let out a whimper but said nothing more. Seconds later the girls reached the bottom of the stairs.
Eliza moved aside, her shoes scratching across the floor as if it was covered in sand or grime. Theresa and Catherine joined her, holding out their candles and the lantern in front of them. With a deep breath, Eliza realized that there was nothing to be afraid of in the basement room. No devils or demons or mummies or ghosts. It was simply a small, circular room with no furniture save for a large wood trunk at its center.
Slowly Theresa walked around the trunk. After a moment, Catherine and Eliza followed. All three of them crouched in front of it, tucking their skirts around their knees. The trunk was made of a plain but sturdy wood. Its latch was simple and gold, and etched into the panel just above the latch was the intertwining circle symbol now so familiar to Eliza. She touched the locket around her neck, then reached out and traced the symbol on the trunk with her fingertips. Despite the cool air of the chamber, the wood felt warm to the touch. There was no lock.
“Whatever we find inside, it belongs to all four of us,” Eliza said, looking at her friends.
“We’re not including Alice,” Theresa said. “She’s done nothing but complain and protest.”
Eliza opened her mouth to retort, but Catherine stopped her with a hand to her arm. “She came inside with us even against her better judgment, which was very brave,” Catherine said. “This trunk belongs to her, too.”
Theresa rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
Together, the three girls lifted the heavy lid of the trunk. It opened and fell back from their hands, slamming against the bottom half so loudly, that all three jumped. Holding her breath, Eliza peered inside.
“It’s nothing but a pile of old books!” Theresa blurted.
Intrigued, Eliza reached in and took out the first hardcover tome. “
The Mystical Realm,
” she read from the spine.
Catherine put her candle aside and grabbed another. “
The Lunar Seasons,
” she read, her eyes bright with excitement.
Theresa removed the third. “
Rites, Sabbats, and Festivals
.”
“I’ve never seen books like these,” Eliza said, flipping through pages of diagrams and illustrations. Many of them had notes handwritten in the margins—arrows and measurements and sketches of planetary alignments. Quickly the girls removed each and every volume from the trunk, laying them in piles around their knees. Finally, Catherine reached inside and pulled out a heavy book that was bound in gray linen. When she opened the cover, Eliza saw that someone had drawn the same circular symbol on the inside. Catherine reached over and flipped to a random page. There was a list of ingredients down the center, followed by two paragraphs of directions.
“It’s a recipe book,” Theresa said, disappointed.
Catherine placed her palm reverently against the page, her middle finger just grazing the letters of the recipe’s title. She looked up at the others with an excited expression in her eyes.
“‘Potion for a Broken Heart,’” she read.
“Potion?” Eliza echoed, her brow furrowing.
“What does that mean?” Theresa asked.
“It means that this is not a recipe book,” Catherine replied. “It’s a book of spells.”
“Here’s one I’d like to try,” Theresa whispered, bending over the book that sat across the girls’ laps in the center of Catherine’s bed. “‘The Swelling Tongue.’ It says it will cause the tongue to expand, filling the mouth of any boy who tries to get fresh.”
Eliza and Catherine giggled. “You wouldn’t, really,” Catherine said, her eyes dancing in the candlelight.
“Well, maybe with some boys,” Theresa said. “But I’d never have to cast it on Harrison. He’s a gentleman.”
Eliza’s happiness melted at the mention of Harrison, and her eyes flicked to the book he’d sent her earlier that evening. For a brief moment, she found herself mulling his intentions. But just as quickly, she put him out of her mind. What she was doing right now was far more interesting than anything a boy could offer.
The three girls were gathered closely together on Catherine’s mattress, their backs against the wall, legs crossed in front of them.
Catherine held the book open over her lap, but it was so large that the front cover rested on Theresa’s thigh and the back cover on Eliza’s. The one candle they had lit sat on Catherine’s desktop, casting shadows that shifted across the weathered pages.
“How old do you think it is?” Eliza asked, fingering the thick parchment as she turned the page.
“Older than us,” Catherine said. “Probably even older than our parents.”
“Look, a disorientation spell!” Eliza said, scanning the page closest to her.
“And on this side is a forgetfulness spell,” Theresa put in. “Imagine what we could do with these. We could make old Britton forget all about giving us exams!”
Catherine laughed. “I’m not sure about that. You have to be careful with magic. The natural balance of things always has to be maintained.”
Eliza and Theresa both stared at her.
Catherine blushed and looked down at the page, turning to the next. “I just heard that somewhere, I think.”
Eliza’s eyes narrowed. She had a feeling there was more to what Catherine had said than she was letting on.
“But what does it mean?” Theresa asked. “If we were to make Miss Britton forget to give us a literature exam, how would the natural balance, as you call it, be affected?”
“I’m not sure. It’s just . . . I think what it means is, there are consequences to magic,” Catherine replied, the color in her cheeks deepening. “For example, perhaps if Miss Britton forgot to give us
an exam in literature, we would then be given an extra one in French. Something like that.”
“Ugh. Then forget I said anything,” Theresa said, sticking her tongue between her teeth. “I’d rather take one literature exam than two French.”
“Agreed,” Eliza and Catherine said in unison.
The three girls laughed, and Eliza sat back again, pulling her side of the book back onto her thigh. For the first time, she was feeling a real camaraderie with Theresa.
“Oh, look, Eliza. Here’s one to brighten dull skin. Perhaps you should copy that one down,” Theresa said, arching an eyebrow.
And just like that, any positive feelings Eliza had toward Theresa vanished.
“Thank you, Theresa. How very thoughtful. Maybe there’s one in here for curing a permanently bad attitude,” Eliza shot back.
Theresa glowered and opened her mouth to respond, but Catherine placed her hands on their wrists.
“Girls, please. I can’t abide my two good friends fighting all the time,” she said calmly. “No more insults.”
Eliza gritted her teeth as she looked at Theresa. “Fine,” she said.
“No more insults,” Theresa agreed.
Catherine nodded and turned the page. “Thank you.”
Eliza resolved to keep her promise and say nothing else against Theresa. At least, not tonight. But she knew that she would never understand how any rational person—Harrison and Catherine included—could ever tolerate Theresa Billings, much less love her.
The low-ceilinged Billings School library was as charmless inside as it looked from the outside. It gave the impression that it had been built off to the side of McKinley Hall as an afterthought, as if no one had imagined in the early days that a girls’ school might be in need of an actual book collection. Although the library was architecturally bland and almost windowless, Eliza still managed to love it.
As she and Catherine slid into chairs beside Alice at one of the small wooden tables on Wednesday afternoon, she couldn’t help but breathe in the room’s musty, papery scent. Then Theresa dropped the heavy tomes from the chapel basement in the center of the table, chasing away the warm and cozy feeling.
“I cannot believe you brought those here,” Alice whispered, glancing derisively at the ancient volumes. “Not only are those books an abomination against God, but if the headmistress catches you with them, you’ll surely be expelled.”
Alice stood up, turned her back on the other three girls, and sat down at the next table. She opened her history book, tugged her kid gloves from her fingers, and directed her attention to the page before her.
“How many times do I have to tell you, I can’t be expelled?” Theresa hissed, leaning toward Alice’s table to be closer to her ear. “Besides, these are your books as well.”
“They are
not
my books.” Alice sniffed. “I want nothing to do with them.” She yanked her chair so close to her table, Eliza was sure she would crush her ribcage.
“Come on, Alice. It’s all in good fun,” Eliza said, removing her favorite hat—the blue one with white ribbon trim and a slight brim. She glanced surreptitiously around the library to make sure no one was listening in. A pair of girls sat nearby, taking notes from etiquette books. Clarissa was camped at a corner table, surrounded by huge books, chewing on the end of one of her golden braids as she concentrated. The elderly librarian was shelving books on the other side of the small room, seemingly unaware that there were any students present at all.
“Perhaps these books were hidden for a reason,” Alice said. “Perhaps that box was buried because it was never meant to be found.”
Theresa opened her mouth to speak, but Catherine interrupted. “Or maybe they were simply waiting for the right person to find them,” she said, her eyes sparkling.
Eliza regarded her friend. Careful Catherine seemed quite ready to throw caution to the wind all of a sudden.
“I don’t know about what’s meant to be,” Theresa said, opening to a page she had marked in one of the books. “All I know is, this whole thing sounds as though it could be the perfect antidote to this boring place.”
“Haven’t you people read the Bible?” Alice hissed under her breath from the next table. “‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live?’ Do you even realize what that means?”
“It’s not as if we’re going to be putting anyone under spells to do evil,” Theresa whispered back. “It’s like Eliza said: I’d just like to have a bit of fun.”
“From what I’ve read, hell is no fun at all,” Alice replied, looking at Theresa over her shoulder.
Theresa leveled her with a glare. “What about a potion to make a boy fall in love with you?” she asked, opening to another page and letting the book cover smack into the table’s surface as a sort of exclamation point. “Does that sound like fun?”
Eliza and Catherine looked at Alice. Alice looked at the book. She bit her lip, twiddling her pen between her fingers. Then, abruptly, she lifted her chair, turned it around, and jostled in between Catherine and Eliza.
“Fine. Tell me more,” Alice said.
Theresa grinned. Eliza hid a laugh behind her hand.
“It says here that if we can gather eleven strong women, we’ll be able to summon the power of Mother Earth,” Theresa said, running her finger across an open page. “That means we can cast spells, concoct potions. Basically, we’ll have the power to do anything we want.”
“Within reason, of course,” Catherine said.
“Of course. Within reason,” Theresa echoed, her gaze still focused on the books.
“I’m serious, Theresa,” Catherine said, leaning toward the table. “Witchcraft is not something one should trifle with or use for selfish purposes.”
“Look who’s an expert all of a sudden,” Theresa said snidely.
“It still feels wrong,” Alice said, shaking her head, her auburn ringlets bouncing against her cheeks.
“Think of it as a club,” Eliza suggested. “It’s just a club of girls, getting together to read some strange books.”
A thrill of excitement shot through Eliza’s chest. A literary club actually sounded like a fantastic idea to her—one where real books were read, not just spell books. It would give the friends time to talk about things they might not otherwise have the opportunity to talk about, like books, politics, and the world at large. Things the properly demure ladies of Billings were normally forbidden to even think of.
Slowly, a new mission started to form in Eliza’s mind, along with a list of qualities all members of the club should strive to possess: loyalty, intelligence, progressive thinking, industry, eloquence, and, without question, the ability to speak one’s own mind.
“All right, then. A club sounds harmless enough,” Alice said, looking around at the other girls. “Who would we invite?”
“We’ll need seven more to complete the circle,” Catherine said. “A coven needs eleven people.”
“A coven?” Alice asked in an alarmed tone.
Catherine rolled her eyes. “A club, I mean.”
From her bag, Eliza drew the empty journal her mother had given her and placed it on the table.
“I’ll take notes,” she said.
Alice reached around to her own bag for her fountain pen and then shook it to bring the ink into the point. As Eliza took the pen from Alice, she had to allow herself a private smile. Imagine what her mother would think if she knew what use her book was being put to.
Slowly, deliberately, Eliza wrote down the names of the four girls present: Elizabeth Williams, Catherine White, Theresa Billings, and Alice Ainsworth.