“Alex,behind you!”
She spun around, and in that same motion the specter vanished, bursting into shards and scraps of shadow that faded into the night.
Margery.
“Nothing’s there,” Alex said.
But I could still sense her: Margery Lemont’s spirit had its talons dug deep in my heart, my blood turned to poison in my veins.
I shook my head. “It was…She was there, I swear. She wasright there.”
How did the poem go?
And then the spirit, moving from her place,
Touched there a shoulder, whispered in each ear,…
But no one heeded her, or seemed to hear.
“This is bullshit,” Alex declared.
“No! Alex, don’t—”
Too late. She swept the planchette from the board and stabbed the incense out. “It’s not real, Felicity. Calm down.”
No. No, this was all spiraling out of control. We had to end the séance properly. Margery was still here, lurking, the veil between our world and the shade world gone thin and diaphanous at Samhain. It was only too easy for her to shift into our sphere.
I’d prepared for this possibility: a tiny bowl of ground anise and clove to be ignited over a charcoal briquette—enough to protect against the cruelest spirit, or so I’d been assured by the library’s copy ofProfane Magick.
Alex scattered the spices across the floor, rendering them useless.
That was the moment, I decided later, that set everything in motion, the moment the devil’s wheel began to turn, my blood spilled on Margery’s skull and Margery’s hands tangling in the threads of our fates. We’d cursed ourselves.I am going to kill you,she’d made me say. And she was right.
It had an absurd sense of inevitability about it. I kept thinking about the séance the Dalloway Five had held, the one that was interrupted. About Flora, dead three days later. How each girl died in mysterious circumstances which couldn’t be explained, until finally Margery herself was buried alive. It was almost like whatever spirit they’d raised had cursed them—and wouldn’t rest until every one of those girls was dead.
But at the time, I let Alex convince me. Once the lights were on, it all seemed rather ridiculous: The candles had guttered because we’d left the window open, which also accounted for the chill. The figure I’d seen behind Alex was her shadow stretching and shifting in the candlelight. Everything had a reasonable explanation, and Alex was right. The spooky atmosphere, the old school legends, Samhain: we’d let it get to us; that was all.
I didn’t tell her how I couldn’t stop dreaming about Margery after that night, or how I slept with anise and clove under my pillow to keep her away.
A few months later Alex was dead, and now…
Now I can’t hide from the truth.
The postcard never emerges. I search everywhere in the following days, even the hole in the back of my closet, but it’s no use. The card is gone, vanished into the place where lost things go.
Or, perhaps, into someone else’s possession.
I started readingWe Have Always Lived in the Castlethis morning for my thesis. I wonder if Merricat’s brand of magic would work here—if I could tie a black ribbon in knots and bury it in the back garden with a murmured incantation, and tomorrow I’d wake to find the postcard back on my wall, where it belongs.
Not that I do that kind of thing anymore. If the postcard is lost, it will have to stay lost.
Later in the day, right before we’re meant to head to Art History, Ellis knocks on the frame of my open door and says, “Let’s skip.”
I’ve just finished packing my notebooks into my satchel; when I look back Ellis is leaning against my wall, arms folded over her chest and one heel tipped against the baseboard. She’s wearing trousers and a starched-collar dress shirt, the formality of her cuff links and suspenders somewhat undermined by the way her hair is pulled up in a messy knot, like she just woke up.
“Class, you mean,” I say.
“I was thinking we could go into town instead,” she says. “There’s this little antiques shop on Dorchester I’ve been meaning to explore.”
