“This will be good closure for you,” she says, rising to retrieve the broom to clean up the broken pottery. “Trust me.”
“I don’t,” I tell her, but we both know that makes little difference.
Whether I trust Ellis or not, I need to do this. I need to understand what happened the night Alex died. I need to know if some shadow of Margery Lemont has curled up in my heart, guiding the movements of my hands and the words in my mouth. The ghost raised by the Dalloway Five didn’t rest until all of them were dead. I need to know if I’m cursed by that same fate. If raising Margery’s spirit in our unfinished ritual cursed me and Alex. If it killed her.
I need to face whatever caused the broken ceramic shards on the floor, the misty handprint on my window.
I need to face the truth.
I don’t tell Wyatt I’m researching the witches again.
Maybe it’s because I know what she’d say. I can visualize the precise character of the disappointment that would settle over her features. I can even imagine her deciding to call my mother, who would call Dr.Ortega, who would ask if I’ve been taking my medication.
Better to wait, to prove I’m healthy—stable—before I tell Wyatt the truth.
And there’s research to do, not just for myself now, but for Ellis as well if I’m going to help her write this book. I reread my old notes a dozen times, but they’re full of references to primary source material, questions scribbled in the margins that I meant to answer later, when I could go back to the occult collection.
There’s no other option. I need to access the original sources before I can get anything else done. Wyatt gave me a signed permission slip last year, which is what it takes to get into the occult library as a student. They say it’s because the books are old and rare, but really it’s because the administration is afraid more students will turn out like me. I have no idea if my old permission slip will still work, but I smile at the front desk librarian anyway as I pass it over with my student identification card.
“Good evening,” I say, and I notice even as I’m speaking that my voice has taken on crisper enunciation—my mother’s accent, laden with all its connotations of privilege and power. “I need to access the occult collection. Felicity Morrow.”
The librarian examines the slip and then scans my card. She shakes her head.
“I’m afraid your permission to view this collection has been revoked,” she says, passing my ID back across the desk.
Of course it has.
“Are you sure? Can you check again?” I ask.
The woman just spins her computer monitor to show me the screen, where it says my name and, in bright-red font,disallowed.
I know for a fact that Ellis has been going into the occult section; that’s where she got the book on tasseography, after all. Still, something in me balks at the prospect of asking her to go for me. I don’t want to open up the possibility for questions I can’t answer.
So I return to Godwin House and pack myself a sandwich and a water bottle, then go back to the library and claim a carrel on the fifth floor—the emptiest floor, housing the school’s encyclopedia collection. I occupy myself by reading the rest of my latest Shirley Jackson book, then type out a few new paragraphs of material for my European History essay.
Eventually even those few students who had ventured up to the fifth floor drift away, the last of them packing up when the lights flicker, a sign that the library’s about to close for the night.
I’ve been one of those reluctant students before, lingering as long as possible to finish just one more chapter, one more page. The librarians will come through any minute, checking to make sure all the students have egressed and gone back to their houses; I know that much from experience. But I also know they won’t checkeverywhere.
I take my sandwich and go sit in the stacks, eating my late dinner and listening to the echo of heels on hardwood as one of the librarians makes her rounds through the carrels.
Then the sound of a door shutting and the lights turn off, plunging me into darkness.
I pull out my flashlight and flick the switch. The amber beam of light casts a narrow channel through the gloom. The stacks feel taller like this, looming watchful in the darkness as I pass. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea; my skin prickles at the nape of my neck as I take the elevator to the basement, which encloses the occult collection. I’m afraid to look behind me, knowing that if I do I’ll findherthere, dripping lake water on the tile floor, eyes like black pits above sharp teeth.
I dart out of the elevator as soon as it hits ground; the doors can’t slide open fast enough. Only it’s worse once I’m ducking under the velvet rope and shouldering through the door into the occult section. If Alex haunts me, haunts the school—if Godwin House is the epicenter of her power—then this would be the epicenter oftheirs.The Dalloway Five.
I find myself gazing through the iron grate at a leather-bound copy ofMalleus Maleficarum,my breath coming in shallow gulps, afraid to look too deeply into the shadows.
This is my problem. Despite my fear, despite all the ways this obsession ruined everything for me, Iwantto be back here. I’m drawn to these books like a moth to a struck match. I can’t stay away.
I used to spend hours in this room, poring over the papyrus boards ofGrimoirium Verumand caressing its cobra-skin spine. I scrawled pages of notes fromThe Book of Paramazda.
I should be flipping through pulp horror novels and having nightmares overThe Yellow Wallpaper.I should be spending my afternoons in the general stacks with cozy, comfortingly fictional books, then returning home to hot tea and a warm bed. I shouldn’t be picking the lock on the Godwin case, washing my hands at the sink, settling in under the amber glow of a desk lamp to read.
But the Dalloway occult collection is the only place in the country where I might find the information I need: how to unravel the curse Alex and I brought down upon ourselves, how to close the ritual a year too late.
The spine makes a faint cracking sound when I open the second volume of the Dalloway records, its heavy leather binding settling reluctantly against the surface of the desk. The smell of it hasn’t changed. It’s like the inside of a grave. The title, in brown ink, is inscribed in eighteenth-century calligraphy atop the first page:
