And then we’re outside, we’re in the forest, following the witches’ footsteps deep enough that the house vanishes into the night’s open mouth, until the dark space beneath the trees hangs heavy enough that even our breath sounds muffled. An owl hoots somewhere nearby, warning of our passing. The Greeks believed witches could transform themselves into owls to stalk their prey. I can’t stop thinking of the figure Ellis saw in my teacup: the bird,dangerous situations.
“They aren’t coming,” I say after we reach the clearing. The forest seems to close in around us, sharp-toothed and hungry. I take off my mask; I can’t stand feeling half-blinded, unaware of what lurks just out of sight, in the corners of my eyes.
“They’re coming,” Ellis replies.
I don’t believe her, but I get ready anyway. My bag has everything we need, materials retrieved from the hole in my closet wall: candles and herbs, a vial of goat’s blood I bought from the butcher in town.
When a twig snaps I lurch upright, half expecting to seeher,Alex. But it’s just Kajal emerging from between the trees, a smudge of dirt on her knee and a scowl on her face.
“Morrow,” she says. “What are you doing here?”
I know the moment she spots Ellis, from the way her spine stiffens, the reflexive half step back and away. I turn to look just as Ellis is lifting the goat’s-head mask away from her face.
“It’s me,” she says.
“What the fuck, Ellis!”
Ellis draws a cigarette case out of her pocket. She pauses long enough to light one and blow smoke toward the stars before she says: “I’ll explain when the rest arrive.”
I’m caught there between them, Ellis pale and serene, Kajal shifting her weight from foot to foot as she clearly debates running back to Godwin. But she doesn’t. She stays, watching in wary silence as I finish building a circle out of candles and black tourmaline. Ellis might be right—we aren’t in any danger from Margery or her kin—but the protection of the crystals make me feel better all the same.
Clara and Leonie arrive over the next fifteen minutes, Leonie appearing perfectly coiffed and all but presidential, as if she were somehow transported to the middle of the woods by hired car rather than by traipsing over twig and stone. Clara looks rather worse for wear, but she doesn’t complain. Perhaps she’s pleased to have been invited at all.
Ellis stands at my side, her fingers pressing against the back of my elbow: careful, steadying. I doubt she knows how much I need that anchor right now.
Leonie recognizes Ellis’s mask. I can tell from the way she hesitates but doesn’t flinch when she sees it—the goat’s skull is less horrifying if you’ve seen it before. Perhaps she’s one of the Margery coven’s newest members, inducted while I was rotting away in a hospital bed.
Does she know, then, that I was once a sister too?
That I was excommunicated?
“Ellis,” Leonie says slowly, carefully, “what is that?”
Ellis, who had resumed wearing the mask after she finished her cigarette, tips it away from her face again. “It’s a mask, Schuyler. What does it look like?”
“Where did you get it?”
“From me,” I interject. “She got it from me. I was part of…Well.” I can’t say it out loud; even though I’ve been excommunicated from the Margery coven, it feels like their rules still bind me. Leonie’s dark gaze holds mine, steady and knowing. “I gave it to her,” I say.
“I thought we could play a little game,” Ellis says, finally discarding the mask altogether and smiling at us, her acolytes, gathered for her homily. “You’ve heard of the Dalloway Five, I presume.”
Nods all around.
“Your book is about them,” Clara ventures. “The witches.”
“That’s right. And you know my style—I’m a method writer. They say the Dalloway girls were witches, or at least that they had séances and cast spells. So I must as well.”
Clara gazes adoringly at Ellis as if Ellis had just offered her true and everlasting friendship for the low price of her eternal soul. Leonie and Kajal exchange looks.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” I say at last, because it’s clear these two aren’t convinced but are too nervous to contradict Ellis to her face.
“Me too,” Clara adds.
Kajal twists a lock of black hair around her finger. “I suppose it could be fun….”
One left. Ellis turns her gaze toward Leonie, and Leonie sighs, then nods. Our pact is sealed.
“We need a name,” Clara says. Her tone is too bright for the setting, at odds with the heavy tree cover and the treacherous vines snaking underfoot.
