Page 16 of The Witches of Cambridge

Jamie rose to his feet, light-headed, with no clever words to fend her off. “That was a trick. Ava, I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but this is crazy.”

Ava stood up to face him, hurt by his response. “If you think I’m crazy, maybe you should stay away from me.”

“I’m not a research project, Ava. Stop investigating my family.”

“I’ll do as I please,” she told him, stung by his response.

“Who am I to stop you?” Jamie flung back at her. He was done with this, and he did what he always did when he was threatened. He’d seen black blood before, and had never said a word about it. Keep it to yourself, his mother had told him. Some things are best kept secret. Now he turned his back, shoulders hunched, shut down.

Jack was growling more fiercely, lips drawn back. Dogs had always been drawn to Jamie, the Labrador retrievers at home as well as strays on the street, but this one clearly could see through his bravado. Ava had taken off and was running through the cemetery gates, and the dog raced after her across the lawns, down paths laden with leaves. Ava had said too much, and she couldn’t take it back. The Lilith Society warned its members to keep the truth to themselves, for they’d suffered too much at the hands of those who wished to imprison them.

Share who you are and they’ll think you’re mad, they’ll lock you away, they’ll burn you at dawn when the birds are waking and calling out to you, seven days will pass as if they were seven years and when you turn around everything you know will be gone.

That weekend, on his visit to his family’s home in Sudbury, Jamie spent most of his time in his boyhood bedroom, where he had always kept the shades drawn. Late at night, before he could think clearly, he took up the penknife he’d had since he was ten and stabbed himself. He did it quickly, before he could stop himself, before he could tell himself he was a fool to listen to Ava. He did it and there it was. There had been no mistake. His blood was black. He’d always had a faint memory of a fall near the pond onto a sharp, craggy rock. His mother had tied a white bandage around his arm afterward, whispering, Keep this to yourself. Don’t show your father. No matter what, you belong to us. My crow, she’d said. My dearest boy.

Back then, his mother had brought him into the house. She’d made Jamie a cup of hot chocolate and told him to stay out of the woods, and they’d never spoken of it again. But now he didn’t look away. He pricked himself again and again, and each time he did, the truth of who he was became more evident. He could tell himself he was the same person he’d always been, he could say blood meant nothing at all, but he knew it wasn’t true.

He wondered if there was another reason his mother had told him the crow’s story. You are not like all the rest, neither mortal nor crow, forever drawn to two worlds and belonging to none.

He wondered if he’d always known.

They lost light every day, and by December it was dark at four. It was the time of year when the gates of the Old Burial Ground in Harvard Square were locked, when wolves once gathered near the river. It was usually bone-chillingly cold, but this year the temperature was in the fifties and sixties, and people felt confused, for it seemed as if something was wrong with nature itself. Ava wrote to her parents offering her regrets; she couldn’t return to Maine for Christmas because she had to work through the holidays. It was a lie, but she was getting better at keeping the truth from them. She often saw Jamie at the café with one date or another. Anyone would think he couldn’t stay away from Ava, although he always asked for someone else to take his order. Anyone would think he wasn’t angry with her, but simply overwhelmed.

“He’s an ass,” Ava explained when the other waitresses asked why he didn’t want her to serve him.

Jamie overheard and walked back to her. “Did you want to say something to me?”

“Why should I? You’re not a research project. Isn’t that what you told me?”

“But I did knock some silverware onto the floor. That might interest you.”

They were glaring at each other, while the girl who was Jamie’s date for the evening stayed where she was, confused by what sounded like hatred and looked like attraction.

“I forget your name,” Jamie said. He’d grown up in a family where the men insulted each other on a regular basis, and he was quite good at it.

“Glad to hear that.” Ava’s eyes were stinging, but she was not the sort of person who could be made to cry. If she had been, she would have cried every day back in Genesis.

“If you can’t take Cambridge, and you need a ride home back to the farm, I’d be happy to help you out.”

“It’s an orchard, not a farm.”

“Well, maybe it’s where you’re meant to be.”

Jamie reached for his wallet and took out a twenty. He felt quite insane. At night he practiced card tricks, but he’d come to realize they weren’t tricks at all. He could see what the next card would be before he turned it over. If he opened his mind, if he stopped all the jumbled thoughts, he could see through what was to come.

Now, he experienced a strange mix of desire and fear when he looked at Ava. If he wasn’t careful, he might be willing to do anything for her. “Bus fare,” he said, tossing down the cash. “So you can go home for the holidays and stay there.”

“I’m staying with friends on Brattle Street. I’m not going anywhere.” Ava refused to show her hurt and disappointment at his lack of interest.

But she was wrong. Jamie couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was as if no one else existed, and he was startled when his date, who was standing behind him, reached for his hand. Frankly, he’d forgotten all about her.

Over the winter break, the Bells gave Ava a room on the third floor, where she had a view of the garden. It was covered by ice at this time of year, blue and white and frozen, with the rosebushes bent over and twisted and the lilacs turned to black sticks. Blackbirds and sparrows were in the cherry trees waiting for the bird feeder to be filled. Once she was ensconced in the house, Ava was overjoyed to find she had complete access to the family’s fabulous library and was surprised when she was instructed to wear gloves when handling the books with green covers. Poison, she was told. For protective purposes.

During this time she practiced the sight, how to see inside of things, objects and creatures and beings. There was a blue jay at her window, terrified of the cats next door. There was a child on the street, afraid to tell her mother the truth of why she cried at night. There was Lionel, on the couch in the parlor, torn apart by the sorrow he saw at the hospital, wanting to save people and still unable to save himself.

They cooked elaborate dinners every night and went for evening walks at Mount Auburn Cemetery, where the ponds had turned to solid ice and the reeds snapped in two when you touched them and owls haunted the trees. Sitting at the kitchen table, they played a game where they would shut down their minds so the others couldn’t see inside them. Lauren always won. She could turn everything inside her black as night, making all her thoughts and desires disappear.

“Unfair,” Ava would always say to her friend. “You’re too good at this.”