Page 36 of The Witches of Cambridge

CHAPTER TWELVE

The year sped by, with the end of the spring term arriving in a rush of vibrant green. Lilith House’s farewell dinner was held in the garden, beside the black roses. All of the society members wore floaty white dresses, and no one bothered with shoes, and there were woven wreaths of brambles for the two graduating seniors, Ashton and Bailey, to wear, for they were about to enter a world that could be cruel to women and witches alike.

On this day, the atmosphere was dark. Clouds hung in the sky, and the air remained murky no matter how many weather spells were recited. The crows flew into the sky screaming and cawing and didn’t reappear. When the rain began, Ashton still hadn’t appeared. Her crown of brambles sat at the head of the table, with more thorns appearing all the time. They wondered if perhaps Ashton had overslept, but when her classmate Bailey ran up to check, Ashton wasn’t in her room, and two hours later, she still hadn’t shown up. By the time dusk fell, they knew she was gone.

They lit white candles, then laid out tarot cards trying to see into Ashton’s future, but the cards brought little comfort. There was the Fool, marking the beginning of a journey, but the card also represented the Moon, often the symbol of a deep fear. It was then that a stinging rain began to fall. The candles were snuffed out and plumes of black smoke rose. The members of the Lilith Society stood silent and felt grief circle around them. Those who planned to be doctors and lawyers and educators, those who could see the future and read the paths of the birds in flight, were soon drenched to the skin, and they made a mad dash for the house.

It was the second time a graduating senior had simply disappeared, and the women in the society still worried about Claire, one of last year’s two graduating members; those who were close to her often tried to reached her, to no avail. This time the police were notified, something the society rarely did, for they mistrusted authority—for good reason, considering their histories. On this day, however, they had little choice. Despite their talents, not one of them could divine where Ashton had gone. No finder’s spell worked; scrying in a mirror and gazing into a bowl of water revealed nothing. They all had the sight, but when they tried to locate Ashton, they could see only a dark fog, for she had become invisible to their eyes. Some far stronger magic had deterred them, standing between them and the truth.

“She’s meant to be graduating,” Emily Bright said. “Why would she run off?”

Lauren knew that Ashton was failing at least one of her classes due to her many absences. Even more telling, she had left a note in the basket for outgoing mail. Lauren was not above reading other people’s mail, and in this case, she hadn’t been surprised by the heartbroken message she’d found.

I thought you loved me.

At last they stopped waiting and cleared up the soggy mess of the dinner party. The rain had stopped, and the whole world seemed hazy with pollen that turned the hems of their dresses green as they stood in the tall grass. It was no surprise to Lauren that this was what love did when you were betrayed. It left you alone in the dark. It happened more than anyone might imagine. It happened all the time.

A young man had parked his gray, unmarked car on the street across from Lilith House. Billy Healy had made detective early, and although he was good at his job, his expression was one of distrust mixed with sorrow. His eyes were so green it was difficult to look away from him. Many criminals had confessed simply because of the color of his eyes, for it seemed you could tell him just about anything. However his openness was a trick of the light. He kept his emotions shrouded, and he always had. He told himself no one needed to know what a cop wanted or thought, but he had often told himself many things he didn’t exactly believe.

The detective always introduced himself as William Healy, but the name didn’t fit him. Billy was young enough to look like a student when he was on campus. Currently, he was wearing a jacket and a black tie, to adhere to the department’s dress code. He’d come up fast through the ranks, and some of the men he’d passed by on that trajectory were envious and swore his ascent was due to the fact his father had been an admired Cambridge detective. When Billy’s father, Ray Healy, had been a boy, he was part of a study of the causation of crime in Cambridge and Somerville. The academics who conducted the study had come to the conclusion that forty-five percent of boys who had cruel or rejecting mothers turned to crime, but there was no actual proof that these thugs wouldn’t have been criminals anyway. It seemed the study was little more than another way to blame mothers for all that went wrong in a family. There was no attention paid to who these boys’ friends were or what their experience with the police had been or how much the ongoing crime in their neighborhoods had influenced them. Boys grew up, and some of them made it despite their rotten families and friends, and as it turned out, Billy’s delinquent father became the chief detective.

Billy’s father would likely have been impressed by his son’s proper attire had he seen him in his black suit, but Billy himself thought he looked like a funeral director, which made him flush with embarrassment. He raked a hand through his thick, dark hair and did his best not to give away the fact that he was intimidated by Harvard students, including the Radcliffe girls, and especially by this secret society that was not so secret in his household. Billy wasn’t much older than a college student, and he used his youth and his earnest manner when he tried to get information from someone who was afraid to discuss what they’d seen or heard. With women, he was charismatic and with men he was disarming, speaking to them as if he were their brother. He understood people who had secret lives, because he had one himself.

He was let in the door of Lilith House after he explained who he was. The Lilith women stood there in their rumpled white dresses, all crying black tears. They looked like swans in a lake or sparrows on a branch, and Billy thought if he wasn’t careful, if he prodded them with too many questions, they might just fly away. And so he would be cautious where another officer might be harsh, and he certainly wouldn’t put them on the defensive. There were rumors about this place, and Cambridge residents tended to avoid it. Neighbors had filed complaints concerning blue smoke hovering over the roof and bonfires in the yard. Even schoolchildren knew there was something going on behind the metal gate. Don’t go there uninvited, don’t taste the herbs in their garden, don’t knock on their door on Halloween night. Billy’s stepmother had told him it was a historic site, begun long ago by a woman who’d had nowhere else to go and that it had become a home for Radcliffe women who were practitioners. Billy’s stepmother and his half sister practiced the Nameless Art, but this was another level of witchery. The house itself was dark, the shades drawn; all the black roses in the flower beds had blood-red centers. The trees cast shadows all around.

Billy had a knack for finding missing items, whether they be bales of marijuana on a barge in the river or guns hidden under a porch in East Cambridge. At work they called him Lucky Bill, and he was good-humored when it came to their jabs, but he’d certainly never discussed anything personal, not even with his buddies. Every now and then his half sister would look at him and shake her head. “Billy,” she would say mournfully, for she knew him better than anyone. He’d been only four when their parents had married, and five when she’d been born. “Will you never learn?” she asked him.

“What did I do wrong?” he would ask, thinking his sister was finding fault with him, but she’d laugh and say, “It’s not what you’ve done, it’s what you haven’t done.”

That made him nervous, for he was plagued by doubt. “Meaning?”

“You’ve got to be yourself,” she told him.

“Who else would I be?” Billy had joked, walking out to make certain the conversation was ended before either one could say another word, for they both knew the answer to that question. The person his friends and coworkers and drinking pals knew was on the surface. Deep down, he was someone else entirely, someone he saw in the mirror looking back at him, until he walked away.

Now the women from Lilith House gathered around him.

“Were there any signs of unhappiness?” Billy asked. “Were they drinking, or staying out late? You must know something.”

“You’re investigating, you’re the one who should know something about what happened.” Lauren met his glance with her own fierce gaze. He noticed her sharp teeth, the sign of a witch. He never shared the knowledge he’d gained from his mother and sister with anyone he worked with, but it had helped him in the past, and he gathered it would help him now.

“I don’t know anything yet,” Billy admitted. “But I will,” he informed them, which sounded like both a promise and a threat.

He asked for their names, just a matter of protocol, he assured them, nothing to worry about. The girls had a wordless exchange that made it clear they were uncomfortable—Do we want the police to have information about us? Isn’t that how witch-hunters begin? But in the end, they allowed him to write down their names in his notebook. He was most interested in the girl with the sharp teeth and the extra finger on her hand, the pale blond who looked like a fairy sprite. He would have bet she would bite you if you did her wrong. She had written her name in small black letters. Lauren Bell. His heart clattered against his chest, for Bell was a name he knew. He’d heard it in an alleyway, perhaps a year earlier, during a raid on a dark night when he found himself derailed from the pretense of the life he’d created. Don’t disappear, the man had called, but Billy had done exactly that, and ever since he’d been trying not to think about that encounter. He’d done his best to try to forget that wild kiss on the mouth, for a shiver went through him whenever he remembered. What he felt for this beautiful man couldn’t be denied, nor could he deny that it was a crime. He was meant to go after criminals, but according to the laws of Massachusetts, he was one himself. There were men serving time in jail because they’d danced with another man, men whose friends abandoned them when the truth of who they loved had come out.

“If there’s anything you remember that you think I should know about, contact me.” He seemed to be speaking directly to Lauren.

“Yeah. Sure,” she said, as if she ever would. She had been one of the dissenters when it was decided that the police should be notified. Never let the authorities in, never speak to them, never let them know who you are and what you are capable of.

When the detective offered Lauren his card, she wasn’t interested, but the red-haired young woman beside her took it, surprised when she saw his last name. “You must know Maureen Healy. She’s a good friend of mine.”

“Is she? She’s my sister, and you clearly have good taste in friends.”

“I don’t know if that’s necessarily true,” Lauren said grimly. Billy wasn’t quite certain if this girl was insulting Ava or his sister, but she definitely didn’t hold back on her scorn.

“Oh, it’s true,” Billy said. “My sister is the best.”

“Actually my brother, Lionel, is the best,” Lauren responded. “But you’d know that if you knew him.”