Page 55 of The Witches of Cambridge

“Maybe you and I are more alike than I thought,” she said to Jamie. He was clearly a tortured soul. He’d be worse by the end of the night, when he finished The Catcher in the Rye and realized he would never be happy until he discovered who he really was.

“I assume that’s an insult,” Jamie said. He looked so sad that anyone with a heart would feel bad for him, and Lauren nearly did.

“We’re not meant for love,” she told him. “We’re too selfish.”

Jamie nodded in agreement. He wasn’t about to ruin Ava’s life, no matter how much it might hurt to stay away. Keep walking, he told himself. Don’t phone, don’t write, don’t dare look back.

Ava did her best to find out more about her father, but it was as if he never existed. All she had was the single recording, which she played on the old phonograph in the parlor at Lilith House. The music was so filled with love she felt as if she was beginning to know her mother, the woman for whom it was written. Someone loved you so deeply he would have gone to the ends of the earth for you, he would never have said goodbye. When Lauren wasn’t at home, Ava sat in the empty house gazing into the garden. The twelve crows were on the roof, and the neighbors grew more worried that something was wrong in their neighborhood. Ava wandered through the empty bedrooms. She heard the voices of the previous residents, especially the ones who had disappeared; they kept her awake at night, as if pleading with her to find them. She stopped attending class, and one day she realized that she was burning up. She drank ginger tea and mixed up a remedy of turmeric and saffron, traditionally used for fever, but it didn’t help in the least.

She was treating the symptoms, but not the cause. Lovesickness can strike anyone, and that’s what had happened to her. There are obvious signs: you stop eating, you don’t bother to change your clothes, you sleep all day, you stop speaking and lock yourself in your room. If anyone brings you a cup of tea, it’s left untouched on the floor by your bed. Days pass and you don’t know whether it’s a Monday or a Saturday. You don’t respond if someone is knocking at your door. You’ve lost faith in people and, far worse, you’ve lost faith in yourself. Your life is empty, or so it seems. You’ve lost everything and you can’t get it back, but then one day you hear birdsong. You see that the leaves are turning red. That’s when you wake up and decide to be alive again. You make yourself a cup of Love Tea, using lemon balm, spearmint, chamomile, and rose hips. There is only one way to recover: one step at a time. Brush your hair and your teeth, run cold water from the tap, get dressed, get ready, walk out, don’t stop until you find what you’re looking for.

Ava knew the one person who could give her the answers to her questions: the man who had watched from his long black car as Jamie told her they were through. She borrowed one of Lauren’s Chanel dresses and a pair of heels and pinned up her hair so that she would look like a grown woman rather than a student. She hadn’t made an appointment at the law firm, and the secretary at the front desk told her Mr. Mather was in a meeting, but as soon as the secretary turned her back, Ava sneaked down the hall anyway. You had to be reckless sometimes, and this was such a time.

Paul Mather glanced up from the contract he was reading, and there she was at his door. No wonder Jamie had fallen for her. She was gorgeous, even with her hair pulled back. Her anger was burning; though her demeanor was calm, there were spots of color on her cheeks. Ava had thought she would feel idiotic and small when she faced Mr. Mather, but that wasn’t the case. She was who she was, the thirteenth witch of Cambridge, just as he was who he was, a witch-hunter, as his ancestors had been.

Mather leaned back in his chair, arms folded over his chest as if he didn’t give a damn, but Ava saw something in his eyes. If she wasn’t mistaken, he was afraid of her.

“You told him not to see me, didn’t you?” she said, her voice strangely confident. She thought of the way this man had stared at her from the car that day, as if he had won and had claimed the soul of his son.

“Are you here to threaten me, Mouse?” Mather asked.

Ava shook her head. She was too confused to be angered by the insult. “I’m here to understand.”

“All you have to understand is that you’re not right for him,” Mather said dismissively. “Your family circumstances will only hold him back. Face it, people like you can never fit in with the rest of us.”

“How do you know anything about people like me?”

“Why don’t you ask your friend?” Mather suggested wryly. “Though in all honesty, I’m not certain whether she is your friend.”

His remark stopped Ava cold. “What did you say?”

“That little blond friend of yours. She told me you were a witch, and I have to say I’m grateful to her. I don’t want Jamie influenced by that nonsense. Come to think of it, I think your friend was wearing the same dress you’re wearing now when she came to meet me at the Ritz.”

Ava turned and left before she could hear another word. How many times could a friend betray you and continue to pretend she had your best interests at heart? How many times could she look you in the face and lie?

Ava ran down the hall, her heart pounding, and she didn’t look back. Paul Mather might have called after her, he might have laughed out loud, or he might have simply closed his door, pleased with the day’s unexpected turn of events. It was business, nothing more, it was family business, and if this young woman didn’t understand, then she would surely have difficulty in navigating this cruel world.

Once outside, Ava stood on busy State Street and did her best to breathe. She was dizzy and light-headed as she went forward on the gritty Boston streets. She’d been betrayed not once but twice by someone she’d believed was her dearest friend. She couldn’t help but think of her grandmother’s warning. You can never trust people’s intentions. The scar on her palm was throbbing. Soul sister, betrayer, liar, friend. On the train back to Cambridge, she took a pen from her purse and stabbed at the scar until it was bloody and torn. Let her leave me alone, let her get what she deserves, let whatever is between us be broken.

When she got back to Lilith House, Ava went directly to Lauren’s room and threw open the door. Lauren was writing in her grimoire and looked up, startled.

“I went to see Jamie’s father,” Ava said. “He recognized the dress I was wearing. He said it was yours.”

“That man is an ass,” Lauren said, but she didn’t sound as sure of herself as usual. She may have been shaking.

“You did it again,” Ava said. “You want to ruin my life.”

“I know what the Mathers did to your family and mine. If given the chance, they’ll do it again, Ava. I only wanted to protect you the way you protected me.”

“I won’t ever forgive you for this,” Ava vowed.

“You will, Ava. You have to. We always forgive each other. That’s what we do!”

“No, I always forgive you. You can tell yourself you ruined what I had with Jamie to help me, but you did it out of spite. You did it out of revenge, because that’s who you are and who you’ve always been.”

“It’s not true! I’ve forgiven you for not telling me about Cora and Amelia Bell. My family! Who I knew nothing about!”

They had both kept the truth from one another, but Ava had truly wanted to keep Lauren safe from a history of sorrow.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Ava said, disgusted. “Don’t come near me,” she warned as she slammed the door shut.

Lauren knew that when you hurt someone, you have to be willing to see them turn away from you, knowing there’s a good chance they might not come back. Spells are to be used with caution, and they’re never sure things. Come Back to Me was always a complicated enchantment, but Lauren began it all the same, and she left the charm beneath Ava’s pillow, hoping their friendship wasn’t ruined beyond repair.

Take black feathers, vinegar, silver beads, take the bones of a dove. Take anguish, sorrow, regret. Mix with honey, and your own tears, then make a paste to cover a single sheet of paper and write on it with black ink when you beg for forgiveness. If it’s meant to be, the person you’ve hurt will someday look beyond the hedges and the thorns and see that your heart is there, even if it’s hidden, like a rose that goes unseen, even if you have to look carefully to know that you’re loved.

But Ava didn’t return to her room. She ran all the way to the library, the place she’d always gone when the world seemed too wicked and cruel. She fell asleep in the dark on the floor, curled up knees to chest with Jack beside her even though dogs were not allowed. She slept beside a letter from the first witch that she didn’t have the heart to read. The Come Back to Me charm didn’t have a chance of working, for in the morning, when Ava and Jack returned to Lilith House and she found the charm, she tossed it into the trash. She settled into bed ready to read the last letter, wanting to escape the present and return to the past.

She had lost both her best friend and her true love, but there was someone else to think of, someone who seemed to have left her a message at the start of the witch’s letter, written in black ink. Now she understood that someone wanted her to know the truth, whether or not it hurt.

Walk through the marshes, remember everything, remember that when someone loves you, they are with you at all times, even when they’re gone.