But it had already swallowed Catherine, and she couldn’t rest with that on her conscience.
“If you wish to help me so badly, then help me now,” Eliza pleaded, scooting her chair closer to the table, angling herself to look into the maid’s face. “Help us.”
“I’m sorry,” Helen said simply. “I can’t do that.”
“But you must!” Eliza protested. “Helen, if you know something of this, if you understand how these spells work, then you must help us.”
Helen continued to polish the silver, as if Eliza wasn’t begging for someone’s life.
“We’re going to do it with or without you,” Eliza said.
Helen paused. She laid down the rag and turned to look Eliza in the eye.
“Fine,” she said. “I will agree to help
you on two conditions. First, I wish to read this spell first, to make sure there are no mistakes.”
“Done. And second?” Eliza asked, laying her palm flat on the table.
“Second, when the spell is done, we bury the books again,” Helen said. “We bury them, and you all put this magic where it belongs. In the past.”
“Agreed.” Eliza reached out and took the maid’s hand. “All I want is for this to be over.”
Helen sat and stared at Eliza’s hand on hers.“All right, then,” she said, sliding her hand away from Eliza’s. She wiped both palms on her dingy apron. “I’ll help you.”
“Thank you,” Eliza said, her voice thick. “Thank you, Helen.” She shoved her chair back and held out her hand to the maid. “Now come along. We must go.”
“Go where?” Helen asked, standing.
Eliza looked her up and down. Beneath her blue shawl and brown apron she wore a nightgown of white flannel. Perfect.
“The girls are waiting in the chapel,” Eliza told her.
Helen hesitated, glancing at the door as if she expected a ghost or goblin to come screeching out at her. “Waiting for what?”
“For you,” Eliza said. “It’s time for your initiation.”
Chosen Ones
“The girl who died—her name was Caroline Westwick,” Helen said, tugging her blue shawl closer to her body as she, Theresa, and Eliza trailed the other girls back through the woods after her initiation. The sky overhead was lit by the biggest full moon Eliza had ever seen. It glowed an eerie yellow-green against the midnight sky. “That was the name of the girl who died. Odd, isn’t it? How she and Catherine have the same initials?”
A chill went through Eliza as she glanced back toward the chapel. Catherine was there, all alone in that basement, her body growing colder by the moment. Eliza felt an ache in her gut over leaving her friend behind once again, but she’d had no choice. She had wanted to do the Life Out of Death Spell right away, as soon as Helen had become a member of the coven, but Helen had insisted they wait another day—long enough for her to study the spell, to make sure it was safe. And that, after all, had been a condition of her initiation, so Eliza had no choice but to agree.
“Check your sources,” Theresa said under her breath, glancing ahead at the other girls. Their hushed conversations traveled back to Eliza’s ears in furtive whispers. All of them had just seen Catherine’s body for the first time, and all of them had been affected. “Everyone knows that Caroline Westwick ran off to Europe to marry some divorced ex-duke and broke her mother’s heart.”
“That’s just what her family wants you to believe,” Helen said, looking Theresa in the eye. “But next time you visit their home, walk out to the orchard. At the foot of the easternmost tree, you’ll find an unmarked grave. That’s where her mother goes every morning to grieve.”
Theresa stopped walking. All the color dropped from her face, and she held both hands against her stomach. “How can you possibly know this?”
Helen paused and looked down at her hands. “Because I visit Caroline, too.”
Theresa pressed one hand into the trunk of an old oak tree, her breathing ragged. The rest of the girls kept tromping ahead, not noticing their friends’ absence.
“Theresa? Are you all right?” Eliza asked, placing her hand on the small of Theresa’s back.
Theresa nodded, waving Eliza away, but Eliza kept her hand there as she looked wildly around at Helen. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . she was a friend of the family.
“I don’t understand,” Eliza said. “Why would the Westwicks lie about something like that?”