The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (309 page)

“Eliza.”

Whirling around at the sound of her name, Eliza saw Harrison slipping inside her sanctuary. She shook her head at the sight of him, not wanting him to see her like this.

“Eliza,” he said again, approaching her. “I’m so sorry about Catherine. I know how you must feel.”

“You don’t know anything,” Eliza heard herself say, her voice soaked with tears. She backed away from him, moving around the trunk of the tree. “You don’t know anything about me, Harrison.”

Still he came. He closed the gap between them quickly and pulled her into his arms.

“I know everything I need to know,” he said, holding her head against his chest. “And it’s okay to cry. I’m here.”

“I can’t,” Eliza said, sniffling. Her chest felt as if it was being crushed by the weight of ten thousand heavy heels. “I can’t.”

“Eliza, no matter what happens, I’ll always be here for you,” Harrison said, leaning back. He placed one finger beneath her chin and lifted her face to look into her eyes. “All I want is to be with you. I haven’t spoken to Theresa yet because of all that’s happened, but I will. I’ll make her understand.”

Eliza yanked herself away from Harrison’s grasp. “I can’t, Harrison.” She channeled every bit of frustration and misery and regret into the words. “I can’t be with you. You belong with Theresa. You
should be with her now, not me. She needs you. Please, just go to her. Leave me alone.”

The look of hurt and confusion on his face was impossible for Eliza to bear. She had hurt Catherine. She had hurt Theresa. She had hurt all her sisters in the coven. And now she had hurt Harrison, too.

“But Eliza, I thought you said—”

“I know what I said, but I was wrong,” Eliza sobbed. “Please, Harrison, just go. Just go to your fiancée.”

Harrison still didn’t move. Eliza couldn’t take the pain in her chest for a moment longer. She ducked under the lowest branches and ran for Crenshaw House, shoving the heavy door open. Nearly blinded by tears, she ignored Mrs. Hodge, who called after her, and ran up the stairs and into her old room, slamming the door behind her.

This, she realized instantly, was a mistake. Catherine’s things were still there. Her dresses still hung in the closet. Her books still stood on Eliza’s shelves. Her quilt still covered her bed. This was the last place Eliza wanted to be right then. The last place in the world. But as she turned to go, there was a knock on the door.

“Miss Williams?” Mrs. Hodge said tentatively. “Catherine’s father has sent some men to pack up her things. May I let them in?”

Eliza’s heart pounded. Without thinking twice, she dropped to the floor, yanked Catherine’s case of magical items out from under her bed, and shoved it under the one she had slept in. Then she stood up, dried her eyes with her fingertips, and took in a long, ragged breath.

“Come in,” she said.

Mrs. Hodge opened the door. The two young men in plain, gray
flannel jackets doffed their caps at Eliza but said nothing. They simply went to work, transferring Catherine’s clothes from her bureau to her trunk. They plucked her toiletry items from the shelves, removed the linens from her bed, and finally removed the fleur-de-lis from the wall, tossing it on top of everything else. The whole while, Eliza stood in the hall with Mrs. Hodge, at a respectful distance but watching their every move. She held her breath the whole time, waiting irrationally for one of them to spot Catherine’s box, to realize that it belonged to her deceased friend and not to her.

“Good day, miss,” one of the two men said to Eliza as they carted the trunk out between them.

“Good day,” Eliza managed.

Mrs. Hodge gave Eliza a sympathetic smile. Eliza was surprised and touched to be the recipient of such kind emotions from such a hard woman.

“Is there anything I can get you, Miss Williams?” Mrs. Hodge asked.

“No, thank you,” Eliza replied, stepping into her old room, now eerily empty. “I’d just like to be alone for a while.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Hodge said.

The maid reached for the handle and closed the door, leaving Eliza on her own. Trying not to start crying all over again, Eliza sat down on the edge of her bed and stared at the blank side of the room that was once Catherine’s.

“I wish you were still here, Catherine,” Eliza said aloud. “I wish you were here with me right now.”

There was, of course, no reply. But Eliza felt a strange warmth over
her shoulders, a glimmer of peace inside her chest. Somehow, she felt as if Catherine
was
there. And that she was wishing she could be with Eliza, too.

It wasn’t until the men and the trunk were long gone and the house had gone still that Eliza lay back—and in doing so, caught a glimpse of her bookshelf. Her heart caught and she smiled, for the men had accidentally left her Catherine’s most prized possessions: her books.

Wiping the last stray tears from her eyes, Eliza shoved herself up and pulled out the blank book her mother had given her. She opened it to the first page and ran her eyes down the list of girls she, Theresa, Catherine, and Alice had chosen to be members of the “Billings Literary Society.” Then she turned to the next page, the one on which each of the girls had personally signed her name. Her fingers grazed Catherine’s signature, and her heart caught miserably.

Eliza took a deep, broken breath and sat down at her old desk. She took out a pen, turned to the first clean page in the book, and began to write. Slowly, methodically, she recorded every detail of the past few days. The story of Caroline Westwick, of her sister Lucille, of Helen’s involvement in the original coven and Caroline’s suicide. Then she tearfully recorded all that had happened with Catherine—her dream about her friend’s death, the actual accident, the ritual and the thing it had brought back, and finally the curse. As much as it broke her heart to recall the details, she knew she had to record them—just in case any future Billings girls ever stumbled across the books again. They would have to be warned. They would have to be protected.

Catherine would have wanted it that way.

“Why must Miss Almay keep such a close eye on everyone?” Theresa asked Eliza as they sat on the wrought-iron bench alongside the Crenshaw garden on Wednesday afternoon following classes. “Does she think we’re all going to wander off and meet our doom in the woods?”

“No,” Eliza replied, watching as Miss Almay paced the flower beds planted alongside the house’s foundation. “She knows something is wrong. She can tell.”

“How could she not know?” Helen asked. The maid knelt in the garden a few feet in front of the two girls, pulling out weeds—all the better to hide the fact that the three of them were conversing. “Look at them.”

Eliza scanned the area. It was free period, and several of the younger girls had started up a game of jump rope on the lawn. Their laughter and shrieks of joy were in stark contrast to the attitude of the girls from the coven. Alice sat under cover of a wide-brimmed felt
hat, reading her Bible diligently, as she had been doing ever since she’d learned that Catherine was dead—again. Jane reposed on a bench opposite Eliza’s and Theresa’s, staring listlessly into space as she toyed with her hair. Lavender, Bia, and Viola sat together on a picnic blanket not talking to one another. Marilyn and Genevieve were ostensibly watching Petit Peu play with a stick, but they hardly seemed to notice him at all. Clarissa was squirreled away in the library, ignoring the existence of everyone else.

“Well, we’re still in mourning,” Theresa said. “Of course we’d be listless.”

“It’s not just listlessness,” Eliza said. “It’s guilt.”

Theresa’s head snapped around, and Helen stopped weeding abruptly but didn’t turn.

“What do you mean? Why would they feel guilty?” Theresa asked.

Eliza’s mouth was dry. “Because we had the chance to save Catherine, and we failed,” she said, one single tear spilling down her cheek. “We promised them we could bring her back. We set them up for failure. They believe . . . they believe Catherine is still dead because of them. Because of us. Don’t
you
feel that way, Theresa?”

Theresa took a breath. “No,” she said. “We tried, Eliza. Most people wouldn’t have even done that.”

“Well, even if you don’t feel it, they—we—do,” Eliza said, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched Alice slowly turn the page in her Bible. “That sort of pain doesn’t just go away.”

For a long moment, none of them spoke. All three of them just
watched the others—watched them ignoring one another, watched them not living their lives.

“All right, then. We have to find a way to help them move on,” Theresa said finally. “We have to help them put this whole mess behind them and start over.”

“But how?” Eliza asked.

Helen stood up, dusted her hands off, and turned to them. “I know we said we were done with magic, but perhaps we need to cast one last spell.”

Eliza stood in the center of the temple with Theresa and Helen, the other eight members of the coven gathered in a circle around them. It was Saturday afternoon, and Miss Almay had gone off campus for a visit with her sister in Norfolk. If the girls were going to put Helen’s plan in motion, now was the time.

“What are we doing here?” Clarissa snipped, hugging herself against the chill. “No one wants to be here, you know.”

“Clarissa is right. You don’t intend for us to be casting spells again, do you?” Marilyn asked, holding Genevieve’s hand.

Bia and Viola stood huddled near the door, while the others eyed Eliza, Theresa, and Helen with suspicion. Eliza ignored their questions. She looked into Theresa’s brown eyes and held her breath.

“Ready?” Helen asked. She pressed a single grape leaf into each of their palms.

“Ready,” Theresa and Eliza replied.

The three girls clasped hands, their leaves pressing together, and recited the incantation.

“Sleep, sisters, sleep, and dream your fondest dream. Take no note of what we do. Things are not what they seem.”

This time, there was no dizziness whatsoever. A warm wind swirled up and out from the tight circle, lifting Eliza’s hair straight up from her head. When it died down, she glanced at Helen and Theresa for courage, then turned around.

All eight girls had fallen fast asleep where they stood. Lavender was even snoring. Alice swayed slightly on her feet but didn’t tip over.

“Let’s get to work,” Theresa said determinedly. She walked over to Jane and touched her fingertips to Jane’s forehead. “When you wake, you will be free of this pain,” she said. And Jane’s head nodded forward, her chin ducking toward her neck.

Eliza stepped up to Clarissa and placed her fingers against the sleeping girl’s forehead. “When you wake, you will be free of this pain.” Clarissa’s head nodded forward.

Standing in front of Alice next, as Helen and Theresa worked on the other girls, Eliza took a deep breath. She hoped that when Alice awoke, she would be back to her formerly vibrant, bright-eyed self. She hoped that she would be free of this fear of retribution, this overwhelming guilt that had consumed her. She reached out, touched Alice’s forehead, and closed her eyes, channeling all her energy into her friend.

“When you wake, you will be free of this pain.”

Alice’s head nodded, her red curls grazing her cheeks. Eliza smiled slightly, hoping she had done right by her friend.

“All right. We’re done,” Theresa said, her long, azure blue skirt swishing about her ankles as she turned. “Let’s get them upstairs.”

Helen placed her hands gently on Genevieve’s shoulders and turned her toward the stairs. Then she took Marilyn by the hand and walked her toward Genevieve. Marilyn went along, being led like a sleepwalking child. Helen lifted Marilyn’s right hand and placed it on Genevieve’s right shoulder. Catching on, Eliza set about helping form the chain. Lavender’s hand met Marilyn’s shoulder. Then Clarissa, then Alice, then Viola, then Bia, then Jane.

“I’ll take the front, and you girls take the rear,” Helen said. Then she walked to the front of the line, placed Genevieve’s hand on her own shoulder, and began to walk. Each of the sleeping girls stepped forward as her arm was tugged by the girl in front of her. The chain loped up the winding staircase in silence, never missing a step. Eliza and Theresa stayed behind on the floor of the temple for a moment, looking at each other in awe.

“That Helen really knows her magic,” Theresa said.

“Thank goodness,” Eliza replied. She took a deep breath and let it out, feeling relieved. If this spell worked, at least her friends would be released from their misery. That was something.

At the end of the chain, Jane started up the first step. Eliza looked around the temple and felt a pang of regret and nostalgia. What they had done here in this room had been exciting. It had opened up so many possibilities. But now, those possibilities were gone forever.

But this is a good thing,
she reminded herself.
Then, you looked forward to only happiness and innocent mischief, but look what misery you wrought. Those books are better left hidden.

“We’d better follow,” Theresa said, nodding toward the stairs.

Together they took one last look around their hallowed space. The pedestal and chairs still stood where they’d left them, looking so lonely and bare without the candles and the draping and the books. With one last sigh, Eliza reached for Theresa’s hand. The two girls turned as one and climbed the stairs. At the top, Theresa closed the door behind them, and Eliza turned the key with one final, resounding click.

“Never again,” Theresa said, looking Eliza in the eye.

Eliza slipped the key into the pocket of her dress, where it came to a rest, cold and heavy at her side.

“Never again.”