The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (304 page)

Thinking of Catherine, Eliza screwed up her courage and pushed the door open on its hinges.

Helen sat at the table, her back to Eliza, her blond braid down the back of her blue shawl. She was polishing silver methodically as she hummed.

“I delivered your message to Harrison Knox, Miss Eliza,” Helen said.

Eliza nearly collapsed. How did Helen know she was standing there? She hadn’t made a sound. And what message was she talking about?

Helen turned around slowly. “He won’t be waiting for you. I let him know you couldn’t be there, as you were to be otherwise occupied.”

Eliza’s mind swam as Helen blithely returned to her work. She took a tentative step into the room and was surprised when her weakened knees held her.

“What . . . how did you . . . ? Did you read his message to me? How did you know I couldn’t go to him?”

Helen simply arched one eyebrow as she rubbed a serving fork with her rag.

“What do you know?” Eliza asked, walking boldly over and standing next to Helen’s chair. Her skin pulsated with uncertainty and fear, but she wasn’t going to let Helen see that. “How much do you know?”

The polishing continued, as did the awful tune.

“How did you know it was me at the door?” Eliza demanded.

“Oh, that.” Helen placed the spoon she’d been working on down on the table, along with the rag. When she looked up at Eliza, her expression was far more normal—amused and lightly teasing. “You, Miss Eliza, have a very peculiar gait.”

Eliza’s shoulders relaxed, and instantly she felt foolish. Of course. Her mother had always scolded her for loping around like a boy, and after a couple of weeks of living among the other girls, she knew none of them had her plodding steps. She pulled out the chair at the head of the table and rested her hands in front of her.

“I need your help,” she said.

“I know,” Helen said, picking up a fork and inspecting it in the candlelight. “You need me to help you bring her back.”

Eliza’s heart thumped.

Helen breathed on the fork, and Eliza could have sworn that the rust stains disappeared before her eyes. Still Helen lifted the rag and polished it anyway.

“None of your spells work on me,” she continued, laying the fork alongside the other gleaming utensils. Her eyes flicked to Eliza’s locket. “Not a one. I’m under the protection of a charm that makes me immune to witchcraft.”

Eliza sat and stared. “A charm?” she blurted stupidly.

“Yes,” Helen said as she polished a teaspoon. “I know what those books of yours can lead to. I knew the girl who last owned them.” She placed the teaspoon down on the table and slowly turned to look at Eliza. “She was killed by her craft.”

Eliza felt as if Helen had just plucked one of the forks off the table and jammed it into her heart. “Killed? Like Catherine was?”

“No, not quite like that,” Helen said thoughtfully. “This girl, she let the magic consume her. It became an obsession . . . an addiction . . . and it took over. After she died, we tried to burn those books so that it would never happen again, but it didn’t work.”

Eliza sat up straight and swallowed hard, attempting to focus. “What do you mean, it didn’t work?”

“We threw them in the fire, and they came out an hour later without a mark or a scratch,” Helen explained. “They were untouched, Miss Eliza. Unscathed.” She pushed the silverware away, her eyes hard. “You’re fooling with a power that is not to be trifled with. That is why I have tried to send you those messages all this time. Tried to tell you to turn back when you were about to get yourself into trouble. But you don’t seem to want to listen.”

Eliza’s heart dropped into her toes. “That voice I’ve been hearing . . . that was you?”

“Yes, Miss Eliza,” Helen said, going to work on a serving spoon. “But like I said, you didn’t want to listen.”

Eliza was stunned, an awful hollowness growing inside of her gut. A feeling that she had started something she could not control. A feeling that if she didn’t end it now, it might grow and expand and swallow everything she held dear.

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.”

“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?”

Helen removed a handkerchief from the pocket of her nightgown and handed it to Theresa in a perfunctory way. Theresa cupped the fabric over her mouth, closed her eyes, and breathed.

“Think of your own mother, Miss Eliza,” Helen said. “Would it be more humiliating for her to say you’d simply fallen in love and followed your silly little heart, or to tell the world that you’d become obsessed with witchcraft, lost your mind to it, and subsequently killed yourself?”

Eliza’s mind went suddenly gray. Now she clung to Theresa’s arm to steady herself. “She committed suicide?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Helen said flatly. “She threw herself off the roof of the Easton Academy chapel, but I don’t think she knew what she was doing when she did it.”

“How is this possible?” Theresa looked around in confusion, as if hoping Caroline would step out of the trees and explain it all away. “Why did she do it?”

Helen sighed.

“It was Caroline’s older sister, Lucille, who originally found the books. She started her own coven, and she invited ten other girls to join, just as you did. Even though I was only thirteen years old, I was one of those she invited. Caroline was not,” Helen said.

Eliza narrowed her eyes. “She invited a maid, but not her own sister?”

The moment the words left her lips, Eliza felt ashamed.

“I think that was why she did it, Miss Eliza,” Helen said. “I believe that by asking me, she was taunting her sister.”

“That does sound like Lucille,” Theresa admitted. “She always left Caroline out.”

Helen nodded. “Every time our coven would meet, Caroline would follow us. She would hover upstairs in the chapel, and occasionally she would beg to be let in, but Lucille always shunned her. She would laugh about it, like it was all a joke to her. It made some of us uncomfortable. But you didn’t argue with Lucille.”

Eliza looked at Theresa, wondering if she saw the parallels to her own position at Billings, but Theresa’s attention was trained on Helen.

“Everything we did back then was in good fun, or so we thought,” Helen said. “It was much like I’m sure it’s been for you. We cast fun little spells, helped the girls pass tests, helped them attract certain boys. They even cast a spell to get me out of scrubbing the floors when I had a cold.” The moon broke from behind a cloud, bathing Helen in milky light.

“And?” Theresa prompted. “What happened?”

“One night Caroline’s frustration got the better of her,” Helen explained. “She snuck into Lucille’s room and stole the books. She told her sister she would burn them unless Lucille initiated her. So we did. We took in a twelfth. And that, we all later believed, was our mistake.”

Helen turned and began walking again, her steps hurried, as if she wanted to get away from these memories. Eliza gripped Theresa’s hand, clinging to her as they rushed to catch up.

“What do you mean, your ‘mistake’?” Eliza asked.

“Caroline was never invited to join the coven. She forced her way in,” Helen told them. “We didn’t choose her, the way Lucille chose us. She wasn’t meant to be a witch . . . and she couldn’t handle the power.”

“And that’s why she died?” Theresa asked.

Helen nodded. “All Caroline wanted was to be like her sister, so she cast several spells. One to change her hair color, another to make her taller, another to make her smarter, a better musician, a finer artist. All just to be like Lucille. But it was too much. She didn’t know what she was doing. And she lost her mind.”

Helen paused as they reached the edge of the woods, looking out over the Billings campus. Every window was dark, yet the moon cast its solemn glow over the troop of girls moving swiftly toward Crenshaw.

“After she died, we tried to burn the books—and that was when we realized Caroline’s original threat was empty, though she had no idea at the time. When burning them didn’t work, we locked them in the chapel basement, then buried the map along with the locket Lucille had commissioned for herself as the leader of the coven,” Helen said. Her eyes flicked to the gold locket around Eliza’s neck. “The locket you now wear, miss.”

Eliza’s hand fluttered up to touch the gold trinket. Suddenly it felt heavier than it ever had before.

“If you thought the books were so very dangerous, why bury the locket and the map right there in the garden where anyone could find them?” Theresa asked. “Why make a map at all?”

Helen took a deep breath and blew it out audibly. “The map was Lucille’s idea. She said the books were too precious to be lost forever. She said that some future Billings girls would find them, and maybe they would know how to harness their power better than we did.” She cast an arch look at Theresa. “Really, I think she couldn’t let go. As for the burial spot, it wasn’t a garden then, and we were all too terrified to venture back into the woods at night to bury it there.”

Eliza looked at the dark windows of Crenshaw House. She wondered which room Caroline had lived in.

“Caroline’s last words were what convinced us that we never should have let her force her way in to the coven,” Helen said, gazing off into the distance.

Theresa gripped Eliza’s hand tightly. “Why?” Eliza asked. “What did she say?”

Helen’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “We were all on the roof. We were trying to stop her,” she said, her voice thick. “But she wouldn’t come down. She turned to look at us—her eyes were so unfocused, so blank. Then, right before she fell, she said, as clear as day . . . she said—”

Helen paused, touching her fingertips to her lips as they quivered.

“What? What did she say?” Theresa demanded.

Helen drew in a ragged breath. “She said, ‘I don’t belong.’”

Eliza walked into her room that night and fell directly into bed, glad that she was already wearing her nightgown, since she never would have been able to muster the energy to change. She curled into a ball facing the center of the room, but at the sight of Catherine’s empty bed, she flung herself around to face the wall.