Chapter Twenty-One
TWENTY-ONE
THE DAYS AT BLACK MOUNTAIN Academy are enchanted with the ability to pass like molasses during class but like lightning the rest of the time.
At night I wander the halls of my dorm like a ghost, the creaking floors and freezing draft the only company for my insomnia.
I don’t acknowledge the darkening bags under my eyes or the cracks forming at the corners of my lips.
I ignore the ever-more present static, the buzzing, the unintelligible whispers in my head.
Sometimes I think I see something out of the corner of my eye.
A flash of white that disappears the second I turn my head.
Perhaps she is following me, that ghoul from the woods.
But if she is, I have no idea what she wants.
So I smile when I should smile and laugh when my friends laugh and never, not for a single second, stop thinking about my purpose here.
About Fiona and Gigi and the witches. About Malachi and Lucas and secrets, and how all this feels connected, yet I have no way of proving it.
In the afternoons I sit in the corner booth at Beantown, the campus café tucked into the side of the student center, a million tabs open on my laptop. But no amount of research is yielding anything worthwhile.
I read and reread my birth chart, I map out the moon phases for the next two years, and I reserve a time slot to use the observation deck on the roof of Maxwell, hoping to see some answers among the stars.
I fall down a rabbit hole of online communities of “witches,” which are mainly full of middle-aged white women who claim to have some vague “indigenous princess warrior” ancestry with crystal shopping addictions.
But really, I’m looking for Fiona.
She’s not on any of the usual sites, which is odd given, well, reality, so I scour the lists of followers for the cheerleaders and football team, and when that doesn’t work, I click over to the school’s Tumblr account which hasn’t been updated in several years.
I’m absently scrolling their following list, my vision going blurry from boredom and too much blue light, when something catches my eye.
A curious-sounding username with a default avatar.
Moonshine.n.magic is a faceless, seemingly anon blog with a deep purple background and stars that float down the screen like rain. The last post is from October of last year, right before Fiona went missing.
sometimes it’s like the stars are talking to me. i feel crazy ’cause it’s clear i’m the only one who can hear them. i’m paranoid, too, the longer i’m here. the bell tolls every hour, and every hour i nearly jump out of my skin. it’s hard to keep it all in, but i know it’s not safe to say anything.
they’re watching me.
i can feel their eyes like needles on my skin, stabbing until i’m all broken flesh and bloody.
the shadows, they follow me too.
i’ve never missed my mama, not even a little bit, but now i wonder if she felt this all like i do.
i went into town the other day and heard some rumblings of a coven downriver. i’m thinking i might try to make contact. prove to myself i’m not the only one like this.
prove that the voices in my head are real.
someone is calling for me. i just gotta figure out how to answer.
I scroll down, and there’s post after post of similar musings.
before mama left, she’d do something she called ’lachian magic.
she’d settle a bowl of water in a ring of herbs and berries and tap the sides.
she’d read futures in the ripples and reflections.
she’d brew up tonics and claim they would cure a cold, grind up poultices for our wounds, whisper incantations into charms and stuff them in our pockets…
but she was wrong. she wasn’t doing magic. at least not the kind of magic i feel tearing me apart.
My thoughts whir a thousand miles per second, my eyes scanning faster than my mind can process. Whoever this poster is, I can’t ignore the similarities between their story and my own. But it’s not until I find a post that causes my whole body to go numb that I’m certain.
my mama used to tell me stories about this lady called the Mother—
I slam the lid of my laptop closed, my breathing stilted and struggling as I take a shaking sip of my chai latte.
I’m discombobulated and anxious, and my calf is sore from the bounce, bounce, bouncing on my toes over and over again. There’s only one thing I know that’s guaranteed to slow my heart, to still my hand; there’s only one thing besides the occasional anxiety medication that can truly calm me down.
I whip out my kit. Pull my curls into a topknot, slide on my headphones, roll up my sleeves, angle my sketch pad at forty-five degrees. Line up my mechanical pencil; my HB graphite; kneaded eraser; Sharpie; and black, blue, and red pens.
Today SZA screams in my ears about “Good Days” as I tap the pencil against my lips.
I never know what I plan to draw until I do, until it crawls out of me and is given life on the page. Art for me is life sustaining, and I’ve been dying in its absence. Because class is cool and all, but it can’t replace the act of creating art for the sake of it. For the need of it.
When I finish, I glare down at the page.
A long, homespun skirt that brushes the forest floor.
Dirty apron caked in what looks like old blood.
Hands made of bone and ash. A tapered waist that widens into shoulders built from years of labor.
A face made of shadows. All around her the forest caves in.
It feeds on the grief she spills, the breadth of her fury the only balm for the decay that muddies the details, blurs the line between real and not, here and the other side.
I’m there again, in the woods. The memory of what I saw distorting or becoming clearer, I can’t decide. Only this time I’m not alone.
Shrewd eyes and an upturned nose, peeking through the trees with me.
I swear, it’s almost like I can hear her voice, though I have no reference for it.
So soft, I can’t quite make out the words.
Fiona is haunting me, and I don’t even know if she’s dead. I don’t know her at all. And yet…
A shadow casts against my table, obscuring my vision.
I slide my right headphone back and release a heavy sigh.
“Freaky,” Missy says with her nasally, high-pitched voice.
“Do you need something?” I ask, glancing up at her. Though I don’t know why I’m entertaining her when every interaction so far has been so painful. Maybe I’m looking for a fight. Maybe it would be a relief to let out my anger for once instead of shoving it down.
She tosses her icy hair over her shoulder and rolls her eyes. “No, I was just walking past, and you were, like, in a trance. It was weird. You’re being weird.”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think there’s something beneath the haughty curl of her lip and the annoyance on her face—something more akin to… concern?
“What is that a drawing of anyway?”
I flip the paper over and pin it down with my hands. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Fine,” she says, sucking her teeth before turning away.
Stop her.
I freeze. The voice, still so quiet, but clear enough to decipher.
“Actually! Could you, um, sit for a second? I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“Uh… oh… kay…?” she mumbles, sliding into the booth across from me.
I steeple my fingers beneath my chin. “So, um…”
The voice doesn’t come again. Instead it’s like images are being superimposed onto my thoughts. Missy in the dining hall talking about how Fiona didn’t run away. Missy with the flyers. Missy being the only one who seems to give a shit about the missing girl.
“I just, I wanted to ask you about Fiona.”
Her shoulders stiffen, any minute amount of candor on her face immediately shuttered.
I hold up my hands, palms out. “I know it’s probably wild of me to ask, but there’s something familiar about her. I’ve been wondering if maybe I knew her somehow…”
“You don’t know her,” Missy says harshly. “She’s not even from here.”
“Oh. Where was she from?”
Her gaze drifts out the window and toward the hedge maze that sits behind Biltmore. “Technically she is from out of state. South Carolina.”
“Technically?”
Her head snaps back as if she hadn’t noticed that she’d started talking out loud. “What’s it to you?” she sneers, her hand gripping the side of the table like she’s gearing up to bolt.
“I’m just, uh, doing a project on… um…”
“Don’t lie.”
I stare into her critical, hazel eyes, and she stares right back. We’re at an impasse. I don’t trust her, but I want to figure out what’s going on with me, and as a byproduct, what might have happened to Fiona. I’m not too proud to realize that I need her help.
“I think I might be able to help you find her.”
There’s a change in her posture at this. She sits a little straighter, her eyes narrowed as she regards me. I wait, unblinking, unbreathing.
She barks out a laugh before scooting out of the seat. “Fuck off, Harper,” she says, turning.
“I’m serious!” I shout at her back, shrinking a little when the people closest to us turn their heads in our direction.
She pauses, her shoulders rising before she faces me again.
“I know there’s something fucked going on at this school,” I say. “And I think it has to do with what happened to Fiona.”
She turns slowly before planting both hands on the table and leaning down until I can see the slim, golden ring around each of her pupils.
“Why do you care so much?”
She has a point. Why do I care about some girl I’ve never met? But I’ve also never met the witches from my dream. I don’t have to know them to know this is right. This is why I’m here. I can feel it even if I can’t explain it.
Besides, she hasn’t talked about the girl in past tense once. It pains me to think we may actually have something in common.
I take a deep breath. “I know what it feels like for someone to go missing and have no idea where they went, or why.” I close my eyes against the echo of my father’s scribbled words in my head. I’m sorry. But this is the only way to save her.
She twirls the ends of her hair around her finger while she considers me, her head cocked in thought. “This doesn’t make us friends.”
“Of course not. Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You’ll have to do what I say.”
I roll my eyes. “We’ll see.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Later, when I finally shove my stuff back into my bag and start making the trek to my dorm, I hum along to the soft chanting that plays in my head, and when I pass the fountain, two beady-eyed cardinals watch me until the doors shut at my back.