Chapter Twenty-Four
TWENTY-FOUR
I LEAVE THE CAFé IN a daze, a light drizzle dampening my clothes on my walk to the library.
We part ways with a fragile unspoken truce and tentative plans to commit the heist over the weekend (after the trig test we’re both pretty sure is going to tank our midsemester grades).
It’s Wednesday, and the proposal for my history project is due on Monday. Lately I’m finding it increasingly difficult to care about my classes, except for art. It’s so unlike me.
But these days I feel like a cheap imitation, like a doppelganger, like a shadow of who I used to be back when Gigi was still alive, when Earnest felt more like a home than a calling.
The very first dredges of autumn have arrived to the mountainside, and a cool breeze gives way to gooseflesh on my arms. I’m halfway past Biltmore when someone pulls up beside me.
Rain-dampened earth and just the slightest hint of smoke.
My steps slow to a crawl.
“What do you want?”
“It’s starting to really cool down, huh? It’s a little early in the season. Not that you’d know though, since you’re usually long gone by now.”
I refuse to look at him and instead attempt to ignore the sting of Malachi’s eyes scraping down the side of my face like a trail of fire ants.
“Are you really talking to me about the weather right now?”
We haven’t spoken to each other since that nonconversation with Alastair and Lucas outside the library. It’s hard to believe that was only a few weeks ago.
Even though we don’t speak, he’s seemingly always around. The burn of his gaze ever present.
He huffs out a quiet laugh, and it startles me so much, I nearly trip over my own feet. Embarrassment warms my cheeks, but for some reason he doesn’t comment on it.
“Odds you fail the trig test next week?” he asks without context, and this time I stop walking for real and peer up at him cautiously.
He stares back at me, his face completely neutral except for his eyes which shine with a nostalgia so severe, it feels like it steals something important from me. Some tiny bit of my hardened resolve.
“Um… like, one in four,” I say, cringing.
He nods solemnly. “You never were that good at math.”
“Hey!” I laugh, slapping him on the arm. “Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s nice to say.”
His lips pull to the side, though it’s not quite a smile as he turns and resumes walking. I fall into step with him easily.
“Okay,” I start, picking up the rhythm of the past. “Odds you ever tell me what’s up with all those new tattoos?” I glance at his face, waiting to see irritation flickering across his features, but it doesn’t come. Instead, his cheeks pinken, and he turns away to hide it.
“One in a million,” he murmurs, his hands folding behind his back.
“One in a million? Really?”
We lapse into an uncomfortable silence for a few steps, and the longer we go without talking, the quicker my heart is beating until he’s looking at me curiously like he can somehow feel it, the way my body reacts to being so close to him.
“Odds you’ll tell me what you’re thinking about right now?” he asks, his voice thick.
I shouldn’t entertain him. I shouldn’t want to tell him everything I’ve been biting back for months now. I shouldn’t let him trick me into giving him even more fodder with which to torture me.
And yet, what Lucas said about the accident presses a heavy hand against my chest.
He blames himself.
“One in twenty-five…,” I whisper, and he nods.
“Ready?” he asks, and we count together. “One, two, three—”
He says, “fifteen,” at the same time I say, “thirteen.”
“Damn,” he laughs, and I bite my lip to keep myself from smiling.
It’s not at all like old times, bored and overheated from the summer sun, dirt-caked fingernails and knees skinned and knobby, our games of “What Are the Odds” growing increasingly delirious until one of us—usually Lucas—ended up in a tree somewhere, trying to hop from branch to branch like Katniss Everdeen.
I pick up the pace, heart working a little harder as I reach for my water bottle in the hopes that it will satiate the burning in my belly.
I’m not sure what his goal is—reminding me of the past, trying to form some kind of truce with me, maybe—but it’s not comforting, it’s concerning, and it happens all at once, the way my heart slams shut to keep him out.
“Well, anyway, I’ve got to…” I gesture to the library as I start to climb the steps.
“Oh yeah, of course,” he says, hand running through the back of his scarlet hair. “Um… see you around.”
“See ya.”
I shake my head as I watch him walk away.
What the hell was that about?
He crosses over the quad with his hands shoved deep into his pockets. I’m turning around when I notice the headmaster cutting him off at the edge of Biltmore.
The change in Malachi’s body language is immediate. His shoulders stiffen and his fists clench at his sides. I don’t realize I’m still staring until he turns and glances at me like he can feel me watching him just as much as I can feel when he’s watching me.
“Oop!” I startle and turn, rushing through the heavy library doors.
Once inside I head straight for the spiral staircase leading to the basement.
There’s something seriously wrong with that family. I knew that Malachi hated his parents, his violent dad and his do-nothing mother, but he loved Lexie more than anything else, and he loved Lucas, and I thought he might have loved Alastair, too. But now I’m not so sure.
In the back corner of the large room I find what I’m looking for.
The mahogany desk stands—or leans, really—against the wall, an ancient monitor purring loudly in the quiet.
A single yellowing lamp emits an ominous glow against the dark.
Beside the computer is the microfiche that Lucas showed me the last time we were here.
I flop down in the seat and press the space bar on the keyboard, waiting for the monitor to wake.
Somewhere in the back of the room a cascade of thumps punctures the quiet like an avalanche of books.
My fingers tighten on the mouse, but I close my eyes and breathe.
The ensuing silence is only broken by the whir of the computer’s motor kicking on.
The welcome screen casts me in a soft teal light.
History: A Comparative Study of US Values and the Impact on Local Government.
The project assigned by Dr. Rogers is so broad and generally uninteresting that I’ve decided to use it to my advantage.
As far as I know, Gigi’s side of the family has lived in Earnest, North Carolina for as far back as we can remember.
And if my dream was really a sign, and Daisy’s claims about the Lee Valley Witches are true, then it’s safe to assume that maybe I can find answers for myself and complete a halfway decent project.
I type my searches into the database.
Witches in Earnest, North Carolina. Nothing.
Witch coven in Western North Carolina. Nothing.
Witches thrown from mountainside in Earnest, North Carolina. Nothing.
Maybe it’s all just a rumor. With each search ending in an error message, I’m beginning to feel discouraged. If this project doesn’t lead me to the truth, I might never find it.
I have nowhere else to turn. No one to ask.
I exit the database and move my search to the microfiche.
I know from the photos hanging in the administration building that the school was opened in the late twenties, so on a whim I start a decade before, just to cover my bases. Scrolling through many newspapers and clippings, I breeze past several years’ worth of ancient articles.
Doubt settles like lead in my belly. As each page passes without mention of a coven, or witches, or anything more interesting than tobacco, weather, and the occasional petty crime, I begin to seriously question why I’m here.
But that doesn’t feel right. I know what I saw in my dream. I know what I feel when I’m in Earnest. What I’ve always felt. I know somewhere deep inside me that there is more to all this.
I’ve noticed my power builds faster now, crests the tips of my fingers so quickly that I’ve started to become afraid of touching people. I’m scared that if I don’t figure out what’s going on, I’m going to hurt someone besides Sam.
I worry that I’ll accidentally self-immolate before all is said and done.
Still, sixteen years in my mother’s house—where magic is nothing more than the delusions of crazy people—taunts me.
In the middle of the night, in the halls of my dorm, I sometimes catch an unsettling, haunting wail floating from one of the rooms, and the whispers I’ve been hearing are growing in frequency and volume.
Add that to the pale bone-fingers of the ghost woman clawing around every corner, or the shadows slithering like sentient beings…
and I sometimes wonder if I’m losing it.
Has Gigi’s death sent me over the edge? If nothing comes of this, if there is no coven, if there is nowhere else to turn, if everything I believe to be real isn’t, then I will ask for help.
I can’t keep feeling this way—so out of control—because I fear there’s only one end to this.
With a cryptic note and nothing more than a handful of memories.
If I go, will I find my father there?
Refocusing my blurry eyes, I continue to scroll. When the mouse clicks through to the next set of articles, my brain only processes a few words before my head is swimming.
My hands tremble as I zoom in. There, in small print at the bottom of the page:
LOCAL COLORED-WOMEN’S CULT ACCUSED OF ACTS AGAINST GOD
Well, I guess this explains why the word “witches” wasn’t getting me any results.
Colored-Women’s Cult? Acts Against God? I check the date—1926. Well before my grandmother was even born.
There is so much involved in being a Black woman in this country, least of all carrying the burden of our trauma.
Shoving it deep down, even when it feels impossible.
For so long we have been nothing more than objects in the eyes of the people who run this country, even though we built it with our bare hands.
We raised the children who would grow to become the men who keep their boots on our necks, and the women who hide behind them.
That’s an enduring pain. It’s not something we can erase. It embeds in us. In our DNA. It burdens our daughters. It feeds the seeds of us as we grow and imbues us with a knowing. I don’t need to read more than the title to know.
After reports of mysterious happenings around Earnest, North Carolina, a number of colored women have been questioned and will potentially face charges in relation to what some are referring to as “Acts Against God.”
Members of the community have reported the women, accusing them of things such as demonic possession and unusual forces of power.
A source told us their family has been tracking this group for over a decade, noting atypical weather patterns and a curious number of unsolved white deaths.
Coincidentally our sources tell us that one woman is being investigated for murder.
On Tuesday some took to the yard of the Beaumont Clark School in protest of the colored presence in Earnest. The Beaumont Clark School is the only colored school west of the Triad.
A stronghold in the negro community, the school began as a sort of church and still holds these mysterious, female-centric services every Sunday.
These accusations come after years of tension between the colored folk and the Biltmore family, who purchased the surrounding land and wish to move the school at no cost.
Sheriff Bob Miller of Buncombe County has stated that they’re “investigating the situation closely and will protect the local community at all costs.”
I reread the article. And then I read it again.
And again. Is it possible that this is the spark that ignited the legend that still stalks the halls of this school?
Is it possible that these “unusual forces of power” and “acts against God” were something more akin to magic?
To static? Did they have the same thrumming in their veins that I feel in mine?
Or is the article lying? Was this just an excuse to round up Black women? Where does the truth and the history I know diverge?
If the legend is true, then this wasn’t just some coven of witches, it was a group of Black women who were being accused of the impossible. Witches? Or women who didn’t aspire to humble themselves at the foot of the white man?
A steady ache forms behind my eyes. The fear and pain that these women must have felt. The isolation they must have fought against, wanting nothing more than to be free and safe in a community that clearly did not want them to exist.
The allegations in the article could very well be false, though I can’t help but think back to Dawson’s, to the cafeteria, to the woods, to Willow Estate, to the whispers that have infiltrated my mind, to my dream and the blazing fire, the chanting in the face of men on a witch hunt.
For what feels like the millionth time, I’ve sought out answers only to be filled with an endless sea of questions.
Lifting my phone, I snap a picture of the article before searching for more information.
Five pages later, twelve brown women of varying shades, black sacks over their heads, hang from trees illuminated by the light of an inferno, Beaumont Clark burning behind them, executed without trial.
And on each sack, in stark white:
A symbol.
Exactly like the one hanging around my neck.