Chapter Forty
FORTY
“IT’S JUST A DANCE! WE can dress up and—oh! I know the perfect group costume for us!” Daisy waves her hands wildly in the air as she speaks. Beside her Missy stares off toward the maze, her eyes flat.
I can’t bring myself to look at it with her.
Ever since the séance, Missy has been around more. We’ve only talked about it once, on a foggy morning outside the student center.
“God, you’re so annoying,” Missy had grumbled about me like she always does, but I wasn’t in the mood for her attitude.
“Shut up, Missy,” I’d hissed. “Why are you even hanging out with us if you hate us so much?”
“I never said I hate you,” she snapped. “I just said you’re annoying! Because you’re annoying.” She crossed her arms and buried her head against her knees.
“Then go bother your real friends,” I scoff. “No one asked you to be here.”
“Guys,” Sam warned. “Stop.”
“Ugh,” Missy groaned.
I rolled my eyes.
“I don’t have real friends,” she said softly.
Daisy eyed her suspiciously. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means my only real friend is dead, and the ones I thought were my friends don’t seem to care.
They think I should just get over it and move on already.
” Her bloodshot gaze met mine. “You might be the most obnoxious people I’ve ever met, but at least you don’t try to make me pretend to be okay.
You don’t want me to be something I’m not. ”
My heart gave an uncomfortable squeeze.
“Oh.”
Now we’re on our way across campus to meet up with Sam for lunch on the quad.
“Group costume?”
It’s been a little less than a week since I learned that I’m a Zodiac Witch. That I might even be part of some prophecy. And I haven’t been able to shake the paranoia eating me alive.
My thoughts are consumed by the lore Maureen unveiled. The knowledge that after the attack in the hedge maze, it’s reasonable to assume I’ve been marked by a hunter. That soon I might have to come face-to-face with them, again. That there are other creatures lurking in the dark woods.
I can’t stop wondering about Fiona. Did fruit grow in the place where her body lay bleeding? Or have I been wrong about her all along?
As we pass the dorm building, I notice something perplexing.
Malachi and Lucas tucked beneath the spindled shade of a towering oak. Their heads are huddled together as they speak. I watch them openly, too confused by what I’m seeing to hide it.
Whatever they’re talking about, it must be serious. The back of Malachi’s right hand meets his left palm, adding emphasis as he speaks. When he’s finished, Lucas nods before glancing over his shoulder.
They dap each other up, pulling into a quick embrace. Their faces are somber, but it’s not the same tension like hatred I’ve grown used to. It’s brotherhood, no matter how tenuous. If I squint, I might even say that Malachi has the world’s slightest grin on his face.
The sight of them together makes me uneasy, the feeling both nostalgic for our childhood yet disconcerting after all that’s changed between them.
Like a magnet, they both turn their heads in our direction. Lucas raises his hand, his dimples folding in on both sides. Beside him Malachi looks away like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Like he’s embarrassed to be seen like this.
And for some reason I feel embarrassed to have witnessed it. I shake my head, hiding my blush as I turn back to Daisy just in time to see her bouncing up and down as she says, “We can do Hocus Pocus! Harper, you, Missy, and I can be the Sanderson sisters, and Sam can be Thackery Binx!”
I almost choke on my water. Witches. We could be witches for Halloween.
“Hocus Pocus?” The irony of it is too good to pass up. “I fucking love Hocus Pocus!”
Daisy squeals.
“But I wasn’t planning on going to the dance,” I admit.
“WHAT?” Daisy stops in her tracks, grabbing on to Missy for support. “You have to go! Halloween is the fucking best! It’s the one school-sanctioned event that is actually, like, a lot of fun.” She turns to Missy and gives her arm a little shake. “Right, Missy? Tell her!”
Missy kisses her teeth. “Last year Robbie Macintosh threw up in the punch bowl and someone thought it was part of the décor.” She shrugs. “It was disgusting. But if you’re into that sort of thing…”
Daisy groans, pushing Missy off the sidewalk. “Shut up! If you have nothing helpful to say, don’t talk!”
“You asked!”
I have to do a double take when I see the barely visible lift in the corners of Missy’s mouth.
“That’s horrifying!” I deadpan. “Okay, fine, I’ll go.”
“I don’t do group costumes,” Missy cuts in.
Daisy stops walking, her hand curving her hip. “You’re doing the costume.”
Missy glares down at her. “No.”
They stand there, eyes locked, brows creased in frustration.
My gaze bounces between them, night and day, ice-blond hair and a black so deep, it shines purple in the light.
“Ugh, fine!” Missy grunts.
Daisy squeals, throwing her arms around Missy and me. “Okay, so Harper, you can be Winifred because she’s a boss-ass bitch, I’ll be Mary, and Missy, you should be Sarah! I wonder if Sam will want to be human or cat Binx.”
My project for history is dead. Now that I know about witches and that magic is real, writing about those women feels a lot like betrayal. Like I’d be desecrating some twisted, holy bond.
Still, admitting to Dr. Rogers that witches “never existed” in Earnest seems like accepting defeat. So I simply shot her a vague email about how there “wasn’t quite enough information to confirm or deny either way” and changed my topic to the Great Flood of 1916.
Besides, after everything I learned from Maureen, I’ve spent more time researching what she revealed than I have on my project, anyway.
Hunters hungry for our blood, syphons that steal powers, beasts that roam the Appalachian wood…
where does it end? How much of the world have I been ignorant to?
Unsurprisingly, the internet isn’t much help.
Everything I read seems like an approximation of the truth, but there are no firsthand accounts, no credible sightings, no Zodiac Witch forums or private social media groups.
Every now and then I revisit Fiona’s blog. Reread the handful of posts. Try to put myself in her shoes. Understand what was going through her mind.
I wonder if the coven she was planning to meet with downriver is the same one Maureen is going to introduce me to.
I add that to the note in my phone with all the questions I plan to ask her next time we meet.
At this point it’s close to overflowing.
We were supposed to get together this week, but she called me yesterday and canceled.
Said something about her gout acting up.
When she suggested next weekend, I almost said yes before I remembered the Halloween dance, so we’re planning for the one after that.
To be honest, I’d rather skip the dance to go see Maureen, but Daisy would be devastated, and I’ve been a crappy enough friend as it is.
Before we hung up, she promised she would reach out to the Asheville coven and set something up. She said we could meet with them together. I didn’t miss the layer of apprehension in her tone, though. Like there’s something she’s still not telling me.
So now I’m sitting in the back of Beantown, ten tabs deep into peer-reviewed articles about the recovery efforts of those trapped in the raging waters of the Swannanoa, when a shadow falls over my table.
My eyes travel up the looming form and are met with the same piercing hazel stare that unsettled me that first day in the cafeteria.
“Missy,” I say around my dry throat, reaching for my now-empty London fog.
“Harper.” She gives me an appraising look. “We need to talk.”
Internally I groan.
I haven’t meant to continue pulling away from everyone, but after going to Maureen’s house and being run off the road, I barely have enough energy to make sure I’m brushing my teeth every day.
The burst of fearless confidence I felt that night was short-lived.
Since then, each fake smile, each I’m fine, has taken something from me.
I know they’re worried. That they have been for a while.
And yet, I pull. I pull and pull and hope they remain tethered to me no matter how far from them I get.
I’m being unfair. I know that.
Missy slides into the bench across from me. “You’re freaking everybody out.”
I wince. “Thanks.”
She steeples her hands against the table. “You know, I’ve been wondering what your goal is.”
I just stare at her.
Her voice starts out light but quickly transforms into something much harsher. “You walk around here like some sort of poltergeist. Every day you seem less and less like yourself—or at least of the girl you were when you first got here. It’s starting to feel a little… familiar.”
She doesn’t have to say it. We both know what she means.
“You say that like depression is a choice.” Am I really depressed? Or is it something so much stranger than that? Grief. Not just for Gigi or for Kai. But for twelve witches, for my magical ancestors. I wrap my hands around my mug, using it as a prop to occupy my growing anxiety.
She tilts her head down, her eyes never leaving mine. “Are you? Depressed?”
I shrug. And it’s not quite a lie.
She leans back against the booth. “If you were in trouble… you know you could, like… If you needed something or someone to help you… or talk to…”
Her face is marred the same way mine is. Like Malachi’s, and even Daisy’s. Dry skin and sallow eyes, an anxious, vibrating energy.
What the hell is this school doing to us?
“You know what, Missy?” I say, leaning forward and pulling my lips into a facsimile of a smile. “I really appreciate that. But I promise I’m fine. Everyone can stop worrying about me.”
She frowns. “That’s what Fiona said, too.”
There’s something uneasy about the look in her eyes. Something I don’t quite recognize on her. When it hits me, I struggle against the lump in my throat.
Fear.
She tucks her hair behind her ears as she scoots out of the booth. “I’m going to be keeping an eye on you, Scott. Just in case.”
“You do that,” I say as I watch her turn and push through the door. Before she rounds the corner, she turns to look at me over her shoulder, tension blooming at the back of my neck when she meets my gaze.
A pit forms in my stomach as her words ring back to me like an omen. That’s what Fiona said, too.
When I finally drag myself out of the café, I’m met with a lilac sky and chilly October evening.
Four pairs of beady eyes trail me as I trudge past the hedge maze and toward my dorm.
Once or twice I check my surroundings, searching for the source of the sparks skimming over my back, but like always, there’s nothing but shadows.
When the sun has set and I finally crawl into bed, I slap my phone on the charger and commence my nightly doomscroll.
I click through Daisy’s story. A picture of me with a giant dead leaf in front of my face.
Her chipped nails holding a boba. A video of two Canada geese fighting over a bag of Takis.
Missy’s story only has one photo.
Her face squished next to Fiona’s. Fiona’s fingers pinching Missy’s cheeks into a fish face.
I hold the image down as I sit up, my heart hammering in my chest. I turn the brightness all the way up, the blue light straining my eyes painfully.
On Fiona’s wrist, an opal bracelet shines in iridescent beads against her brown skin.
I hop down from my bed and open the jewelry box I keep tucked in the bottom of my sock drawer. I push aside the letter from Gigi and a clump of tangled necklaces.
The bracelet I found at the guest cabin after homecoming.
Mine mine mine mine, Fiona’s ghost whispers to me as I rub the small stones between my fingers.