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“I’m right behind you,” I told her, keeping an eye on the candle, which she held up in front of her. She started up the steps, but I paused at the bottom, glancing around the room one last time.
It’s just a room, I told myself. Just like every other room at Easton.
I lifted my foot and placed it on the first stair, and as I did I felt a light breeze against my face. I looked around. There were no openings in the stone wall. No windows anywhere, being that I was belowground. Shrugging it off, I kept walking, but at the third step, I felt it again. And by the fifth it was stronger. By the seventh it was stronger still, the wind right in my face, slowing my progress. By the tenth step, the flame of the candle in Noelle’s hands had died, and by the twelfth, I had to squint my eyes to see. When I got to the top, I slammed the door behind me, breathless.
“Since when is that staircase a wind tunnel?” I asked.
Noelle’s carefully brushed hair stuck out from behind her ears, and some of her bangs stood up straight on her forehead.
“Must be that window,” Noelle said, gesturing at the pane behind the desk. The top was completely bare, as if someone had broken it, removed all the shards, and never replaced it. My insides squirmed as I stared at the bending and swaying branches of the trees outside.
“I don’t remember that being broken before,” I said.
“Well, it is now,” she replied casually. “Come on. Let’s clean up and get back to Pemberly. We need to talk guest list for your party.”
“Okay.”
I tried to sound as excited as she did, but as we walked out I took one last trembling look at the window, half expecting to see Elizabeth Williams’s ghost reaching out to me. I closed the door firmly behind me and jogged to catch up with Noelle.
If I really wanted a life with no drama, maybe it was time I stopped walking around in the middle of the night looking for it.
“Billings will only live on in you, Reed. You’re the only one who can set things right.”
My breath was a white cloud in front of my face. Stars twinkled merrily through the tangle of branches overhead. I stood in the center of a small clearing in the Easton woods, wearing nothing but my Penn State T-shirt and mesh Easton Soccer shorts.
“Billings must live on, Reed. The book of spells is real.”
Someone was speaking, but no one was there. The voice sent a warm, familiar tingle down my spine, but not from fear. It was almost as if I recognized the delicate tones. Like I’d heard them somewhere before.
“It’s real, and I can show you proof.”
A sudden movement in the corner of my vision stopped my heart. A young girl, about my age, stepped out of the trees. It was as if she’d materialized out of nowhere, out of the ether, but she wasn’t a ghost. She looked solid and real and three-dimensional as she slowly, deliberately crossed the forest floor. She wore an old-fashioned dress with a blue plaid skirt and a darker blue wool jacket, the hood pulled up to cover her dark brown hair. Her eyes were green, kind of like my mother’s, and as she approached I realized she was almost my height, though far slimmer. I could have placed my hands around her tiny waist and I was sure my fingertips would have touched. She came within two feet of me, but I didn’t flinch. There was nothing threatening in her.
“You’re very beautiful,” she said, tilting her head to one side. Her lips moved, but her voice didn’t issue from her throat. It came from all around, as if the trees held hidden surround-sound speakers. “But it’s not the most striking thing about you.”
“What is?” I asked.
She smiled slowly. “Oh, I think you know. And if you don’t, you will soon enough.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I think you know that, too.”
She turned with a smirk and walked over to the edge of the clearing. Elizabeth Williams. It had to be. What other specter would my subconscious conjure up for me? Because clearly that’s what t
his was—a dream. Otherwise, how had I gotten here, to the center of the Easton woods? At the foot of an ancient oak tree, she crouched, her skirts billowing before they floated to rest on the ground. Behind her, at a slight distance, the spire of the Billings Chapel hovered above the topmost limbs of the bare trees, its face stark white against the night sky.
“Here,” she said, touching her suede-gloved fingertips to the dirt. It was untouched by the snow, canopied as it was by a web of thick branches. “Here is where we buried the books and promised never to speak of them again.” She looked up with a wry but sad smile. “Of course, promises are made to be broken.”
“Books?” I asked. “There was more than one?”
She nodded slowly, looking at the ground. She trailed her fingers reverently—almost lovingly—back and forth, as if she were remembering something or someone she cared for deeply.
“Yes. The others have long since gone missing. Scattered on the four winds to places unknown.” Then she looked me in the eye. “But the book of spells, the most vital of the books, that’s in safe hands now.”
I knelt down across from her. Although I could still see my breath and there were goose bumps visible on my skin, I didn’t feel the cold at all anymore. Nor did I feel hot. It was as if I were somewhere outside my body, and nothing that touched it mattered.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
