—
She made a secondtalisman before leaving the house for her meeting with Christina Everett on Monday, stuffing pins intothe body of a hummingbird. Her fingers stung with the pinprick of the needles, and with something else. A faint buzzing filled her ears.
She called a cab and it dropped her off in front of a Georgian red brick house with an old-fashioned iron knocker on the door. Christina guided her into her home office. She was fiftyish, her blond hair was up in a ponytail, and she wore a sweatshirt with the logo of the college printed on it.
“Sorry to drag you over to my house, but with all the remodeling around campus, my office there is a mess. They’re redoing that wing of Elroy Center practically down to the studs.”
“Yeah. They’re tackling some of the dorms in the fall,” Minerva said. She sat down in front of a large desk that was almost buried under a thick cover of papers, books, and magazines. “Joyce House is being restored, and Thistlewood, too.”
“The library will be next, you know? Won’t that be a mess,” Christina said, throwing her hands in the air. “So Nell Quinn is your adviser?”
“Yes, and Brian Derleth has agreed to be on my thesis committee. But I figure I could use someone outside of the English department. I’m looking for someone who can help me with the witchcraft angle of the thesis. I think you were working with Thomas Murphy on something similar. You were his adviser, correct?”
“Ectoplasm,” Christina said. “Tom was looking at Spiritualism and art, like in the work of Mondrian, but focusing on American artists. He was investigating the work of an artist who attended Stoneridge.”
“Virginia Somerset,” Minerva said. The name was almost like a spell by itself, conjuring secrets.
“Yes. Were you a friend of Tom’s?”
“I was his resident director. But I thought he was looking at witchcraft in colonial America,” she said quickly, trying to sidestep questions about her relationship with Tom.
“I’m afraid we didn’t discuss that. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if he was changing the focus of his research. Tom was smart, but he tended to lose interest in things quickly. I was disappointedwhen he dropped out. Despite his eccentricities, I thought he had a knack for history.”
“What eccentricities?”
“The Ouija board and the tarot cards. He loved to do readings. He thought it brought him closer to the ideas of the people he was studying.”
The Ouija board. Suddenly she remembered that break-in at Joyce House right before Halloween and the hastily abandoned Ouija board and candles. She’d suspected the freshmen were responsible for that, but what if it had been Tom Murphy sneaking into the dorm to commune with the dead? Specifically, with Ginny.
“Now that I think about it, that book he left was on witchcraft,” Christina said. “Where did I put it?”
“He left a book with you?”
Christina swung her chair back behind the desk, scanning her shelves. “He forgot it after our last meeting. I was going to return it to the library, but I thought it might be useful. You see, I teach a seminar on religion in Puritan New England and I wanted to give this a look for the section on superstition—”
“AMS 513.”
“That’s correct.” Christina was moving aside books and papers. “Oh, here it is.”
Christina held out a copy ofBell, Book, and Candle: Witchcraft in the New World.Minerva opened the book, her fingers careful upon the leather cover. On the title page someone had drawn a symbol she recognized: the witch mark with the overlapping circles, and underneath it the words “Look beneath the floorboards.”
She flipped to the back of the book and found an ancient borrowing card with the dates on which the book had been checked out. Few people had asked forBell, Book, and Candle.It had lain forgotten in the stacks for many years. Until, there it was, 1997, it had been checked out. By Tom. But decades before, in 1934, under the columnIssued to,there was another name: V. Somerset.
Ginny had written that message on the front, in a book she’d borrowed, which had likely been returned to the library upon herdisappearance, and no one had read it, no one had realized its importance. But Minerva understood.
She clapped the book shut and looked at Christina, trying to seem calm and to steady the rapid beating of her heart.
“Could I borrow this?” she asked. “I’ve been looking for it and it was checked out.”
“Be sure to return it to the library before the beginning of the term. They’ll have my head if I keep forgetting the due date. So what exactly is your thesis about?”
Minerva mumbled about literature, horror, and legends of New England and managed to get through the meeting without a hitch. By the time she shook Christina’s hand, she’d promised to send a full bibliography and a more coherent thesis proposal before mid-September, and Christina in turn had said she’d seriously consider being on Minerva’s committee if she could furnish these items and fill out the proper paperwork. Then she let Minerva use her phone to call a cab, and she was heading back to campus with the book under her arm.
1908: 12
Dread seemed to blotout the sun. She must tell her family about Arturo’s awful misdeeds, yet she feared his wrath. She hid in her room, unsure of what to say and how to say it. In despair, she buried her face in her pillow and pretended to sleep.
Her mother came by at midday to check on her.
