She’d schooled herself into dismissing stray thoughts about kisses, about him, fearful of where such wild imaginings might lead her. But she’d had those thoughts, and he knew it, and in turn he must have thought many times about her, desire seeping in between the words he spoke, nestled in the silences.
He lowered his gaze, almost shyly, as if wishing to curtain off his thoughts.
“It would ruin it, if it had to be that other way,” she continued. “I will fight you; I swear it. I’ll scream and kick and scratch your face. It’ll be terribly unpleasant. I propose something different.”
“Oh?”
“The farm won’t be sold and I will acquiesce.”
Alba stood up, abandoning the safety of the chair. She wasshivering. The room was made of ice and the nightgown provided no protection against the cold. She sat on the bed and reached out to him, pulling his face close to her own. He looked into her eyes, curious, measuring her boldness, and they sat like that for what seemed like a long time. He was mesmerized, she too.
Below, the clock in the sitting room chimed the hour.
“I don’t need to bargain with you,” he said, as if the sound had broken a spell, and caught her hand, his grip tight around her fingers.
“Then kill me now and eat my heart, and that is all you’ll ever have of me. A rotting piece of meat. You’ve toyed long enough with me. Accept my terms, or kill me like you killed the others, and the only pleasure you’ll ever find with me will be in the grave,” she swore.
He snarled and pushed her hand back, bending it away from her body, making her wrist ache. She didn’t yelp in distress, though it hurt, instead staring at him.
She went on looking at him, and he at her. His eyes were feverish and dark, mirroring her own.
“It need not be painful,” she said.
He grunted in irritation and released her. Before he could either coax or curse her, she kissed him, and he might have pulled away, but she set her hand behind his neck and held him in place. Perhaps he thought she’d been bluffing, for he seemed rather shocked. Nevertheless, he kissed her back with a quick, boiling eagerness. She turned her head sharply and looked away, evading him.
“You know my terms,” she said, and waited, her heart racing.
He idly ran a nail against the gold chain, flicking the pearl back and forth, like a cat that plays with its prey. Then his thumb brushed the hollow of her throat.
“Very well, then,” he whispered against her ear. “I’ve never been able to refuse you anything.”
She offered him her mouth.
1998: 12
It was dusk bythe time she arrived at Ledge House. None of her witch marks had been disturbed. She knew it, and she knew she must venture into Beatrice Tremblay’s old dorm that night. That pinching feeling in the back of her skull had returned but now seemed to radiate farther down, and she kept thinking about Ginny’s note.
She grabbed the thermos she’d filled earlier in the day and drank from it. For a while she stood in the middle of the library, looking at the shattered shadow boxes with their insect specimens. Butterflies and moths and a few bright beetles. On the walls, the birds hovered in midflight. She took another sip.
Afterward, she pulled the toolbox from under the sink and rummaged through it, finding a hammer and a chisel. She tossed them into her backpack along with her flashlight, a box cutter, and the keys to Joyce House.
Walking through Briar’s Commons did feel like walking through a witch’s woods that evening; the tree branches above her head seemed to meet and clasp one another and the path she followed was like a tendril of faded black ink, like in the illustration for a fairy tale. But her great-grandmother’s stories had been darker than most fairy tales, drenched in blood.
She moved at a steady pace, one hand clutching the strap of herbackpack, and listened intently for the sound of footsteps or a branch breaking. But if anyone was following her, it was a stealthy stalker.
A few minutes later she stood in front of Ginny and Betty’s old dorm. She looked up at the second floor and felt the electric tug she often experienced when gazing at it, especially at that one window. Before, she had thought it was merely her appreciation of the old house, but now she recognized it as something else: the faint tracery of magic.
Minerva unlocked the front door and stepped inside, flicking on a light switch. The house was oak paneled, its walls stained a dark brown that was almost black, its ceilings soaring high. This grande dame was past her prime—the rug that had once covered each of the steps on the staircase had been rolled away, its paintings in gilded frames had been packed into storage units, and it was now filled with shadows and dust. But Minerva could still spot the glamour and glitz of Joyce House as it must have been when wealthy socialites chatted in the foyer.
Once she reached the top of the stairs, she found another light switch and the hallway before her was illuminated. She looked at the numbers on each of the doors until she reached the correct one.
Number 11. Ginny and Beatrice’s old room.
She opened the door and stepped inside. The single bulb in the ceiling gave off an anemic light. No matter, she’d known it would be like this; with the house locked down for renovations, she was lucky that they had even left the lightbulbs in place.
She turned on her flashlight.
During her previous incursion into the room, on that night when she’d found the Ouija board and the candles, Minerva had been too busy talking to the security guard accompanying her to give the space a proper look. If she had been alone, perhaps she would have realized that this room was the same one she often stared at, her eye reflexively drawn to that particular window in Joyce House.
