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“It’s a curse!” Miss Lillian shuffled over to Miss Addie’s carved vanity. She opened the doors and removed a small jewelry box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Miss Lillian opened it. There was nothing inside. “This is where Addie kept it all, but it’s gone. It was the first thing I checked.”
“Kept what? What’s gone?”
“His finger. His hair. The binding,” Miss Lillian whispered urgently.
Theta wanted to scream. Miss Addie was slowly dying, and her sister was talking in riddles.
“Sorry, Miss Lillian, but I’m not on the trolley,” Theta said.
“Elijah.”
Elijah had been Miss Addie’s great love, Theta knew—killed during the Civil War
, before they’d had the chance to marry. Even at sixteen, Addie had a strong connection to the world of spirits. She knew there was a trickster spirit who could give her what she wanted, and lost in grief for her dead lover, she went into the woods to bargain with the man in the stovepipe hat. He’d promised that she could have Elijah back if she pledged her loyalty to him. Foolishly, Addie agreed. One moonlit night, Elijah returned, just as the man in the hat had promised, but he was not the Elijah she remembered—young, beautiful, fair-haired, and smiling. He was the Elijah of the dead, with the rot of the grave upon him, and now they were bound for eternity by Addie’s promise and the man in the hat’s terrible trickery.
“He makes cruel bargains, you know,” Miss Lillian said. “Addie was horrified by what she had done. Elijah would never stop coming for her now, she knew, unless she found a way to stop him. At midnight, she dug into his grave, snipped the fourth finger of his left hand, and cut a lock of hair. Then she performed the binding spell, placing it all inside this box for safekeeping. But the man in the hat tricked her again. He got to her in her sleep, she told me. He whispered in her ear to empty the box, to ruin the binding spell. She was left with no protection from Elijah.”
“I saw him,” Theta said. “That time in the basement.” She shuddered at the memory of the rotting ghoul coming after them. There was no stopping him. Just like Roy.
Miss Lillian stroked her sister’s hair. “He wants to punish her. To rob her of strength.”
“Why?”
“She defied him! He doesn’t like that. But I suspect that he wants to keep her from you. So that she can’t protect you. Can’t teach you. She’s trapped like this. There’s no telling what he’s doing to her.” Miss Lillian’s eyes moistened again. “I’ll do what I can to keep her alive. I have my ways. But I can’t hold it off forever. And once she’s gone, there’s no hope. He will have her for eternity.”
Theta wasn’t about to let that happen. But how could she free Addie in time? “What can I do?”
Miss Lillian left her sister’s bedside and returned after a moment, a slim, well-worn leather book in her hand. “Her diary. Her spells. Go on, take it. She’d want you to have it.”
Theta opened it. It was inscribed, To our Adelaide with love, Mama and Papa. Christmas 1860. The pages crackled as Theta turned them. Miss Addie’s elegant cursive filled each one.
“All she knows of the King of Crows is in that little book. I hope that it can be of help to you,” Miss Lillian said. “Please. Please, bring her home, Theta.”
ADDIE
Adelaide Proctor’s body lay perfectly still, but her feverish mind dreamed of a dew-kissed meadow. Sweet clover as far as the eye could see. And daisies—her favorite. What a glorious morning it was! The sun pushing up fine and warm. The day would burn into a perfect summer beauty. Addie gathered marigolds in her arms, singing “Gentle Annie” as she did:
Thou will come no more, gentle Annie
Like a flower thy spirit did depart;
Thou are gone, alas! like the many
That have bloomed in the summer of my heart.
She stooped to twist a flower from its stalk and add it to her pile. When she raised her head, she was pleasantly surprised to see her lover, Elijah, standing at the edge of the field. The bright sun burnished the top of his blond head to a high gleam. Addie waved and called to him. He did not return the wave but began walking toward her. How she’d missed him! He’d been somewhere.… Where was it? Had he traveled to see his cousins in Charlottesville? She couldn’t remember, but it seemed he’d been gone for ages. Oh, she was impatient for him to reach her, and so she hurried her steps to meet him, thinking of the evening ahead. They might take her pa’s wagon into town. Lillian would have to come, of course. Their mother would insist on a chaperone. No matter. She and Elijah would find a way to steal secret kisses. She loved the press of his lips against hers, a joining of souls. They’d be married soon enough. Yes, he’d asked her to marry him—she remembered now! But they had to wait. Why was that?
A cannon fired, far off. The ground shook a little. Plumes of smoke rose from the distant woods. But never mind that now, for look! Elijah was getting closer. His skin shone clean as a new nickel. He was almost too bright to bear, like an angel fallen to earth. It felt like forever since they’d kissed behind the barn and Elijah had promised they would set up house on a farm down the road from her parents in a cabin he’d built with his brothers.
Addie’s steps slowed. Her brothers. Something about her brothers. The sun was a fixed dot in the sky. Again the unseen cannon whistled, and there was a great thumping wheeze, like a steam-powered thresher getting too hot.
Elijah. Yes, Elijah. Go to him.
No, wait. Her brothers. Her brothers were… dead. Some awful fever, wasn’t it? A buzzing whine like bees. The machine grew louder, screamed. Where was that hideous sound coming from? She sang over it:
We have roamed and loved mid the bowers
When thy downy cheeks were in their bloom…
