The Witch Haven

by Sasha Peyton Smith

  His statement fills me with both terror and relief, because Finn saw what I saw tonight, and he knows what I now know with bone-aching certainty.

  I can no longer stay at Haxahaven.

  Finn takes one look back at me as he walks down the street; his eyes grave. I nod, just once to communicate my understanding.

  Helen and I march on back to where the ambulance is parked outside the hotel. She takes my arm in hers and tugs me in close. What must look like a show of maternal affection to passersby is closer to a death grip. The hold of her arm in mine feels like a threat, like a reminder she controls me.

  “You’re hurting me,” I whisper through clenched teeth.

  “You failed tonight, Frances,” she whispers in return, her tone poisonous.

  Her response fills me with rage. “I suspect that was the point. Perhaps I would have succeeded if you’d bothered to teach us anything.”

  “We teach you how to stay safe.”

  “Yes, thank you. I feel so safe, Helen,” I say disdainfully. “Or should I say Gertrude?”

  “Gertrude is dead,” she replies flatly.

  For blocks we walk down the street arm in arm, weaving through other pedestrians out for a night in the theater district. Above us, electric lights advertising the Ziegfeld Follies twinkle.

  “Did you kill Gertrude, too?” I snap.

  “Typhoid did when it took her husband and son from her.” Helen looks up at the billboards, glassy-eyed and far away.

  My words stick in my throat for a moment, but the anger doesn’t wane no matter how tragic her past.

  “You put me in danger to prove a point,” I say. She and Mrs. Vykotsky have been so self-righteous about keeping us safe, but the minute they had a chance to use me for their own gain, they took it.

  “I apologize for the way things got out of hand this evening.” Her arm on mine is still too tight. I don’t believe her apology.

  “If you hurt any of my friends because of what happened tonight, I swear to God, I’ll burn that wretched place to the ground.” I don’t know if I mean it, but by the fear that flashes across Helen’s face at my threat, she does.

  “You can’t burn down the world for taking the things you love from you. I tried.”

  We’re back to the ambulance now, where it sits parked on a curb outside the hotel. People are pouring out of the main entrance, their drunken conversations filling the night with noise. The fundraiser must be over. They’re so happy, unaware that one of them is now dead.

  Helen opens the driver’s-side door and slides in.

  My hands hesitate on the handle of the door. I know what I have to do. I’ve known it since I saw my brother’s pocket watch in Oliver’s hands.

  I take a deep breath. I look up at the stars.

  And then I step into the crowd—and run.

  The city does what it has always done; it makes me invisible.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Like a river, I let the current of the crowd carry me away from the ambulance, my heart beating faster with each step.

  From behind me, I hear Helen shouting, enraged. “Frances!” she screams over and over again. “Frances!” My name is carried away by the sound of the crowd, floated off on the breeze by the jangling music spilling from theaters until it becomes just another noise.

  I pick up my footsteps until I’m running at a full sprint, and I don’t look back. I duck through alleys and dart around corners, dodging passersby who clutch their pearls and look at me with horror.

  It’s only when I’m doubled over—gasping for breath, sure Helen isn’t chasing me—that I allow myself to take stock of my surroundings. I need a plan, even if it’s a half-baked one.

  I’m in midtown, a good hour’s walk from Columbia. If I know anything about Oliver, he’s home safe in his bed at this hour. He was never the type to close down a party, raging past midnight.

  The subway is closed this time of night, but I can hail a petty cab. This close to the theater district it isn’t difficult. One stops in less than two minutes.

  I rip one of Maxine’s delicate bracelets off my wrist. “Columbia University, please. You’ll take this for payment?”

  The driver eyes go wide at the sight of it. “Yes, ma’am.” He nods. “No escort this evening?”

  “He went home ill,” I lie.

  He huffs in acknowledgement and drives on. He’s not chatty. I’m grateful for it.

  All the ride, my brain buzzes with possibilities. If it is the witches of Haxahaven killing the boys on Sheepshead Bay, I need to know who was involved. Is it just Helen? Certainly Mrs. Vykotsky is part of it too. But who else? Surely Ann or Florence. But what about Maxine? She spends so much time alone with Helen, out doing god knows what.

  It’s too horrible a thought to dwell on.

  I need more than ever to speak to my brother, to learn the truth. Only then can I make things right.

  By the time we arrive uptown, every one of my cuticles is bloody. My jaw aches from being clenched. One step at a time. I hear William’s voice in my head.

  The jingling reins slow the horse to a stop. The driver sees me off with a polite nod and a “be careful, dear.”

  I feel a little sorry I have zero intention of heeding his fatherly advice.

  It’s a navy-blue dark outside, the moon covered by gray clouds. This part of the city feels dead compared to the theater district. The quiet is heavy. I found comfort in the crowds of midtown. The empty, wide boulevards uptown make me feel exposed, like I have nowhere to hide.

  The imposing, ivy-covered buildings of Columbia University might as well whisper, Frances Hallowell, this is not a place for girls like you.

  I’ve been here once before, back when William was alive, to deliver a Christmas present to Oliver. William had saved for weeks to buy his best friend a book of sports statistics. It seemed like a boring gift to me, but Oliver clutched it to his chest with delight upon opening it.

  I loved that day. It was the first time I’d seen Oliver in months, and I’d been thrilled my brother had asked me to come along. I remember my boots crunching down this same brick path. It was covered in snow then, and the sky was a clear, bright blue. Five months later my brother would be dead. And now, eleven months later, his sister is back to rob the place.

  Oliver’s dormitory is an intimidating fifteen-story brick building near Morningside Park. This late, the paths winding through the campus are empty, but inside the building, windows glow with students studying after dinner and faculty advisors waiting to catch the honorable young men of Columbia University breaking the rules.

  I circle the building once to find the diamond-paned first-floor window I’m nearly positive belongs to Oliver. I remember the slightly cracked glass in the left corner from when my brother and I visited. I found it odd that such a nice university would let cracks go unfixed.

  I press my face to the cold glass and cup my hands around my eyes to see better. The glass is foggy with time and frost, so the image is warped, like trying to look through the bottom of a pop bottle.

  The room is dark, just a single low lantern flickering. I hear no noise, see no movement. I pray he is asleep.

  I steel myself. “Briseadh,” I whisper to the window. The lock obeys my order and unlatches with a thunk.

  As slow as I’m able, I pry the window open. It squeaks terribly. Curse this old school and its rusty window hinges.

  Nothing stirs from inside, so I press on. What will I do if he isn’t home? Hide and wait?

  And what will I do if he is home? Greet him like there’s nothing unusual about climbing in his window late at night?

  I have no time left to contemplate. The window is open. I hike my heavy, beaded skirts around my knees, and climb inside.

  The room is small, dancing in shadows cast by the single lantern. And sitting up in bed, wearing a nightshirt, holding a book, is a very startled-looking Oliver Callahan.

  “Hello,” he greets me, wide-eyed, like he doesn’t know what el
se to say. But a sliver of amusement cracks his face—watching me in all my fancy-dressed glory sneak into a boy’s dormitory at such a late hour. “Aren’t you full of surprises this evening?”

  “Hello,” I reply, like any part of this is normal.

  We stare at each other for a moment. I’m calmer than I thought I’d be.

  Oliver opens his mouth, then closes it. He opens it again. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  I picture another life in which I’m an ordinary girl sneaking into his dormitory simply because I want to spend more time with him. We’d arrange this secret meeting with passed notes and stolen moments. Perhaps if my brother had lived, Oliver and I could have grown together naturally, like I’d always wanted. I can almost picture it, like the echo of a memory, a different version of Frances and a different version of Oliver. Both a little less broken, embracing in this same room.

  I snap back to reality. “I wanted to see you.” It’s mostly the truth. His face softens, but I can tell he’s unsettled by my sudden appearance.

  “I don’t often have pretty girls crawling through my window.” Pretty.

  “Not often?” I reply. “But it has happened a nonzero amount of times?”

  Oliver furrows his brow and laughs a little, like he’s baffled by this entire conversation. I don’t blame him. “Is that what you came here to talk about, Frances?”

  I sink down into the wooden chair at his desk. Like everything in this room, it’s tidy. The pencils are lined up in an even row, his papers in a stack. His blazer hangs unwrinkled on the back of the chair. But for all the room’s cleanliness, it isn’t cold. There’s a threadbare red quilt on the bed, and a painting of a sunlit landscape hung above the door. The whole place is paneled in oak. His room is small and soft. It smells too much like him, feels too much like him.

  “No, that’s not why I came.”

  “Are you in trouble?” The concern on his face is genuine. It hurts with an acuity so fierce it nearly knocks the wind out of me—the realization that he’s trying to take care of me.

  “No.”

  He knits his brows together and snaps his book shut. “You look like you’re in trouble.”

  “I’m not.” It comes out sounding petulant.

  He pulls himself out from under the blankets and sits on the edge of his bed, so close our knees nearly touch.

  Oliver sighs. “I cannot let you go like I let William go. Let me help you, Frances.”

  It’s uncomfortable, this fizzy, soft nervousness that comes with looking at his face, so I choose to feel anger instead. I poke at the familiar rage, and it rises as I think of all my unanswered letters in the months after William’s death, all the days I spent alone at the police station. They would have taken Oliver more seriously. Perhaps they would have solved the murder months ago, saved the other boys from the same fate. The world listens to boys like Oliver Callahan. “You abandoned me,” I reply.

  His fine features crumble like he might cry. “I’m sorry.” He breathes as if the words have been trapped in his throat for the six months William has been gone. “It hurt, Frances. It hurt to look at you. It hurt to think about. I cared so much, and I couldn’t take it. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.” His dark admission hangs in the room for a moment.

  But now is not the time to make amends. “I don’t need your apologies.”

  I hate the way he’s looking at me like a thing that needs saving. And I hate that some small childish part of me craves his protection.

  “I understand nothing I say will ever be enough to express my deep regret.” He pauses and sighs, like the weight of the world rests on his shoulders. “Will was always the one who was good with words. I never seem to be able to find quite the right ones.”

  I didn’t think Oliver Callahan had the ability to break my heart anymore, but here it is, breaking.

  It was one thing to have Maxine and Lena and Finn help me with the quest for the Resurrection, but it’s another to be here with someone who misses William as much as I do.

  Grief is lonely.

  I lean forward; our knees brush, just barely. “I miss him too.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever feel better.” Oliver’s green eyes well with tears, and it cracks through the facade of my anger. It’s easy to forget why I came here tonight at all. My only thought is that I’d do anything to keep him from crying.

  “I think we’ll feel differently one day. Perhaps not better, but different.”

  “I thought we’d grow old together.” He sighs. “Be old men sitting on a balcony, feeding pigeons.”

  I smile at the image. “I think none of us get the future we imagine for ourselves. How strange it is that life always turns out to be a different thing entirely from the one you pictured.”

  What would it be like to embrace him? Would it make him look a little less shattered? Could I press the pieces of his broken heart back together?

  “Are you ever going to tell me what’s going on?” he asks.

  I know he’s not asking about me breaking in; he’s not even asking about the tuberculosis. He’s asking about what happened in that basement. He’s not going to let this go. Which is fair. I probably wouldn’t either.

  “Frances, please.” It’s more an exhale than my name, like it’s a word that always exists in his lungs.

  I want to tell him so badly, but that’s not why I’m here. “I need something.”

  His answer is immediate. “Anything.”

  “I need my brother’s watch.”

  He looks confused. “Will’s watch?”

  I hope he gives it willingly. The thought of using magic on Oliver makes me sick, but I’ll do it if I have to. “Yes. I can’t explain, but it’s urgent.”

  Oliver worries his lower lip. The gears in his brain whir behind his eyes. He’s thinking hard. After a long moment he rises. “All right.”

  He pulls open the top drawer of the table next to his bed. There sits my brother’s watch, carefully placed.

  Oliver presses it in my hand. “I’ll ask only once more: please let me help you with whatever is going on.” His eyes are dark and syrupy, Coca-Cola on a hot summer day a lifetime ago.

  “I wish it were that simple.” I wrap my fingers around the smooth, cool watch. It’s heavy in my hand. I’m reminded of the night William went missing, when I woke up the next morning to his unslept-in bed and his pocket watch on the kitchen table. It wasn’t like him to go somewhere without it. I left for work, annoyed at him for being so careless with his things. When I came home and the watch still hadn’t been moved, my annoyance turned into full-blown panic.

  It took them three days to find his body.

  I rise and walk to the window, still cracked open, leaking cool air into the cozy room.

  Oliver looks startled. “You’re not staying?”

  I’m confused. “Why would I stay?”

  “I just thought after seeing you tonight, perhaps you’d come for more than the watch, that you’d wanted to see me, too.…”

  The feeling I’ve tried so hard to tamp down swells in my chest. “Thank you for the watch.”

  He gathers the courage to look me in the eye. “Remember when I said I used to picture Will and me growing old together, feeding pigeons on a balcony?”

  “Yes?”

  His gaze bores into mine, resurrecting dead butterflies. “I’d picture you, too. In my future, I mean.”

  My cheeks burn red. How different would my life be now if he’d looked at me like this a year ago? How would sixteen-year-old Frances have reacted to getting the thing she wanted most, the thing she only let herself imagine late at night?

  But tonight is not a night to dwell on feelings; I still have so much to do. “Thank you for the watch.”

  I place a leg on the windowsill and turn to say goodbye. I find Oliver, hand outstretched, staring at me like he has so much left to say. I accept his hand, warm and soft, and climb through the window. His fingers linger on mine just a moment too long.
>
  “Good night, Frances.”

  * * *

  I hail a petty cab two blocks away. “Forest Park, Queens,” I greet the driver.

  “That’s a long way,” he replies. I rip the borrowed sapphire necklace from my neck and pass it through the barrier. I hesitate, giving away Maxine’s jewels like this, her gifts. But, remembering the way she clasped the necklace onto my neck—They are yours, she whispered. Do with them what you wish—allows me to extend my hand out farther. “Will this do?”

  “Lady, I’d take you to California for this,” he replies and flicks the reins. I jerk back against the seat as the horses begin to trot.

  The watch in my hand gives me a renewed sense of determination.

  The ride back to school is longer in a carriage than an ambulance. I’d fall asleep if my nerves weren’t so rattled. Instead, I count down the objects the entirety of the ride. The watch, the dagger, the mirror, the graveyard dust, the book.

  I have the watch. The book is next. It will be easier to sneak into Haxahaven while it is still dark than wait until morning.

  Soon this will all be finished.

  After nearly an hour, the driver drops me on the far edge of the school wall. The street is abandoned. I hear nothing except the rustle of trees and the swishing of beads on my dress.

  I round the corner, preparing to unlock the gate when a figure moving in the corner of my eye makes me jump.

  “Calm down, it’s just me.” Finn’s Irish brogue cuts through the darkness. His bow tie is slung untied around his neck, his tuxedo shirt unbuttoned two buttons, exposing his collarbones. He looks as exhausted as I feel. “I thought you’d be inside. Where are you coming from?”

  I hold up the pocket watch. “Getting this. One of the last items we need for the spell.”

  If he recognizes the watch as the same one Oliver had at the fundraiser, he doesn’t let on. I don’t know why I don’t want to tell him I was in Oliver’s dormitory. It feels like a betrayal, somehow.