A Lesson in Vengeance

by Victoria Lee

Quinn arches a brow. “Ellis was alone for four weeks. It took three weeks for the snow to melt, but the power company was stretched so thin with all the outages that they didn’t get around to fixing our grandmother’s house that whole time.”

“They came back all right,” Quinn says grimly. “They came back early, in fact. But Ellis had already run out of food. Our moms weren’t supposed to return for another three weeks. Ellis didn’t have anything to eat….She ended up strangling her pet rabbit and eating him. Raw. You have to understand—she was desperate….She didn’t have a choice.”

oh my gods...

Our eyes meet across the room. I feel like I’m seeing Ellis Haley for the first time, turning over memories like fresh stones: When I told Ellis about Alex, she never said it wasn’t my fault. She’d said, You didn’t have malevolent intent. There was a difference, which Ellis—Ellis the writer, Ellis alone in the dead of winter—understood better than anyone.

“Don’t worry,” Ellis says, pushing herself to standing. “It’s nothing sinister. Quinn keeps this rifle in their car for self-protection—it’s a southern thing.” A southern thing. My throat is still so dry I have to swallow against it several times before I’m even able to speak again. “I’m not asking why Quinn has it. I’m asking why you have it.”

“The body was found on an altar. None of the accounts dispute that fact.” Ellis shrugs. “Sure. But that doesn’t mean the magic was real. Just that Margery wanted to make it look like it was real.”

Maybe she’s right. She’s been right about enough so far. So much of this has been in my head, the product of fear and some kind of chemical imbalance in my brain. I’m not sure I want to see the Dalloway witches as human, though. I want them to be like me. But when Ellis starts off toward the woods, I follow.

The way Ellis’s rabbit might have squealed when Ellis wrung its neck. I glance sidelong at her, quick and surreptitious, but if she is thinking about that winter it doesn’t show on her face.

I know she died. But… What if she hadn’t? What if she’d survived—half-drowned in the cold air, her bones shattered. Could she have dragged herself out of the water and away from the rocks, into the woods, still drunk? Would she have wandered through the dark, living off mushrooms and tree bark? Would she have stayed there, watching me, waiting for the chance at revenge?

Ellis presses her bared hand to my sternum, right above my heart. I wonder if she can feel it beating against her palm—too fast now. “You’re brave, Felicity,” she says. “You’re the bravest person I know.” And then she kisses me.

“I want you, too,” I say. Ellis’s smirk widens. This time when she kisses me, it’s harder, more desperate. I’m desperate, too, shucking off her jacket and waistcoat, Ellis’s fingers fumbling over the buttons on my shirt in turn.

I coil in closer, and she smiles a small and careful kind of smile, a smile that conceals secrets. We fall asleep together, Ellis’s arm thrown over my stomach and my face tilted in against her shoulder. And for once it is so easy to forget I’ve ever known anyone else.

I don’t want to forget this. No one understands Ellis Haley like I do. No one ever will.

so hard not to wonder if that’s a figment of my imagination or if a girl’s voice carries on the wind, calling my name across the snowy hills.

I press both hands into my lap and stare down at my tea. I don’t want to see the look on her face right now: concerned, knowing. What we have together feels fragile, not even two days old. I want to seem better now. Sane.

Margery’s curse still waits for me. I might have killed Ellis’s coyote, and she might have proven their deaths could happen without magic, but that doesn’t make me free.

And somehow thinking about Alex now…it doesn’t hurt. Or at least not the way it did. Maybe there’s still a chance to repair things with her spirit, to make amends. Maybe, at last, Alex can rest.

That night, I take down the letters Alex sent me. I tie them in a neat stack with a length of ivory ribbon and slide them into my desk drawer. I leave the photo of us, pinned next to a postcard Alex sent me one summer. I fall asleep easily, and I sleep well. Perhaps too well.

When I was a child, I found it so hard to imagine ever turning sixteen. Sixteen. The age was laden with implication: sweet sixteen celebrations, cars, makeup, drinking at parties, and kissing lips I’d never remember. Only then I turned sixteen, and the impossible age became eighteen.

None of the Dalloway Five had lived past eighteen; why should I?

I also know what it is to have a secret you’ve held close to your chest for so long it starts to poison you—to fear that if you show it to anyone else, it might poison them, too. But when I finally told Ellis about my mother, she hadn’t been poisoned. She’d understood.

“What do you think of them?” I ask. Leonie pats the seat next to her at the island, and after a beat, I take it. She crosses her arms over her shut notebook and meets my gaze straight-on. “You really want to know?” she says. “I really want to know.” A smile cuts across Leonie’s red-lipsticked mouth. “I think they’re full of shit.”

I only ever wanted the Five to have been witches. I only ever saw what I wanted to see. Not like Leonie. For Leonie, it was never about what she wanted—it was about discovering the truth.

It’s not possible. It’s…I’d finished this, the nightmare was over. I blink, almost expecting the book to vanish when I open my eyes again, like a trick of the light. But no. Nothing has changed. I tug the book free with shaking hands.

A black dust tumbles from between the pages, scattering to the floor at my feet. I press my fingertips to the cover, and they come away dark. Grave dirt.

oh dear

And there on the title page, in Alex’s handwriting, an inscription: I never told you that I love you, but it’s true. It was always true. Those words….they’re my words, from the letter I wrote Alex a week after she died. The letter that was buried in her empty casket.

The snow has fallen ankle-deep; it’s a slow trudge past the mausoleum and toward the silent oak tree that stands watch over Alex’s grave. The hellebore has been buried under that weight, and as I approach, the grave looks unmarked. Undisturbed.

Alex never died in that lake. We didn’t find a body because there was no body to find. While I ran down from the cliff to find her body, Alex pulled herself out of that black water and staggered into the woods, vanishing without a trace. Of course she did. She could have. Her career was over, her reputation ruined. Everyone thought she was violent now, too emotional, too unprofessional. She’d told me there was no escape, that she could run and run as far as she wanted, but she’d never stop being Alex Haywood.

I’ll find you, I tell her. I’ll fix this. I don’t know what I’m fixing.

The seal on the casket is broken; it’s easy to hook my fingers under the lid and yank it up, the hinges creaking as the coffin opens. And even in this dim light, dawn still pewter over the hills and the cover of snow draping everything in silence, I recognize her. Alex.

But Alex’s mouth just twisted meanly, and she said: “Yes, well, you’d know all about making a fool of yourself. Wouldn’t you, Felicity?” It felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. The party went silent; the feeling of all eyes on me made my skin itch.

But they’ll figure you out soon enough, Miss Morrow. You can’t hide it anymore, can you? You’re fucking broken. You’re batshit, just like your mother.” And I pushed her. I didn’t mean for her to fall. She wasn’t even that close to the edge. But she was drunk, and when she lost her balance, she stumbled. For a split second I thought she was going to recover and lunge for me— Instead she pitched, and dropped, and vanished, screaming the whole way down. Alex died. Alex was dead. I killed her myself.

That isn’t Alex’s mouth, nor Alex’s nose. Her cheeks have too many freckles, her body isn’t decayed. Not Alex’s body. Clara’s.

She hasn’t been dead long. I twist around and press my brow against the dirt, eyes clenched shut. I can’t fake innocence. I knew it. I knew it. The body in Alex’s grave has a bullet in her stomach. Her throat is slit. Wormwood leaves wreathe her hair, and hellebore flowers bloom where her eyes should be. She’s the perfect picture of Flora Grayfriar’s corpse.

Ellis killed her. She really killed her.

holy shit

All of it makes sense now. I don’t want to believe it; Ellis had seen how upset I was. She had comforted me, had— She’d manipulated me this whole time.

I turn off my phone. It feels like it takes years for the screen to go dark, that infernal unknown number mocking me the whole time. Is that enough? I didn’t pick up; maybe I’m safe. Only I already know that’s not true. If the police find out about Clara’s body—if I become a suspect—they’ll know I was here. They’ll think I killed her.

The thought makes me want to start running and never stop. Ellis killed Clara. What reason do I have to think she wouldn’t kill me as well? Only if she wanted me dead, she could have killed me a dozen times already.

Somehow, though, betraying Ellis to the police never feels like a real option. I should feel more than I do. I should grieve Clara. I should cry and scream and beat my hands against the walls.

But—no—but…what if she didn’t? What if I did? What if I killed Clara, then forgot about it, the same way I forgot I’d pushed Alex until Ellis made me remember? What if this is the curse playing itself out again and again, an endless string of deaths to satisfy an insatiable bloodthirst? If this is the curse, the evidence will only point to me. Checkmate, Margery Lemont murmurs from the darkness.

“Clara’s dead.” Ellis shoots me a sharp glance, something almost disapproving to the set of her mouth as she shuts my bedroom door. “I know. You don’t have to say it so loudly.”

The knot in my chest loosens slightly. It was her. It was Ellis. Not the curse, not the witches, not my fault. It wasn’t my fault.

Ellis smiles. “It’s done now. I did it. Thanks to you. I can’t even tell you how much I…This book. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written. You understand, don’t you?” I don’t know how to reply to that. What is there to say? I can still see Clara’s cold body in the back of my mind. The blood on her stomach. Her blank gaze.

Ellis shakes her head. “Why would anyone even think to check a graveyard miles away? Clara could be anywhere.” Only she isn’t anywhere. She’s in that coffin. If they do find her body, it will look like I murdered her in cold blood. Or in a psychotic rage.

She leaves, taking her manuscript, and I’m alone again. I don’t want her to come back. I wish I had never met Ellis Haley. But in her absence the walls close in on me. I’m left alone with nothing but the watch ticking on my wrist and the inescapable knowledge that sooner or later, my time will run out.

“You’ll have a long life. Healthy. And—you might have guessed this—you’re a creative person. These branches here suggest ambition and achieving impossible goals.” Ellis grinned. “That’s me.”

“But…you should be careful about the friends you let into your life,” I continued. “You shouldn’t trust anyone. A mysterious older figure will spell destruction and a fall from grace.” A quick and sharp grin cut across Ellis’s face. “I knew Wyatt had it in for me.”

Nothing in Ellis’s fortune gave any sign of what she really was. I should have paid better attention. I should have marked the smaller crosses and stars on her skin, should have found the truth written in her flesh. I should have known she was a killer.

Liu taps short nails against her ceramic coffee mug. “I have to ask the question: Did Clara have any enemies? Anyone who might want to hurt her?” The back of my throat has gone bone-dry. I lick my lips and swallow, but it doesn’t help. “No. Of course not. Everyone loved Clara.”

Only Margery Lemont had never existed. Not as a spirit haunting me, anyway. She had just been a too-clever girl living in a time when being clever made you dangerous. And she’d paid for that with her life.

Wherever Ellis has hidden that letter, the one allegedly written in my own hand, it isn’t here. Downstairs, the office door creaks open. I’ve run out of time.