Juniper flicks the bent nail at Gertrude in response and mutters about stubborn Sioux girls and useless men. At this point the Hull sisters intervene, insisting that they wouldn’t need Mr. Lee at all if instead they summoned the dead souls of their ancestors for instruction. Juniper makes a lewd suggestion about where Victoria can stick her crystal ball, and the tone of the evening descends thereafter.
Mr. Lee watches the rising debate with his jaw slightly slack and his blond hair tousled. Agnes sidles closer and pitches her voice beneath the noise of the room. “What’s the matter, Mr. Lee? Is this not how you pictured our little women’s club?”
“I . . . not entirely.” He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “What’s all this?” He nods at a pile of black felt and silken scraps, a scattering of dark feathers.
“Oh, nothing that would interest you, I’m sure. Just another show.”
For some reason this provokes another of his bright, boyish grins. “My what sharp teeth you have, Miss Eastwood,” he murmurs. “Will you be sprouting wings? Riding broomsticks across the Thorn?”
Bella, who was apparently eavesdropping, begins to say something about the absence of historical evidence that witches specifically preferred broomsticks, and that such stories likely refer to any number of spells for flight or levitation—but Agnes interrupts her on the grounds that it’s boring and no one cares. “That information is for Sisters only, Mr. Lee.”
“August, please.” He looks up at her with a dare in his eyes. “And how would one petition to join the Sisters of Avalon?”
Agnes never liked to back down from dares, either. “Bella. The roster, if you please?”
Bella hesitates for a long second before sliding her little black notebook across the table. Lee writes his name beneath the others—AUGUST SYLVESTER LEE—and tosses the pen down like a dueling glove.
“And now your oath, sir. Prick your finger and draw a cross, then repeat after me.”
“Witchcraft? Are you sure a man can work it?”
“Are you sure you’re a man? You strike me more as a mouse.”
August barks a laugh before he pricks his finger and speaks the words. The two of them grin a little giddily at one other until Juniper squints over at them and mutters darkly, “Oh, for the love of God.”
Later—after most of the Sisters of Avalon have slunk back through the halls of South Sybil and out into the damp green darkness of the June night, after August left with a tip of his hat so low it was nearly a bow and Agnes watched him go with a hand on her belly, reminding herself the price a woman paid for wanting—Bella clears her throat.
She’s standing at the door with her black notebook tucked beneath her arm, looking back at Agnes with deep lines around her mouth. “Be careful, Ag.” It’s almost a whisper. “I heard Annie saying he’s just here for a month to lie low. I don’t think he’s the type to stick around.”
“It’s not—it’s none of your damn business,” Agnes hisses back.
“I just didn’t want you to form any attachments that might be . . . unwise.”
“And what about the lovely Miss Quinn? Is she a wise attachment?”
Bella’s face goes gray, her shoulders hunching around some unseen wound. “I—I don’t know what you mean.” She sweeps from the room.
Then Agnes is alone, feeling like a snake or a shard of glass, something that hurts if you hold it close.
At the next meeting of the Sisters, Beatrice chooses a seat beside Miss Frankie Black. They work side by side, stripping lace and buttons from a pile of old skirts and donated blouses. There are more Sisters now, in need of more witch-robes.
Beatrice engages Frankie in an airy discussion of family and background, basking in the southern sprawl of her accent, before asking casually if Frankie happens to know Miss Cleopatra Quinn.
Frankie looks at her slantwise. “Yes.”
“Oh, I thought you might. And are you . . . close?”
“Quite close, at one time.” Frankie’s voice is very even, but Beatrice’s heart gives a double thump at that quite. She thinks of all the things Quinn doesn’t tell her, the work she doesn’t share.
“Well,” she says lightly, “I’ve just lately become acquainted with her. She’s quite . . .” She trails away, unsure what word she meant to say (enigmatic, compelling, consuming).
Frankie turns to face her directly. There’s an unmistakable shine of pity in her eyes. “Look, you should know before you get your heart broke: Miss Cleopatra has . . . other interests, and they will always come first.”
“Other—?” Beatrice would give any sum of money to prevent herself from blushing. “The Colored League, you mean?” She abhors the note of desperate optimism in her voice.
The pity deepens. “No, not the Colored League.”
“She’s a member, is she not?”
“I don’t believe she’s been to a meeting in months. Maybe ever.”
“Then I—I don’t know what you mean.” But Beatrice does.
She feels her elaborate theory—that Quinn was a clandestine operative for a women’s rights organization—collapsing like underbaked bread. There was a much more obvious reason that a beautiful woman with an understanding husband might make private calls at unlikely places, might disappear for periods of time without saying where. Beatrice remembers her first meeting with Quinn, the blinding smile, the daring derby hat, the effortless charm.
A woman like that could do much better than a bony librarian. Beatrice wonders wanly if she was the only woman to escort Miss Quinn to the Fair.
Frankie sniffs and reaches out to pat her hand. “Don’t fret. You’re hardly the first.”
Following her conversation with Frankie, Beatrice is more careful. She no longer permits Miss Quinn to loop her arm through hers or accompanies her in public. When their eyes meet—gray to gold, cloud to sunlight—Beatrice looks away after a single second (she counts in her head, one-one-thousand, drawing the syllables long and slow).
The last time Quinn visited the library, Beatrice suggested stiffly that there was no need for Miss Quinn to make the trip up from New Cairo quite so often, as they had finished reviewing the Old Salem materials and found nothing more exciting than a few desiccated rose petals and a pale tatter they thought was lace, but which turned out to be the shed skin of some long-dead snake. Everything else—the court transcripts and diary entries, the ledgers and letters—was either painfully mundane or mysteriously fragmented. A promising journal with the final pages ripped out; a little girl’s letter to her aunt with entire passages faded away to nothing; an account from one of the Inquisitors who burned the city, which ended: After the fire died and the screams faded—and I tell you I shall hear them till Judgment Day—Judge Hawthorn had us comb the ashes for days. Whatever he sought he did not find.
“If the secret to calling back the Lost Way exists, we may be reasonably certain it’s not in the Salem College Library.” Beatrice met Miss Quinn’s eyes (one-one-thousand). “Surely your time would be better spent pursuing—other possibilities.”
Quinn opened her mouth as if she might object, but the expression on Beatrice’s face made her close it. “As you wish, Miss Eastwood.” It’s only after she’s gone that Beatrice notices she left her derby hat behind.