“Why,” Quinn answers, with a showman’s sweep of her wand, “the Underground Railroad, of course.”
“Really? You mean these tunnels go as far as—”
Quinn’s laughter echoes through the tunnel. “No, not really. Saints. No one dug a hole all the way to Canada.” Her shadow flickers as she shakes her head. “These tunnels are only under New Salem.”
“Oh,” Beatrice says, intelligently.
“This city was built in a huge hurry, did you know that?” Beatrice did. After the burning of Old Salem there had been a great rush to rebuild, as if the fresh-paved streets were ropes to bind the unruly past. “City Hall and the College were built within a year, along with half a dozen churches, all those boring square houses on the north end . . . Who do you suppose built all that?”
Beatrice has read any number of pamphlets and historical texts about the founding of the city but can’t recall anything about the workers. “I don’t know. I suppose it would have been—”
“Slaves.” Quinn’s tone is perfectly even, but her spine is rigid. “Slaves, in the nation that so recently fought for freedom. Slaves, building the City Without Sin.”
Beatrice feels a queasy flick of shame. “I didn’t—”
“But their work was plagued with delays and setbacks, missing tools, mistakes. Because they were busy building something else beneath all that marble and money. Something that would let them move through the city without fear, whenever they pleased.” Quinn gestures with the wand at the endless tunnel around them, smooth and hollow as the burrow of some vast snake. “They taught their sons and daughters, and the secret was passed down to us.”
Beatrice is quiet for several steps before asking softly, “Who is us?”
Quinn stops walking. Her shoulders lift and fall in a steadying sigh. “The Daughters of Tituba.”
If her voice wasn’t so flat, so entirely empty of humor or mockery, Beatrice would think she was being laughed at. It’s like claiming to be a vampire or a valkyrie, a monster out of myth. The Daughters of Tituba were a rumor, a whisper, a penny-paper story. They were the reason husbands went astray and graves were robbed. In the least reputable papers they were drawn with bones tied in their hair and teeth strung around their throats, red-lipped and wild. The Last Living Descendants of the Black Witch of Old Salem, the captions read, Still Hungry for Vengeance?
Miss Quinn does not possess a necklace of teeth or a bone hairpiece, as far as Beatrice knows, and if she hungers for anything it’s only the same small, impossible thing that Beatrice wants: the truth, laid bare. The story told straight.
“I didn’t think they were real.”
“Real enough.” Quinn is still standing with her back to Beatrice. “I wanted to tell you. Truly, I did. But we’re sworn to silence on the graves of our mothers and their mothers across the sea. I couldn’t.”
“But Frankie said—oh.” Beatrice recalls the phrase other interests and everything she thought it implied. She finds her embarrassment overcome by a sudden buoyancy. Not the Colored League; not a string of lovers, after all.
Quinn turns. “Frankie Black?”
“We spoke. I understood—that is, I thought you and she were . . .”
Quinn’s eyebrows are higher than usual. “We were. But I made it clear that the Daughters came first, and she objected.”
“Oh.”
“Beatrice—I’m sorry.” Beatrice doesn’t think she’s ever heard Quinn apologize.
She half reaches for her before she remembers what else Quinn ought to be sorry for. She makes her voice cold and hard, pretending her flesh is stone once more. “We were betrayed. They were waiting for us, and J-Juniper is . . .” Her breath catches. “Agnes and the others ran, but I don’t know how far they made it.” She feels the distant spark of her middle sister and knows that she, at least, is safe.
Quinn’s mouth is grim, her shoulders heavy. “I’m sorry,” she says again.
“Was it you?” The words come out ragged and bloody, as if they ran through dense briars on their way to her lips. “Did you tell the police? Make some trade or deal with them?”
Miss Quinn’s eyes go wide. She takes a careful breath before saying, very slowly and soberly, “The Daughters have been interested in the Lost Way of Avalon for a very long time. So much of our power was stolen from us—although we kept more than you thought—and the idea that it might be restored to us in a single instant . . . well. When the tower was called to the square I was sent to investigate the suffragists. And I found you: a librarian with a clever face and hungry eyes who knew more than she ought to. I assisted you. Pursued and encouraged you.” Her eyes flick over Beatrice’s face, furtive, guilty.
“Because you were ordered to.”
“Yes.” It should feel like a victory—the hero forcing the spy to confess her sins!—but Beatrice feels nothing but an oily shame. To think that she believed Miss Quinn was interested in her . . . friendship (she never thought Miss Quinn was interested in friendship).
Beatrice wishes without much hope that the tunnel will collapse and bury her before she cries, but instead she hears a soft curse and feels Quinn’s fingers clasping hard around her wrist. “I spied on you. I lied to you. I told the Daughters everything you discovered or planned or even suspected.” Quinn’s voice thickens, low and urgent. “But Beatrice, I swear it wasn’t me who betrayed you.”
The tunnel fails to collapse; Beatrice cries. In a small, blurred voice, she begins, “Then who—” but breaks off. She thinks of Agnes, hard-eyed and harder-hearted, who would do anything at all to save her own skin. But if she’d betrayed them, why had she come tonight? And what about the oath they all swore with pricked fingers and crossed hearts, whose breaking would have certain obvious and rather gruesome effects?
Beatrice swallows a knot of salt and snot. “Why did you come?”
“For the same reason I came to your first two spectacles. Because you—the Sisters were walking into harm’s way, and I wanted to be there in case . . . they needed me.” Miss Quinn—the brash liar, the spy who wields her charm like an edged weapon—cannot quite meet Beatrice’s eyes as she says it.
“And where are you taking me now? To your superiors? Am I a captive?”
Quinn lets go of her wrist very quickly. “No. Never. I’m not . . .” She looks tired and sorry, stripped bare. “Saints, I’ve butchered this. I’m trying to say that I’m sorry, and I will not lie to you again. I remain a faithful Daughter.” Beatrice hears the capital D, the weight of a century of secrets and witching. “But I hope to become a Sister, too. If you’ll have me.”
Beatrice just stands there, looking into Quinn’s yellow eyes (one-one-thousand). She wonders if trust, once lost, can ever truly be found again, and if she’s being a fool (two-one-thousand). She decides she doesn’t care, that maybe trust is neither lost nor found, broken nor mended, but merely given. Decided, despite the risk (three-one-thousand).
“I’m afraid I left my notebook in my office,” Beatrice murmurs in a slightly underwater voice. “But I believe there’s room on the roster.”