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My cheeks burn and she doesn’t give me the opportunity to respond before asking, “What went through your mind as you placed your hair in her coffin?”
“I... I suppose I was thinking that I never wanted to be without her. That I wanted some way to be with her again, even if only for a moment.” Her meaning dawns on me. “But...it was enough just to think it?”
The dark eye sockets dance. “Was it enough when you thought of Tommy Bishop’s leg snapping?”
Surely it could not be so simple? What a terrible power, to be able to think something and have it be so. I open my mouth, but she stops me.
“You will learn to control such thoughts in time. For a witch to think something with intent is quite enough, though it takes skill to channel the necessary energy. The fact that you were able to with no training speaks to the power in you. You very nearly called up a storm over the pond in your grief after all,” she says, a hint of admiration in her voice. “In Emeline’s case, you added in a powerful talisman, binding the intent.” She gives a bony shrug. “Though Willow Hall is a strange place, and Emeline had powers of her own.”
“And you?” I ask. “Are you tethered to this world through some talisman also?” Will that be my fate as a witch, once I die? I shudder at the thought.
“I? Tethered?” Her skull tilts back and a rattling laugh comes from somewhere deep inside her. “I am old. I died old, and despite my demise, I died powerful. I come and go through the veil as I please. Emeline was but a child. Children are not meant for this in-between world.”
I bite my lip, considering these revelations. “What about the others who roam the land here?”
“They are not your concern. They belong to Willow Hall now, bound to each other and the land by tragedy, unable to move on. You cannot help them. But you can help Emeline.”
I touch the locket at my throat, Emeline’s hair braided and coiled inside.
Mary Preston watches me as my thoughts race. “You already know what to do, Lydia. You’ve always known. Now you must simply do it.”
I nod. It is one thing to know what to do, but another to find the strength and courage to do it. It is what Emeline wants though, and it is what’s right. Perhaps with Mary Preston by my side it will not be so daunting. Perhaps she will leave me to my thoughts for now, and then reappear when the time comes to make certain that I am up to the task.
But still she hovers there. For the first time, Mary Preston lingers past the message she came to deliver. Her creaking jaw opens and closes as if she wants to tell me something more.
“What? What is it?”
She lets out a weary sigh. “Your young man,” she says, her tone implying just what she thinks of young men, “is about to do something very rash, very foolish.”
My heart stops in my chest as her words sink in, but in an instant I’m up, scrambling to find my boots. “John? Where he is? What is he doing?” But I don’t need to ask to know what John has taken upon himself to do, and when I look up, Mary Preston is gone.
34
I POUND DOWNthe stairs, right to the front door when I stop. Catherine is standing by the window in the parlor, bathed in the predawn light of a snowy day. Her shawl has fallen off, and she bites at her fingers as she gazes out into the palette of whites and grays.
“Catherine?”
She doesn’t move and I catch my breath, wondering if perhaps she too is nothing more than a spirit. But when I say her name a second time, she slowly turns around. Even in the dim light her face is pale, her eyes bloodshot.
“When Cyrus was here yesterday I heard him say you and he had an agreement. What did he mean?”
“Oh,” I say with a little breath of relief, “I thought something was wrong.” There’s no time for this, to explain everything. And even if there was, what does it matter? “I don’t know. I suppose it was just drunken rambling.”
She nods, but doesn’t look convinced. “Lydia,” she says, not meeting my eye, her fingers hovering near her lips, “I think that I...that is, I’ve been—”
“Can this wait?” I glance out the window where the first weak fingers of light are struggling over the trees. “I have to go.”
She opens her mouth to say something, but there’s no time. I might already be too late.
* * *
The first snowflakes are starting to fall as I plunge into the still December morning. I’ve barely gone as far as the front walk when a pale little form appears out of the frosty mist.
As soon as I see her all else is forgotten.
Emeline looks much the same as the last time I saw her; she has not decayed further, nor is she crawling with maggots, and thank God. But she is pale to the point of translucence, nearly as sheer as Mary Preston.
I run to close the distance between us, mindless of the ice and snow. “Oh, Emeline.” I skid to a halt, falling to my knees in front of her. “Thank God you’ve come back. I... I know how to help you now,” I tell her. “You need only say the word and I will make sure that you are free to rest.”