Page 27 of The Women of Wild Hill

“I know, dear,” Aunt Ivy assured her.

“Yes, you’ve made it quite clear that you don’t have the sight,” Sadie chimed in as she lazily brushed buttery crumbs off the silk kimono she’d thrown on over her nightie. “In time we’ll discover what your gifts will be. The family blood is filled with surprises.”

“This one is channeling a very dark ancestor,” Sadie muttered into her tea.

“Twenty,” Ivy said.

“I would like to live a lot longer, so I’ll do things differently and avoid falling in love.”

“I think that would be wise,” her aunt agreed. “At least at your age.”

“Mama thinks so, too,” Lilith told her. Then she caught herself and scowled. “Please don’t tell Sadie I can talk to ghosts like she does.”

“I won’t,” Ivy promised. “You want to choose your own gifts, and I support you.”

“I don’t want to be like anyone else. I want to be like myself.”

This was excellent news as far as Ivy was concerned.

She’d spent decades working to further the family mission.

Sadie, who loved nothing more than the violence of storms and the flash of lightning, had little interest in Ivy’s quiet, solitary research, which she found terribly dull.

But Ivy believed in her heart that Rose had brought Lilith into the world to help her.

THAT BELIEF WAS PROVEN UNDENIABLY true when twenty-year-old Lilith took up scrapbooking. Every day, Ivy would watch her meticulous niece snip pictures and articles from the papers—then carefully paste them into a large album with black pages and a thick black cover bordered in gold.

“Most girls these days collect pictures of movie stars,” Sadie commented the morning Lilith brought her scrapbook to the breakfast table.

It happened to be her birthday. As her granddaughter took a pair of shears to the New York Times, Sadie picked up a clipped illustration of a walrus-like man in a dark suit.

“Our Lilith finds sixty-year-old businessmen irresistible.”

Lilith didn’t take the bait. By twenty, her hair had deepened from brown to black.

She wore it brushed back from her face like Lauren Bacall, to whom it would later be said she bore a resemblance.

Like Ms. Bacall, she sometimes smirked but rarely smiled.

She had no time for her grandmother’s bullshit.

Ivy waited until Sadie had cleared the breakfast room. “May I see?” She pointed at the album, which had just received its latest additions.

“Certainly.” Lilith slid it over to her.

The pages were filled with pictures of men, but if her grandmother had bothered to take a closer look, she would have seen they weren’t all businessmen.

There were politicians and doctors and men who read the evening news on the radio.

Beside each man’s photo, Lilith had added notes in white pencil.

Fire in his factory killed 53 girls, said one.

Experiments on female patients. Removes healthy uteruses, said another.

Dumps factory waste into the Hudson. Kicked Native families off their land.

Encouraged radio listeners to attack suffragettes.

It was a rogues’ gallery of villains—all based in the New York area. “Why are you collecting these?” Ivy inquired.

Lilith looked up from her work. “Our mission is to topple tyrants, balance the scales, protect the earth, and avenge the wronged, is that right?” the girl asked, her voice clipped and correct as always.

“Yes,” Ivy told her.

“Well, I intend to topple these tyrants. I have researched my targets and selected them with great care. I believe the world will be a better place without these men. Just think how different things would be right now if someone did away with Hitler and Mussolini.”

Ivy flipped through the album. “How did you choose these individuals?”

“They’re all known to visit the Island,” Lilith said. “Making contact with them will pose no challenge. Now that I’m old enough, I can finally get started.”

“How will you do it?” Ivy asked. “Have you settled on what your powers will be?”

“Yes,” Lilith told her. “Discipline and determination. Those are the only powers I’ll need. I’m rich as hell and reasonably attractive. As sad as it seems, those two facts will open most doors for me. I won’t need to knock them down with supernatural powers.”

“Have you decided on a weapon yet?”

This time, Lilith frowned, mildly miffed that her aunt had found the flaw in her plan. “No,” she admitted.

Ivy smiled. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Of course.”

“Then follow me.”

Ivy guided Lilith outside and across the lawn toward the rose-and-vine-covered mansion.

She walked around to the building’s shady north side and squatted down in the tall grass.

Carefully, she began to search through the foliage at the base of the wall, pushing each stem to the side just enough to see the soil beneath.

“Aha!” When she stood up at last, she held a small black mushroom between her thumb and index finger. “Bessie showed me one of these a few years ago. Hold out your hand.”

Lilith examined the fungus her aunt had placed in her palm. “How lovely. What’s its name?”

“I haven’t named it yet,” Ivy said. “Perhaps you would like the honor?”

Lilith looked up with an arched eyebrow. “It’s unknown to science?”

“To my knowledge,” Ivy said, and both of them knew what that meant.

“But I don’t believe I’m the first to discover it.

When I was your age, I wanted to know what made Wild Hill so special.

I read everything I could on the history of the Island, but I didn’t find much.

All I discovered was a reference to a woman who was accused of bewitching the local deer and later hanged on Culling Pointe. ”

“Was that Bessie?” Lilith asked.

“I believe so,” Ivy told her. “I couldn’t find any more information. It seems all but one of the people responsible died the following winter. The sole survivor said the others had eaten cursed mushrooms they’d picked on the witch’s land.”

“So Bessie really lived here on Wild Hill?”

“My grandfather tore down a hut to build the mansion. It must have belonged to her.”

“You think these mushrooms could be my weapon?” Lilith asked.

Now they had come to the crux of the issue.

“I’m convinced they’re the same ones that killed the colonists.

The poison mimics natural ailments. It seems to find the body’s natural weaknesses and exploit them.

If the man has a weak heart, it targets the heart.

If his sugar is high, it will make it soar out of control.

If there is a clot somewhere in his circulatory system, it will dislodge it and send it straight to the brain. ”

“How do you know this?”

“I’ve been experimenting,” Ivy told her coyly.

“Experimenting?”

Ivy leaned in close, though there was no one around to hear her. “Not all of my clients come to me with conditions that can be cured with a salve. Over the years, a few of them have had pest problems that have required something much stronger.”

“How many clients?” Lilith asked.

“Five,” Ivy said. “Six if you include your mother.”

Lilith had long known about her father’s demise, but she hadn’t been told what they’d used to kill him. “And the poison hasn’t been detected by doctors?” She could feel her excitement rising.

“As far as I’m aware, no,” Ivy said.

“This could be just what I need,” Lilith told her.

“The only problem is, the mushrooms aren’t easy to process.

” Ivy took a small vial out of her pocket.

It was half filled with a clear liquid. “This took months to make by my method. It’s fine for a single use now and then, but it won’t suit your grand ambitions.

You’ll have to find an efficient way to produce the poison at scale. ”

“Not to worry.” Lilith plucked the vial from between her aunt’s fingers. “I enjoy a challenge.”

LILITH SET OUT TO APPLY to universities.

But it was the 1940s, and most of the schools at the top of Lilith’s list did not admit women.

Those that did admit women often did not allow them in their chemistry departments.

And those that allowed women to study chemistry rarely welcomed them with open arms.

Lilith, as usual, found a way around the obstacles placed in front of her.

She knew the men wouldn’t want her around while they performed their experiments—and she certainly didn’t want those idiots observing hers.

Enrolled as a student at Barnard College, she broke into Columbia University’s chemistry labs after all the students had gone home for the evening.

It was on one such night that she finally met her match.

She was bent over a microscope, fully immersed in her work, when she heard someone clear his throat behind her.

“What are you doing in here?” A man was standing in the doorway. She recognized him immediately. He was the youngest of the department’s professors—a refugee from the war overseas.

“I’m working,” Lilith told him. She wasn’t going to waste a second on chitchat. Who knew how many minutes she had left before he hauled her out the door.

The man walked over to where she sat. His physical appearance didn’t exactly inspire terror.

He was tall and lanky with remarkably long fingers, tortoiseshell glasses, and a slight stoop.

Lilith wondered if she could overpower him.

She’d tie him up with Bunsen burner tubing, perhaps, while she finished her experiments.

She waited to feel the grip of his hand on her arm—and the abrupt yank pulling her off the stool.

But neither ever came. The man merely stood and watched over her shoulder.

“Natural product synthesis,” he said with a slight accent she hadn’t noticed before. “Where did you learn it?”

“I read books and taught myself.” Lilith looked up at him as if to make clear that was all she was prepared to say on the matter.

He merely stuck his lower lip out and nodded.

“And the compound? What is it?”

“Something my aunt discovered.”