Page 28 of The Women of Wild Hill

“Hmm. She must be an interesting woman,” the man observed.

“High praise from a man who teaches in a department that doesn’t make it easy for women to learn.”

“That is not a decision I would have made,” he told her. “My mother was a chemist, too. Better than every man at this university. She taught me everything I know.”

“Your mother is a chemist?”

“Not is. Was,” the man corrected her. “She didn’t want to leave her lab in Berlin. By the time she looked up from her research, it was too late.”

“I am sorry,” Lilith said.

He accepted her words with a resigned shrug. “Perhaps you have noticed, brilliant people can be very stupid,” he said. “Maybe you are one of them? What you are making might be dangerous. You are aware of that, I hope?”

As the daughter of a woman who’d had to murder her husband, Lilith had grown up mistrusting men.

But this one was forcing her to question many of the assumptions she’d made over the years—including a few about herself.

“It’s deadly,” she told him. “That’s why I’m making it.

To rid the world of men like the ones who murdered your mother. ”

Whether or not he believed her was something they’d joke about later. All that mattered was that, at the time, he didn’t blink an eye. “Okay,” he said. “As long as you know.”

She watched as he loped away. The hair on the back of his head was matted. He hadn’t brushed it in ages. His tweed suit, while of excellent quality and exquisite taste, was badly worn around the elbows. She suspected he was wearing the only suit he owned.

“You’re going to let me stay and finish?”

“Of course.” He stopped at the door and turned around. “Your work is interesting. You are welcome here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays when I’m on duty. If you need anything, my office is just down the hall.”

When he disappeared, she realized she didn’t want to see him go just yet.

“Excuse me?” she called out.

He popped back around the corner. “Yes?”

“What I really need is some dinner,” she said, knowing full well she might be taken for presumptuous, bossy, and downright rude.

He nodded. “Tomorrow,” he told her. “I am an excellent cook. I’ll bring enough for the two of us.”

She smiled. “I’m Lilith.”

“Levi,” he said.

AFTER THREE MONTHS OF ROMANTIC dinners lit by Bunsen burners in the lab at Havemeyer Hall, they decided to marry.

“I can’t wait to find out what you make for breakfast,” Lilith said. Levi was, just as advertised, an excellent cook.

“My Eierkuchen mit Apfel is magnificent,” he told her.

And it was.

THEY PLANNED THEIR WEDDING FOR the following spring. Ivy was delighted. Sadie, on the other hand, did not bother to hide her skepticism. She would never recover from the loss of her daughter—or forgive the male half of the species for its role in Rose’s death.

“Who will marry you?”

“A judge at city hall,” Lilith said. “We’ll have the reception here on Wild Hill.”

“What if Bessie throws a fit?” Sadie asked.

“She won’t.” Even at the age of twenty-two, Lilith was still hiding the truth from her grandmother. She’d seen the ghost on countless occasions, and she knew exactly how Bessie would feel, having asked for her blessing.

“This man will take you away from Wild Hill,” Sadie said.

“He’s not taking me anywhere, Grandma.” Sadie despised being called Grandma. “We bought a house closer to the city. It’s less than an hour away. And may I remind you, I chose my own powers,” Lilith said. “Their energy does not depend on Wild Hill.”

“So you’re running away.” Sadie sniffed. “What kind of witch are you?”

“You’ll see soon enough,” Lilith told her. “I’m the kind of witch who gets things done.”

The silence hung between them. Then all at once, Sadie broke out in laughter.

“You get that from me,” Sadie announced. “I suddenly feel much better about everything.” As she prepared to make her victorious exit, she stopped at the door and called back over her shoulder, “And I know that’s not the only one of my gifts you inherited.”

AT THE WEDDING RECEPTION, BESSIE offered her blessing in the form of gentle breezes filled with fragrance.

Lilith and Levi cut their cake on the brow of the hill, in sight of Rose Duncan’s grave.

Sadie and Ivy were there, along with Levi’s elderly aunts.

Two of Ivy’s clients from the village wept openly.

Levi’s mentors in the Columbia chemistry department spent the evening trying to catch Sadie’s eye.

There were twenty-two flesh-and-blood guests in attendance.

Anyone who was able to see spirits might have caught a glimpse of Bessie watching from the roof of the mansion—or Rose perched atop her tombstone.

As they celebrated into the night, Levi’s aunts joined Lilith and Sadie as they watched the chemistry professors dance with Ivy and the ladies of Mattauk.

“Levi has done his mother a great honor,” his aunt Eva told Sadie. “He’s married a girl just like her.”

“He was always such a good boy,” his aunt Sarah agreed. “No child could have loved his mama more.”

“Levi’s mother was a chemist as well,” Lilith explained to her grandmother.

“Among other things,” Eva added. “Aviva was a woman of many gifts.”

“Oh?” Sadie adored gossip. “Do tell.”

“She had a very special nose, for one,” Eva said. “She could have made a fortune in the fragrance business, but such things never interested her. She told me that every person has a distinctive scent—our skin excretes a combination of chemicals with an odor that’s as unique as a fingerprint.”

“Aviva could close her eyes and follow you around the house using only her nose,” Sarah elaborated. “And she always knew if something was wrong with you physically. Cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes. She could smell them from across the room.”

“How delightful.” Sadie was looking at Levi with a new level of appreciation. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Aviva’s gift were passed down to your daughters? It would complement the Duncan family gifts quite nicely, I think.”

“Every chemist needs a good nose,” Lilith replied, with a look that made it clear that she wanted the conversation to move in a different direction.

“Why don’t I grab another bottle of champagne, and we can all toast the magnificent Aviva,” Sadie said, letting Lilith have her way.

As the three of them watched Sadie swish across the room, the aunts grew serious.

“There’s much to be learned from your mother-in-law’s life,” Eva told Lilith.

“Being brilliant and powerful doesn’t make a woman invulnerable.

Those who stick their heads out are often the first to get them lopped off. ”

“I’m not sure I understand.” Lilith was taken aback by the sudden turn the conversation had taken. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“The men you’ll be facing are well aware that women like you exist. They found Aviva. Don’t let them find you. If we can recognize you, they will, too.”

“I’m sorry, but who exactly do you think I am?” Lilith knew her fear must have been written all over her face.

“A disciple of the Old One, of course,” Sarah said.

Tiny Eva stood on her tiptoes and kissed Lilith’s cheek. “Don’t worry, darling,” she whispered. “Your secret is safe with us.”

BY THE END OF THE evening, the chemistry professors and the ladies of Mattauk had disappeared, squealing and giggling, into the trees.

“Did you spike their drinks with one of your potions?” Lilith asked her aunt Ivy, who’d come to stand with Lilith and her husband as they stole a private moment away from their friends and loved ones.

“Believe it or not, the only magical ingredient in the punch was gin,” Ivy said.

“A powerful aphrodisiac by the looks of things,” Levi replied.

“Which reminds me. I still need to give you my wedding present,” Ivy told them. She handed Lilith a plain white envelope. “It’s for your business.”

“We have a business?” Levi had heard nothing of it.

“I must have forgotten to mention it. My grandfather owned a chemical company,” Lilith said as she tore open the envelope. “After my father died, I was his heir. What’s this?”

Handwritten on the page was a formula for face cream. Ivy had been working on it for many months, making sure the recipe was perfect.

Lilith looked up, utterly perplexed. “You think we should make cosmetics?” she asked her aunt.

Levi was the first to see its potential. “It’s a brilliant cover story,” he said. “No one will question why a woman works at a company that makes face cream. And the profits can fund our other endeavors.”

At the mention of their scheme, Lilith sighed with frustration. “We’re still working on the formula,” she told her aunt. “The chemical is proving difficult to synthesize. I wish we could find a more plentiful natural source—”

It seemed a fourth was coming to join their party. Dressed in a glossy black cloak, it strutted across the dance floor.

“Hello,” Lilith said.

The raven bowed its head and placed a key at her feet. Then it bowed once more, flapped its wings and took flight, blending into the darkness of the night.

Lilith picked up the key and twirled it between her fingers. “How odd.”

“It’s a wedding gift from Bessie,” Ivy said.

“What does it open?” Lilith wondered.

All eyes turned toward the vine-covered mansion that sat dark and empty at the top of Wild Hill.

THERE WAS NO HONEYMOON. LILITH and Levi weren’t interested in sunbathing or sightseeing. Their two passions were work and each other. They didn’t need to leave town for either. So the next morning, Lilith returned to Wild Hill with the key in her pocket.

After searching the exterior of the mansion in vain, she sat on the crest of the hill.

In the distance, she spotted a figure in a long white dress walking along Culling Pointe.

Closer and closer the woman came, her hair flowing in the morning breeze.

When she reached the rock where Lilith sat, she stopped.

The ghost didn’t say a word. When the witch set off up the slope, she turned back.

“Do you need me to send a formal invitation?” she asked in her musical accent. Then she giggled at her own joke and continued up the hill.

Lilith followed the witch all the way to the mansion.

When they reached it, the bushes parted and the thorns pulled away, revealing a long-hidden entrance to the basement.

The raven’s key fit the lock, and the door creaked open.

For the first time in fifty years, a living person entered the Wild Hill mansion.

It was dark down below and the air felt thick as it flowed into Lilith’s nose.

The heels of her shoes made no sound against the floor.

She didn’t hear a match strike, but a candle lit the room.

She and the witch were in the kitchen, preserved exactly as it had looked the day her great-grandparents had fled.

An enormous cast-iron cooking range dominated an entire wall.

A long wooden table ran half the length of the room.

The shelves were still lined with filled jars that had never been opened.

But the thing that captured Lilith’s attention hung from a hook inside an old-fashioned fireplace. A large black cauldron.

Lilith took the candle as the witch guided her through the kitchen and down a set of stairs that led to the old root cellar.

The dirt floor appeared black in the gloom.

It wasn’t until Lilith reached the bottom of the stairs that the candlelight finally pushed back the darkness, and she realized she was looking down at a vast field of mushrooms.

IN THE DECADES THAT FOLLOWED, few of Lilith and Levi Vildkeit’s neighbors ever guessed that the family in the split-level ranch down the street was phenomenally wealthy.

Aside from the fact that they let their lawn grow wild, Levi and Lilith seemed exceptionally ordinary.

No one at the company they founded knew the nature of the research that Lilith performed in her private lab.

Most of the men who worked for the Vildkeits assumed the lab was merely a way Levi humored his wife, who had always fancied herself a chemist. None of them had any idea what role Lilith and her husband played in killing off Nazis.

For the next thirty years, they dedicated themselves to dealing with those who’d slipped through justice’s fingers and started new lives in other parts of the world.

When a business mogul in Buenos Aires died of a heart attack after a dinner party at which Lilith was a guest, no one in their right mind would have suspected she might be involved.

Most wouldn’t even have recalled she was there.

When an aneurysm took a nuclear scientist long before his time, his death was attributed to natural causes.

The authorities didn’t even investigate.

Even Lilith and Levi’s daughter, Flora, never suspected that her parents had a body count just south of five hundred.

When the pair was lost in a plane crash, their obits didn’t even make the New York Times.

The authorities never suspected that their twin-engine Cessna had been sabotaged, so no investigation was ordered.

Flora thought her parents were on their way home from Boca when their plane went down in the Everglades.

(They’d spent their “vacation” a bit farther south, in Uruguay.) No one outside the family inquired about a funeral—which is just as Lilith would have wanted it.

She was buried between her mother and grandmother on the brow of Wild Hill.

In accordance with his will, Levi Vildkeit’s remains were donated to Columbia University, where his skeleton would help thousands of medical students master anatomy.

Flora missed them both terribly, but most people forgot Levi and Lilith as soon as they were gone. The few who ever mentioned the Vildkeits agreed that their daughter was very lively, indeed. And they all wondered how such dull people could have produced her.