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Hecate wakes to sensations just beyond her grasp. The smell of roses, her hair loose. She’s had this dream the past few nights, though it slips away the moment she opens her eyes.
It’s early—still night, really—but she gets out of bed, wrapping her dressing gown around her against the chill. Her magic feels nervy and restless, like it wants to spark along her skin and fly around the room. She takes a first shaky breath, and then another, until her breathing is deep and even. Until she is back under control.
It is her fourth day as acting headmistress. She didn’t ask for the job and would relinquish it in a moment to have Ada restored to her rightful place. But the council has decreed, and the rest of them must fall in line. She knows they’re extraordinarily fortunate not to have been shut down altogether, and it bothers her that she can’t account for the inspection itself.
There are almost memories—the roses, a childish melody—but for the most part there is an alarming utter absence. A block of time during Miss Doomstone’s visit is missing, and Hecate has a terrible fear that it has been magically erased from her mind, replaced with these strange sensations: stray notes from a jangling song that she can’t put together and also finds herself humming. A lightness like dancing, but false.
But she has more pressing worries. Ada has all but given up, retreating into her rooms and keeping her own company. Hecate wants to shake her, to scream at her to fight, but such a display would do more harm than good. She tries not to think of spells that might compel Ada to act.
These days Hecate walks through the corridors weighed down by the fears and expectations of her students and colleagues. Only a month ago she’d thought the building falling down was the worst that could happen. But the building was fixed easily enough. Now it’s the essence of the school that’s threatening to break apart, and she alone can hold it all together.
She pushes that haunting song out of her mind, lights the lamp at her desk, and begins to work.
**
Pippa arrives in a wave of literal sunshine and rainbows, and the girls clamor around her like she’s come to save them. Hecate’s mouth goes dry and her stomach flips over with the agonizing want that always accompanies Pippa.
Since their reunion in the spring, Hecate has gotten better at being around Pippa when she expects her. Mirror calls that Hecate initiates. Two scheduled visits over the summer. But to be surprised by Pippa—to be surprised by Pippa at this moment, when she’s trying to do two jobs and the roof is leaking and Ada is packing—makes Hecate’s instincts take over. Fight or flight, she thinks. And the school needs her too much for flight to be an option.
Hecate hates how Pippa makes her feel like she’s always on the verge of coming undone. Like she’s standing at the edge of a cliff, tempted to throw herself into the unknown. It’s always been this way with Pippa.
As a child Hecate came to school with an iron grip on the magic that was always threatening to spill out of her. Control, her father intoned, day after day. And then Pippa leapt into her life with magic loose and generous.
Midway through their first year, some of the other girls tripped Hecate during a witchball game. Pippa caught her hand as she stumbled and whispered come on as she pulled Hecate along, the two of them teaming up to win. It was terrifying and exhilarating: Pippa’s solid hand and the unsteady ground beneath Hecate’s feet. With Pippa she was never sure whether she was falling or flying. Thirty years later, not much has changed.
Hecate can’t bear the hope in Pippa’s voice when she speaks of them working together. How dare you make a decision like that without asking me, she nearly says aloud. It drowns out the part of her that wants to say, yes.
But if Pippa came to threaten the school, she saves it instead. Along with Mildred Hubble. Unruly, unpredictable witches, the both of them.
She watches Pippa leave and feels relieved. And reflexively reaches out her hand as if to pull her back.
**
A squabble in Hecate’s third-year potions class ends with Helen Greengrove turning Gabriela Cantor into a prawn. The spell she used is apparently finicky, and it takes a while to get Gabriela turned back. Helen swears and swears it was an accident.
“Why should it matter if it was an accident?” Gabriela argues. “I just spent twenty minutes as a prawn!”
Using magic against another witch without her consent is a violation of the code. Technically. But junior witches are learning, and they make mistakes; no one would ever leave school if this rule were taken too seriously.
“I think she should have to be a prawn as punishment,” Gabriela continues. “After all, last year Miss Cackle turned Ethel into a frog for days after Ethel did this to Mildred!”
“It was an accident,” wails Helen.
“Girls!” Hecate hisses. “Back to work.”
Gabriela opens her mouth again, but apparently thinks better of it as Hecate glares at her. Gabriela has a point, of course. Hecate pushes back a shudder at the recollection of spending her own schooldays dodging nefarious spells from her bullies. If it hadn’t been for her own skill, and Pippa’s, she might have lived out her life as a squirrel, or a lampshade.
But she won’t say this. Nor will she defend one of Ada’s more reckless disciplinary decisions. She turns back to her desk and takes a deep, calming breath.
The day holds several other minor disasters, and by the time Hecate is making her evening rounds her head is pounding. She snaps at some first years loitering in the hallway at lights out.
As they make for their rooms, she hears one of them whisper, “Are you sure you don’t have any more of the potion to turn her back into Miss Softbroom?”
Hecate freezes. The girls are gone in a flurry of closing doors. She’s certainly aware that the girls have their share of nicknames for her, but she hasn’t heard this one before. Yet it feels familiar in a way she can’t place, a reference to something she ought to know but can’t remember. A potion to turn her into Miss Softbroom, she thinks, turning the phrase over in her mind. She has half a memory of a singsongy tune, and the hair on the back of her neck stands on end.
**
“So I suppose everything is getting back to normal at Cackle’s,” says Pippa.
Hecate frowns. It’s their second mirror call since they’d last seen each other. The first, on the evening of Pippa’s visit, was all apologies and reassurances. In six months of reconciliation, they’ve spent more than half their time misunderstanding each other and then apologizing. Many days Hecate has wondered if it’s worth it, but when Pippa smiles Hecate can’t bear to look away, and it overwhelms all her instincts to run again.
Tonight is supposed to be a normal call. Small talk, exchanged stories of troublesome students and amusing colleagues, Pippa’s thoughts on a book Hecate had recommended. The kind of safe conversation that reminds Hecate she needn’t always feel two steps away from falling apart when she’s around Pippa.
Pippa’s question is innocent enough, Hecate knows. Yet Cackle’s is not back to normal, and Hecate isn’t certain how to respond. She would like to tell Pippa that she’s worried about Ada. Ada seems only half present these days, and Hecate is starting to doubt Ada’s decisions. She would like to tell Pippa about her suspicions from the day of the inspection, that something was done to her and she can’t remember what. She would like to tell Pippa that the world itself feels somehow uncertain, like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But Hecate hesitates. It isn’t that she thinks Pippa will once again swoop in and try to take over the school—on that point, at least, she knows they’ve reached an agreement. But she is unused to sharing her concerns. Even with Ada, who has been her closest friend for more than fifteen years, there has always been a respectful, professional distance.
Once she would have told Pippa everything, the two of them huddled under a blanket on a narrow school bed, naively planning the course of their lives. Those memories feel like they belong to someone else, muted by decades of practiced invulnerability.
These days, Hecate looks at Pippa and wants—everything. Wants to confess all her secrets, wants to flee, wants Pippa’s hands and lips on her, wants to charm herself to be untouchable. But Hecate has spent so many years refusing to let herself want. She looks through the mirror at Pippa and feels it all bubbling up, like she might explode if she speaks.
“Hecate?” Pippa asks, looking concerned. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, of course,” Hecate manages. She forces enough of a smile to placate Pippa and brings herself back under control. “Just a bit tired, I suppose. Did you have a chance to finish that biography of Selena Proudfoot?”
**
Hecate clenches her fists, nails biting into her palms. Fight it, she tells herself, just fight. But it’s as though she’s looking at herself from very far away.
She is compelled toward Algernon, she has to be nearer, stepping into his space even as she tries to force herself away. She’s rigid and tense, moving jerkily as she tries to force herself away. She could swear she is devoting her full energy to shouting at herself, to resisting. But as if through an echoing tunnel she hears herself saying things to him—things that, she is at least moderately relieved to hear, do not sound particularly amorous.
He transfers away. She expects to feel relief but instead is left with confusion, and the simulacrum of an aching, despairing emptiness. It isn’t real. Hecate knows all too well how it actually feels to love someone and lose them, and this sensation is shallow in comparison. She recognizes it as a spell, none too deftly executed, tells herself this cannot continue—yet her feet are taking her down the corridor against her will. She just wants it to stop, but instead she watches herself helplessly as she is driven to find him.
Later, when it finally stops, she is disoriented and confused. Spell hangover, some people call it. She remembers well enough, she thinks with a shudder—that feeling of repulsive attraction and the things it made her do—but still, there is a lingering sensation of lost time, and paralyzing fear around the edges of her mind, that she could have so little control over her own body.
Ada is there, with Mildred Hubble and Maud Spellbody, the three of them looking pleased. Hecate feels a flash of rage, but more strongly she just needs to be elsewhere, needs to be alone. She stumbles into the hallway and then transfers to her quarters, sinking into her armchair to collect herself.
Eight angry crescents line her palms, and two of her nails have broken from the force of her clenched fists.
**
With a rhythmic twitch of her fingers, Hecate turns the lamp on, off, on, off, late into the night. It’s a visible reminder that she can. She is whole again, the familiar hum of her magic running through her veins. She is mistress of herself again—yet her hands shake, and her breathing is still quick. She feels like she might crawl out of her own skin, and also like she can barely lift her heavy limbs.
Adrenaline got her through recalling the evacuated students and staff, through making a formal report to the council and handing over Miss Mould, through a Halloween celebration appearance that was just long enough to be polite. She does understand Ada’s impulse with the party; after a brush with disaster, wanting to celebrate life is natural enough. But Ada didn’t seem to notice people holding back: Mildred Hubble standing at the edge of the dancing, Ethel Hallow sulking in a corner, Felicity Foxglove dropping her smile in favor of an exhausted, haunted expression whenever she thought no one was looking.
Hecate escaped as soon as she decently could and is trying to rest, but her mind is still running wild, full of attraction potions and Ada’s inaction and her own helplessness and the ice, the ice, the ice.
The lamp comes on, goes off. This is her earliest memory of her own magic. Hecate remembers her childhood bedroom, dark and cold. She was afraid to get up to turn on a lamp. Afraid of the dark, perhaps, or afraid her father would hear her. And one night, she wished for the light and it came on. That was the beginning; as a very small girl, she could control the light. And now, decades later, it calms her. Light on, light off. It’s as easy as breathing.
Right now it’s also the thing keeping her grounded. Losing her magic was like losing her breath, her blood, all of her senses. The cold was terrible, but far worse was the feeling of emptiness, of being hollowed out. Hecate didn’t recognize herself without her magic; it felt like her body wasn’t hers at all, like she was entirely at the world’s mercy. And for one terrifying moment she thought she would be destined to spend the rest of her life like that.
Light on, light off.
She had to save the school; nothing else, and certainly not her own fear, could matter. Yet she hesitated. The moment came, and she was gasping for breath, trying to master her protesting body, and she let Ethel volunteer. It was Hecate’s own responsibility to sacrifice her magic, not any student’s, not even Ethel’s, however culpable she was. But Hecate needed a moment to quiet the panic that accompanied her decision, and she hesitated, and then there was ice and then nothing at all.
A witch makes things go her way, her father used to say. She imposes her will on everything around her.
The fire is burning high, she’s wrapped in her heaviest quilt, and her warming spell is robust—yet she still feels the ice, still fears the cold emptiness of a world she can’t control. Hecate takes a deep breath, then another. She turns her light on, then turns it off again.
**
When the Yule holidays finally arrive, Hecate surprises herself by accepting Pippa’s invitation to spend a few days at Pentangle’s. After the term they’ve had, she wants to get away from Cackle’s: away from the castle, away from the pupils, even—though it makes her feel guilty—away from Ada. Just for a little while, just long enough rest.
She had intended simply to go away, perhaps to an isolated cottage in the Welsh mountains she rents occasionally. But Pippa had asked, and Hecate found herself agreeing. She can’t pinpoint it, but somewhere in the recent, exhausting weeks, Hecate has begun to feel safer with Pippa than without her.
Hecate has always been good at being alone, has prided herself on needing nothing but her own magic. But in the aftermath of October, solitude haunts rather than comforts. Her magic is as strong as ever, but she remains somehow hollow and uncertain. She is afraid, and the fear tastes like ice and looks like blankness, like memories magically erased.
In comparison, her fear of the wild freefall that accompanies Pippa is manageable, even welcome. Instead of emptiness, Pippa makes her feel too much, messy and unregulated impulses that Hecate can’t bring into line. Someday this will all spill out, and the idea terrifies her. But there is also something in Pippa’s smile that reassures her, that reminds her of the little girl who caught her hand during a game of witchball and didn’t let go. The world no longer feels solid, but if she really is falling, perhaps Pippa will also be there to catch her.
On the second day of her visit the afternoon edition of the Midlands Witching Herald brings the report of Marigold Mould’s trial. Convicted of criminal conspiracy but, given extenuating circumstances, sentenced to time served and released to live in the ordinary world.
“Oh,” Hecate exclaims as she reads. It’s unintentional, and to her own ears it sounds like she’s been punched. Pippa looks up in alarm, moves to read the paper over Hecate’s shoulder.
Pippa knows the outline of what happened, of course, but there’s so much Hecate hasn’t known how to share. She isn’t sure if it would be worse if Pippa has guessed how difficult the events of Halloween were for Hecate or if she hasn’t. Pippa’s fingers are feather light on Hecate’s shoulder, and Hecate fights the urge to take Pippa’s hand.
“Hecate,” Pippa begins—
“I think I’ll take a walk while there’s still some light,” Hecate says abruptly, and transfers away.
The light is fading quickly, and it’s cold—far too cold for Hecate to be comfortable without the coat she hadn’t considered in her haste. Her instinct is a warming spell. A witch makes things go her way. But she stops, hesitating. She could melt all the ice she encounters for the rest of her life. But that, in its own way, would be weakness. She has always sought to control, but if she bends the world around her because she is afraid, is that control or surrender?
She closes her eyes against the winter dusk of the Pentangle’s garden and feels the cold, gives in to the memory: Cackle’s freezing over, her own body stiff and unfamiliar without her magic, Ada’s inaction, her own hesitation, Ethel’s stalling, and the ice.
And then it was all over. Thanks, as ever, to Mildred Hubble, Hecate thinks ruefully. And thanks to Marigold Mould, who has given up her magic and is exiled. The newspaper reported the sentence as though it were a mercy; to Hecate it sounds like a terrible punishment. The memory of her helplessness that afternoon claws at Hecate and still regularly haunts her dreams.
Though even Marigold’s fate is better, Hecate supposes, than spending decades as a frog, or being trapped indefinitely in a picture. A witch makes things go her way, unless her way is at odds with someone more powerful. Hecate always hoped if she were the most skilled, the most powerful, the most devoted to the code, nothing could touch her.
But there is an afternoon she can’t remember, only the smell of roses and a few notes of a song around the edges of the blank space in her mind. There are attraction potions, and transformations both mistaken and intentional, and friendship traps masquerading as discipline. There is Agatha, with all her atrocities. No amount of power can prevent Hecate from being hopelessly entangled with other people and mired in these casual cruelties.
She shudders. They’ve had seven weeks of relative peace. Why can’t she bring herself back to normal?
She hears soft footsteps behind her, and a moment later, Pippa wraps a warm coat around Hecate’s shoulders. Hecate burrows into it and leans a little into Pippa’s space.
“Are you okay?” Pippa asks.
Hecate shrugs. No, she thinks, choking on everything she almost feels able to say.
Hecate shivers despite the coat, and Pippa moves closer, looping an arm through Hecate’s and pulling her close. It’s dark now, but the moon is out, and Pippa’s hair shines white. Like ice. But even on a winter’s night, Pippa is warm and solid as she reaches for Hecate’s hand. Hecate takes a breath and holds on.