Iris uncovered her ears. “Does anyone hear that?” she whispered.
“Yeah. What the hex? Is someone in there?” Binx replied.
“Maybe it’s coming from somewhere else… you know, like a real house with real people in it,” Iris said hopefully.
“I know that piece. It’s by Schubert. ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen,’” Ridley said, looking confused.
“Doesn’t the word tod mean death in German?” Greta asked.
“Um, yeah. The translation is ‘Death and the Maiden.’”
“What a stupid title for a song,” Binx remarked.
“Death and the Maiden.” A wave of dizziness swept over Iris. Tiny electric zaps buzzed at her brain.
“Iris?” Greta touched her arm.
A woman’s voice joined in with the piano music. She sang in German, her words low and heavy.
“Seriously, where is that creepy caterwauling coming from?” Binx demanded.
From somewhere far away, a dog began howling mournfully. Iris squeezed her eyes shut. The electric zaps were more intense now. She felt sick, delirious. Her feet—had they been hypnotized? Enchanted?—began moving toward the house. The singer’s voice and the piano music twined around each other and grew louder. The smell of roses was almost sickly sweet in its intensity.
Something—a force field? a magical barrier?—stopped Iris when she got close to the house. Greta and Ridley and Binx slammed into it, too. It wasn’t transparent but manifested as a field of translucent gray, like some sort of mechanical fog.
“What is that?” Binx exclaimed. She stepped back and aimed her wand forward. “Elido!” she ordered.
Nothing happened.
Greta held out her wand, too. So did Ridley. So did Iris.
“Elido!” they all commanded at the same time.
It worked. Shards of gray light and shadow rained upon them, stinging and hissing. The four witches rushed up to a narrow opening in the Sheetrocked walls and shined their wandlights inside.
A person lay on the ground, eyes staring up blankly at the ceiling beams and the twilight sky. A young woman. A teenager.
A golden cat lay next to her.
“Gofflesby!” Greta shouted.
“Penelope!” Ridley, Binx, and Iris shouted at the same time.
Greta squeezed through the narrow opening and hurried inside. Binx, then Ridley, then Iris hurried in after her. The eerie German music swarmed at them and smothered their ears. The rose fragrance mingled with the smells of sawdust and roof tar.
Greta rushed over to Gofflesby and scooped him up with a cry. His eyelids fluttered, and he meowed weakly at her.
Ridley bent over Penelope and gently touched the side of her neck.
“Guys? She’s…” Her voice caught in her throat. “Penelope’s… dead.”
Greta leaned forward, still cradling Gofflesby; he was awake now and blinking up at her. “What?”
“She’s… oh my god…” Ridley’s words dissolved into wild sobs. Binx wrapped her arms around her.
And then they all saw it at the same time.
A shadow message on the ground, near Penelope’s body. The words, in glossy black ink, said:
YOU AND YOUR KIND DON’T BELONG HERE.
Then the words began to shimmer and fade away. A few seconds later, a new message emerged in curly script, the ink glittering and purple:
I’m so ashamed of who I am. Please forgive me. Goodbye.
A suicide note?
The German song was fading to a close. “Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen!” the invisible woman sang—except it wasn’t a woman anymore, it was a man.
Iris knew a little German, too, from her old school. Softly shall you sleep in my arms.
Death was singing to the maiden.
Death had claimed poor Penelope. Death and who else?
Iris swayed, on the brink of fainting. She fell to her knees and grasped her smiley-face moon pendant. But its light was gone. The darkness had extinguished it… extinguished everything.
A crow sat above them on a ceiling beam, watching.
PART 2A MURDER OF CROWS
A murder of crows is a poetic term that describes a group of crows, like a flock of birds or a gaggle of geese. The use of the word murder here has several interpretations. One interpretation comes from a folktale that suggests that crows will sometimes come together to decide on the fate of a single crow—as in, should it live or should it die?
(FROM THE GRIMOIRE OF DIVINITY FLORESCU)
21 SYSTEM CRASH
Someone is always watching.
(FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)
“Thank you for coming in to see me.”
Mrs. Feathers, the school social worker, waved Iris and Greta and Binx into her office. They took the couch while she sat down on… was that a big old yoga ball? Weird.
Binx glanced around the room. The shelves were crammed with books that had titles like The Power of Positivity and Dare to Dream and The Self-Esteem Workbook for Teens. A bright yellow wall clock on the wall indicated that it was eight a.m. Another clock next to it had mood words instead of numbers. HAPPY, SAD, MAD, and so on. (CALM seemed to be in the eight o’clock space. Yeah, no.)
Binx wondered how old Mrs. Feathers was; it was hard to tell, with her grayish-blond hair and makeup-less face. Her mom’s age, maybe? Or older? Or younger? Her frump-chic outfit screamed L.L.Bean outlet and grandma hand-me-downs. (The school social worker from last year had not been a fashionista, either, preferring cargo pants and T-shirts with sayings like YOU’VE GOT THIS!)
“Will your friend be joining us?” Mrs. Feathers glanced at a clipboarded form on her lap. “Ridley Stone?”
“She’s out sick today,” Binx explained. She eyed the new doge backpack at her feet—her phone was in there—but decided to wait. It probably wasn’t cool to be texting in Mrs. Feathers’s office. As soon as they were done with this group-therapy crisis-intervention sesh, though, she would send Ridley another text. The girl had been holed up at her house since Friday night, saying she had the flu or something and didn’t want to be bothered. Binx had been checking in with her regularly all weekend but gotten no further responses. She was worried; she didn’t
