I nodded. She gave me a sad smile, patted my arm once more, then turned and walked away into the night.
FIFTY-ONE
By the time I arrived at the clubhouse, waving shakily to Keisha at the security desk, most of the more casual members were trickling out. I looked toward Libby’s favorite table in the corner. She wasn’t there. I wondered if she’d been back to the clubhouse at all since the moment she had realized my betrayal. Maybe it was a good thing for her to give up on this nest of vipers. She could make better, safer friends by taking an improv class or joining an after-work softball team. Vy wasn’t around either. If she couldn’t be part of the Coven, she would never come back.
I made small talk with the sparkling women who had passed all the tests that Caroline and Margot had set for them and who continued to toe the line, to perform and shine and pay their dues so that they could wrap themselves up in the exclusivity that Nevertheless conferred. So that they could feel that they were special. Better. That they mattered more.
The clubhouse was lifeless without Libby and Vy there.
As the final members who didn’t belong to the inner circle said their good-byes, I put my phone on silent and sent a text to Miles. We’re about to head upstairs. Margot appeared at my side. “Ready for this?” she asked in a quiet voice. I nodded, and she gave my hand a squeeze. Before I’d really gotten to know her, when she’d seemed all surety and ease, I would have bet anything that Margot’s palms had never sweat in her life. But now her hand was as clammy as mine.
Caroline unlocked the second door and we filed through, walking down the short hallway to the freight elevator. The energy was different tonight than it normally was, less excited and more nervous, some of us preoccupied with our own impending betrayals, others perhaps thinking of the discomfort that had happened the last time we’d all assembled on this roof.
When the freight elevator let us off in the antechamber, we changed into our robes quietly. As the speedy, impatient ones among us dropped their phones into the bucket and opened the door to the roof, I took my own phone out to give Miles a ten-minute warning before turning it off. But he was already typing something.
We’re at the entrance to the alley, but there’s a woman in it. Can’t tell if she’s security, or casing the joint herself. I stared at his words. What the fuck?
Another message came through: She looks like a Viking, crossed with a ghost?
Dammit. Vy. What was she doing there? Margot was sitting on a bench against the wall, taking her shoes off. I sat down next to her to take off my own, then leaned over and said, quietly, “Hey, have you talked to Vy recently?”
Margot’s eyes darted toward the rest of the group. Then she looked down at her laces and said, out of the corner of her mouth, “She’s not taking my calls. I texted that I had a plan for getting her invited back tonight, if she wanted to come to the neighborhood just in case. But she hasn’t responded.” She stood up and put her phone in the bucket, then headed to the door, her robe swirling as she walked.
I thought quickly and sent Vy a text. FYI plan’s not going to work tonight, so I wouldn’t bother coming to the neighborhood. We’re going to try next week instead.
I looked down at the screen. No response, no little dots that meant she was even starting to type. If she was angry with Margot, she was probably livid with me too, for being so obvious about what she’d put in her tea at Samhain. Maybe she thought I’d tattled on her to Caroline. I sent another text. Also, I didn’t mean to out you with the shrooms, and I’m really sorry if that contributed to you getting kicked out.
Still no response. Fuck. What if she didn’t have her phone on her, or she was wary of trusting me? “Are you coming, Jillian?” Caroline called from the doorway, a strange edge to her voice. Everyone else had already filed out onto the roof.
“Sorry, yes!” I said, standing up quickly. We had to get evidence tonight. There was no telling what would happen, how badly things might blow up, when Margot made her stand. Maybe Caroline would retain her control, and I’d never be invited up here again. Maybe the Coven would tear itself apart. I turned toward the bucket as if to put my phone in it. But instead, moving as fast as I could, I pulled up my voice recording app, pressed record, and slipped the phone into the pocket of my robe. Just in case Miles and the fact-checker couldn’t make it up to the roof, at least there would be some record.
“Well, come on,” Caroline said, holding the door. I followed her out, stopping to slip a piece of cardboard over the automatic lock like I’d promised Miles.
Already, the fire that some of the women had built was starting to roar, and they were assembling in a circle, reaching out their hands to one another, a few of them beginning to take the deep breaths that we would all breathe together to begin the worship.
Caroline took her place next to Margot, the tension between them crackling in the air, but she didn’t reach out her hands. “Stop the breathing for a moment,” she said, looking around the circle, her red hair glimmering in the firelight, strands of it lifting and dancing in the wind. “Before we begin, we have something we
