Late February 2026
Salem, Massachusetts
Eliza and Aunt Ivy stepped through the doorway after arriving home from downtown. Eliza was still thinking about Becca’s smile, and she touched her lips imagining their kiss, her fingers brushing her lips for a moment. Three months of hanging out with (and occasionally kissing) Becca at various spots downtown under the guise of studying, and she still got butterflies every time they were together.
“Thank God you’re both back,” Holly called out from the living room, urgency in her voice. “I found something while you were gone.” Eliza pulled her boots off and followed Aunt Ivy into the room.
Papers covered the coffee table, scattered about. Holly’s silver-streaked hair was pulled into a messy bun, and her large brown reading spectacles made her resemble an owl. She looked up as Eliza and Aunt Ivy entered, eyes bright with excitement.
"Good lord Holly, I was gone for a half hour!" Aunt Ivy exclaimed, exasperated but clearly impressed.
Holly shoved a few papers in her hand, and it wasn't long before Aunt Ivy recognized the spidery handwriting.
“Is that—?”
“Yes!" Holly continued excitedly. "Lucy found a box in the attic earlier today. I finally got around to going through it... and...well,” Holly took back the single page from Ivy, hands trembling. “I found this in a binder of your old grad school notes, can you believe? You must have photocopied pages of the grimoire back in the early ’90s when you were working on your dissertation about blood magic, judging by the paper."
Ivy took the page carefully, examining it, amused, as if it was a lost artifact from another time. The paper was thin, but Eliza could still read the words. Latin mixed with something older, symbols drawn in margins.
Sanguis ad sanguinem. Blood to blood.
“This is the missing page. It's the blood spell Lilith ripped out and used, no question.”
“You really think so?” Holly crossed to stand next to Ivy, her hand finding the small of Aunt Ivy’s back. “The spell can only be used during a liminal time.”
“Liminal?” Eliza tested the unfamiliar word.
“It means 'between.'” Holly gestured to the page. “Day and night. Life and death. Between worlds, even.” She paused. Aunt Ivy chimed in. “Lils went to the cemetery on Halloween night. If you’re going to capture the attention of a Crossroads Keeper, that’s the liminal night you do it.”
Eliza felt nauseous.
“She must have been desperate,” Holly continued. “The spell is meant to call across the veil between the living and the dead. But it also requires a blood offering... Lils would have had to spill her own blood."
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“And we share blood.” Eliza set the page down carefully on the coffee table. Around it, other papers showed scribbled notes in Aunt Ivy’s scrawled handwriting. “And we also share a face, from what I can tell.”
“A Crossroads Keeper was summoned, so your similarities are not insignificant,” Aunt Ivy said. “It shouldn’t have worked—this kind of magic is more theoretical, or so I thought. Lils somehow managed to get a Keeper to crack reality wide enough to pull you through and send herself back in time."
Holly picked up another page covered in symbols. “Impressive, really.”
Ivy cleared her throat. “The problem is the exchange. To reverse it, we need the same conditions. Blood offered at a crossroads during a liminal time, with clear intent.”
“But we don’t know when the next liminal time is,” Holly said. “It could be another holiday. Could very well be next Halloween—”
“It's the vernal equinox, Holly,” Aunt Ivy said quietly. "It has to be."
Eliza stared. “The vernal what?”
“The spring equinox.” Aunt Ivy’s expression shifted, as if remembering something half-forgotten. “March twentieth, when day and night are equal, and winter finally turns over to spring.”
Holly’s eyes widened. “That’s only three weeks away.”
“And what about the witch trials!?” Lucy’s voice rang out from the staircase. “Lils will have to be in the witch trials unless you get her sooner!”
“Lucille Marie Proctor, I told you not to eavesdrop anymore!” Aunt Ivy glared up at the stairs. Lucy yelped, and the staircase creaked as she darted back to her room.
Holly turned back to Eliza. “But she has a point. If Lils is still there when the trials start, she’ll have to face them. Unless she finds a way out.”
The room fell silent except for the refrigerator’s hum and distant traffic outside.
“We need to prepare,” Aunt Ivy said finally. “If the equinox is our window, we have one chance to get this right.”
“We need to contact Lils, right?” Eliza said. “Tell her to be at the cemetery at the spring equinox.”
“We’ve been trying different ways to reach her.” Aunt Ivy gestured to her phone. “I even left a note in our shared Google doc if by some miracle she can access it. Something is blocking everything else we attempt. Scrying doesn’t work, candles just burn normal. It’s like she’s behind a wall.”
“Then we must gather the supplies needed for reversal, and keep trying until then.” Eliza said resolutely.
“Yes, we’ll get her back,” Aunt Ivy said. “We'll get both of you back to where you belong.”
But Eliza was asking herself the same question she had been since the night she’d tasted banana bread for the first time: Did she even want to go back? Did she want the reversal to work, or was she secretly hoping it failed?
Holly must have seen something in her face, because she crossed the room and took Eliza’s hand. Her palm was warm and smooth, gentle in contrast to Eliza's calloused hand.
“Hey, you don’t have to decide anything tonight,” she said quietly. “But you should think about it. Really, truly. Because the spell requires intent from both parties. You have to want to switch back with Lils.”
“And what if...” Eliza swallowed hard. “What if I don’t want to?"
No one answered, but Holly and Aunt Ivy’s expressions both softened in understanding and they exchanged a quick glance.
Outside, the dark of the Salem night deepened. Somewhere in the past, three hundred years away, Lilith was living Eliza’s life, now hiding from the same men who’d originally hunted Eliza through the fall woods.
And Eliza stood in a warm house full of electric lights and caring women, with fresh food and water whenever she wanted, feeling the ghost of Becca’s kiss still tingling on her lips.
Three weeks until the equinox, three weeks to decide which life she wanted to claim as her own.
“Can you explain the spell fully?” she said finally, looking back over at Holly and Aunt Ivy. “I want to understand exactly what we’ll be doing.”
Aunt Ivy smiled, looking sadly proud. “That’s very Proctor of you.”
“Is it?” Eliza looked down at her borrowed clothes. She wasn't sure what being a Proctor even meant for her right now.
They clustered around the coffee table, papers rustling while Holly explained the intricacies of blood magic. Something shifted in Eliza’s chest. Not the pull of the spell... that was constant, a low hum she’d learned to live with. This was different.
Aunt Ivy with her protectiveness, Holly with her gentleness, even Lucy eavesdropping from upstairs... they felt more like family than anyone in her own time ever had.
And in three weeks, she’d have to choose which family she was going to keep.