Lils was sitting on the floor of the Phillips Library, between the tall stacks in the local history section. Golden light spilled through the high windows, and somewhere nearby, a cart squeaked... it was a book cart, the librarian was doing her rounds. The air smelled like old books and the cinnamon of Stevon’s latte.
Stevon was beside her, hunched over his sketchbook. His tongue was poking out the corner of his mouth the way it always did when he was focused.
He turned the sketchbook toward her. “Tell me this isn’t what you were picturing."
It was the crossroads page. Witch Roads, chapter fourteen, the one they’d cracked open at the Gulu Gulu on that last day. It was their character Fiona, standing at the branching point with both worlds spilling away from her.
The living road was green and verdant, and the dead road bone-pale and purple. The crow on her shoulder was caught half in feather and half in skeleton, alive on one side and seemingly dead on the other. He’d finally drawn it, and it had turned out better than she’d imagined.
“Stevon,” she said. “That’s...”
“Too dark?” He grinned.
“No, it’s perfect.”
She laughed and it felt strange in her chest, like it had been bottled down deep for a long, long time.
Her best friend was beside her drawing their comic, on an ordinary summer Tuesday with nowhere in particular to be.
“You always said she didn’t have to choose,” Lils said, tracing the branches with a finger. “With Fiona, I mean. Living or dead. You said she could stay in the in-between as long as she had the crow with her.”
"You said that, remember?” He nudged her with his shoulder. “So that’s what I drew.”
“Right.” She frowned. Something pulled at the edge of her vision. “I think I remember.”
A shadow fell over the page.
“There you are,” Lucy said, exasperated.
She was standing at the end of the stacks in her oversized Shrek shirt, hair a mess, like she’d just rolled out of bed. She dropped down onto the carpet and threw her arms around Lils’s neck before Lils could even turn, and she smelled like banana bread and home.
“You’re squishing me, Luce.”
“I don’t care.” Lucy held on tighter. “You’re so hard to reach. We keep trying and trying.” She pulled back and looked at Lils seriously. “Did you get it? We sent you a crow.”
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“A crow?” Lils repeated.
“With a note." Lucy said it slowly, like Lils was being dense on purpose. “Aunt Ivy did the whole spell. Holly read everything. We sent you a crow with a note and you have to read it, Lils, it’s important, it’s the most important thing, and you have to read it."
Lils felt her vision go blurry on the sides again.
The light was pouring through a single high slit in a stone wall and Stevon was beside her, but Stevon was—
“You’re dead,” Lils said softly.
Stevon kept drawing. “Yeah,” he said, gentle about it. “I was waiting for you to figure that one out."
“You died last year.” Her voice was wobbling now, the dream going thin and translucent around the edges, the library showing the jail through it like a slide held up to a window. “And I’m not at the library. I’m in… Stevon, I think I’m in trouble.”
“Hey Lils.” He looked up again and his eyes weren’t solely brown anymore. They were now gold-lit and otherworldly, but his voice was still his. “There she is. Took you long enough to wake up.”
“Lils, listen to me. Focus,” Lucy grabbed her hands, and her grip felt so real. “The crow with the note. What did it say?”
“It said... it said Ostara." She thought for a moment. “It’s the equinox, right? It’s the—wait, Lucy, what do I do? I’m locked up, and the trial is—” Lucy shook her head, fading away helplessly in front of Lils.
Lils turned to Stevon, desperate now, the way she used to turn to him for everything, for math homework help and crush advice. And then there was the night after his funeral, when she had tried to summon him from the dead, but couldn’t. “Tell me what to do, I know you know. Tell me how to get out of here, how to get home!”
Stevon reached over and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, the way he had a thousand times, and he felt warm and real and actually here. He handed her his pen.
“You already know the way back, Lils,” he said. “You wrote it.”
The branching roads on the page began to glow.
“Stay in the in-between,” he whispered. “Until—”
A boot connected with her foot, and suddenly the library shattered around her like dropped glass.
Lils came up gasping, the cold slamming back into her body all at once. And then the pain hit her next, her foot where the boot had connected, her wrists raw where the rope had been.
The guard stood over her, a thick-necked man holding metal cuffs. His face was almost bored-looking, just a man doing his job before breakfast.
“On thy feet, Proctor.”
“Wait,” Her mouth was bone dry. She was still shaking off the dream and heard Stevon’s voice still echoing in her ear. “Wait, what time is it...?”
“I said up, Proctor girl." He hauled her by the arm before she could get her legs under her, and her shoulder wrenched painfully. She heard a rustle of straw and saw Bridget sitting up, her face grim in the half-dark from the far corner of the cell.
“Gently, you big ox,” Bridget said. “She’s not a sack of grain.”
“Hold thy tongue, Bishop, or thou’lt be next out that door.” But Lils felt his grip loosen just a fraction.
“Where are you taking me?” Lils got her feet down, the packed earth freezing through the thin soles of her stockings. They’d taken her boots. When had they taken her boots?
“Aye, to court, to answer for thyself.” The guard pulled her toward the door, and the morning beyond it was full of the sound of a crowd already gathering. “The magistrate is already seated. The girls will be along soon to give witness against thee.”
The examination. Her examination.
Bridget’s eyes found hers across the cell, and she held them. Lils heard the advice that the older woman gave her last night echo in her head: Keep thy head and hold thy tongue. Give them nothing.
Lils thought about Ostara, the equinox, nearly upon her. They were coming for her. Aunt Ivy and Holly and Lucy were somehow working their magic, and all Lils had to do was survive long enough to reach a crossroads on the right night.
All she had to do was not be hanged.
Stay in the in-between, Stevon had said. Until.
The guard shoved her through the door and into the cold Salem streets. And Lilith Proctor lifted her chin and walked toward Old Salem Meetinghouse, toward her trial.