Alice was a tornado now, ready to destroy everything in her path. “This cast death upon us last time. It will again. Do you even understand? Do you know what that means?”

“Alice, calm down. We have to keep our cool,” I said. “Like we’ve done for the last thirteen years. And everything will be fine.”

“You pushed her.” Alice thrust a finger wildly into the air. “You did it. Not us. You killed her.”

As I knocked her hand away, a crashing sound came from behind me. I twisted around in the direction of Alice’s beehives. Someone was rushing away, through the woods.

“What the hell was that?” Bettina said loudly.

I didn’t wait for the others.

HALLOWEEN

Maybe Daphne pauses here on the bridge. Maybe she looks up, or over, into the blackness on all sides of her. Maybe she thinks about the time she was babysitting Nora in the Hendrickses’ house and, when the little girl fell asleep, came across the expensive, long, green, glamorous coat that Jacqueline Hendricks had bought in New York City. How she’d tried it on, twirling around in the full-length mirror. It had fit so perfectly.

Maybe she hears something, out there in the dark woods, and thinks it will save her.

Or maybe instead she thinks about her baby, and how she left her fast asleep in a crib with another witch.

“Have you been sleeping with all of them, Daphne?” asks Kendra, the Queen Bee, who relies on her each and every day to take care of her two boys.

And take care of them she does, better than their own mother.

“We’ve trusted you. With our homes. With our children.”

“With our husbands,” Jacqueline adds.

“And you liked it,” says Kendra. “Too much.”

Don’t get too close, Daphne. Jacqueline Hendricks is all piss and fire, but it’s just a show. Kendra is the one to fear. This witch has something poisonous running straight through her veins.

“I see the way you look at my husband, Daphne,” she says. “I see the way you treat my boys. Like they are yours.”

The monster inside Kendra, green, envious, has been unleashed. There is no stopping it now.

Daphne shakes her head, alarmed. She is twisting, whirling around. Looking for an escape.

Alas, there is no escape.

“Tell us!” Kendra yells. Her voice a shot through the woods, bouncing off the trees.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Daphne says. “Nothing. I need to get back to the children.”

“Oh I bet you do. To my children? No, thank you. You think you are so good at this, don’t you? You think this is all easy?”

“No, I—”

“Half the time you just sit them in front of the television. Leave all the bad bits to me.”

“They love you. You’re their mother.”

“Oh? There’s a surprise, since I heard you telling them to call you that.”