Page 61 of A Lullaby for Witches

On a whim, Augusta picked up her phone and scrolled through her contacts before hitting Call. It rang several times before a woman’s low, rich voice answered.

“Gussie? Why are you calling me? Phones have this amazing feature now where you can just type your message.” Maureen paused, Augusta’s former coworker’s flirtatious energy permeating through the screen. “Unless you just wanted to hear my voice?”

Augusta launched right into it. “Have you started your criminology program yet? Do you know anything about body decomposition or how to find a body?”

There was silence on the other end of the line, and then: “Augusta Podos, do I need to be concerned?”

“Hypothetically.”

“Uh-huh. Well, if you’re planning on body hunting you better invite me.”

“It’s hypothetical. I’m just curious.”

“You know Google is a thing, right?”

“Maybe you were right the first time and I just wanted to hear your voice.” Augusta couldn’t help herself; her inhibitions were falling away faster than her nerves could catch up.

“Gussie. Stop it. You’re going to make me blush.” Maureen gave a dramatic sigh. “Okay, fine. Tell me what you want to know.”

Giving an account of being buried without including the firsthand experience of her episode turned out to be harder than she thought, so she opted for vagueness. “I’m trying to figure out where someone might be buried. Someone from a long time ago.”

“Okay,” Maureen said slowly. “Most towns have records of that kind of thing. Have you tried that?”

Augusta shook her head impatiently, even though Maureen couldn’t see her. “It wasn’t recorded, and I’m pretty sure it was an unmarked grave somewhere other than a cemetery. I know that there are trees around the area, and I don’t think it’s a very deep grave because...well, it doesn’t matter why.”

Maureen mused on this. “If it’s not a deep grave it could mean that whoever did the digging was planning to move the body later to another location. Skulls are the first thing to appear in dirt when it’s disturbed by human activity or erosion, so if someone really knew what they were doing they could have buried the corpse head-down—foot bones are small and harder to see. But if it was an amateur or they were scared of being caught in the act, they could have just done a sloppy job.” There was a drawn-out pause on the other end of the call. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but—maybe if you have this kind of information about a burial, you should call the police?”

“I’m not calling the police. It’s a historical murder, and it’s been forgotten for over a century. Besides, it’s all hypothetical.”

“Hypothetical. Right.”

There was silence. Her mind was spinning. Margaret wanted to be found—why else would she have shown Augusta everything that had happened to her?—but she had never shown Augusta where she was buried. Was it possible that Margaret herself didn’t know? Would Augusta just have to go out into the woods and hope to stumble on a skull? It was like searching for a gruesome needle in a haystack. “I have to get going, but thanks for the info.”

“Sure. But before you go—are you doing all right? You sound...different.”

Augusta hadn’t been aware that she sounded anything other than like herself. Was it because she wasn’t the same shy, insecure girl that had worked at the Old Jail? Or was it because she hardly had the time or patience for anything besides Margaret anymore? “Yeah, I’m fine.”

The pause that followed was a heavy one. “I miss working with you, Gussie,” Maureen said softly. “We should hang out sometime.”

If she hadn’t been so single-mindedly focused on Margaret, Augusta would have been touched and relished the chance to spend some time with Maureen. How many times had she felt alone and friendless, when there were people right in front of her who had just been waiting for her to let them in? But she had Margaret now, and even Leo was proving too much of a distraction from what was important.

“Yeah, definitely,” Augusta told her. “Let’s set something up.” But as she said it, she knew that the time had passed.

Augusta could feel the critical gaze of her mother on her at the dinner table that night. She didn’t want to be sitting in the linoleum-tiled kitchen or pushing around microwaved lasagna. She didn’t want to be making small talk about her job or listening to her mother recount the neighborhood gossip. All she wanted to do was be with Margaret again. TobeMargaret again. Margaret had unfinished business, and she felt the restlessness, the urgency in her own bones.

With a huff, her mother put her fork down and gave her a hard look. “So, how long are you going to sit there ignoring everything I say?”

Augusta hadn’t even realized her mother had been speaking. “What?”

“What’s going on? You’ve been in a foul mood since you got home.”

“I am not in a foul mood.”

“Yes, you are.” Her mother crossed her arms, giving her a look that usually would have sent Augusta running. “You’re like a sulky teenager.”

“How come we never talk about our family? How come you’re so afraid of facing the fact that Dad died, and we never do anything to remember him?”

“What are you talking about? Of course I remember your father.”

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