The Last of the Moon Girls

around the room, she recognized nothing. The furniture, the art on the walls, even the reflection staring back at her from the darkened window seemed to belong to someone else—a stranger pretending to be Lizzy Moon.
Over the years, the city had polished her rough edges, leaving no sign of the girl who’d run barefoot through her grandmother’s fields, gathering herbs until her fingers were stained, her nails gritty with New England soil. But then, that was why she’d come to New York: to rid herself of that girl. To live like other people. A plain, round peg in a plain, round hole. No surprises. No suspicions. No secret book with her name on it. Just . . . normal. And it had worked, mostly. She’d come a long way since leaving Salem Creek. But was there such a thing as too long? Was it possible to walk away so completely that you lost yourself in the process?
She drained her glass and headed to the kitchen for a refill. She was on the verge of a good wallow; she could feel it. But she couldn’t afford to become nostalgic, or forget what had ultimately driven her from Salem Creek.
Eight years ago, a pair of teenage girls had failed to return home at curfew. Hours turned to days, days to weeks. Heather and Darcy Gilman had simply vanished.
It had taken less than twenty-four hours for Althea’s name to be raised as the likely culprit. It was hardly a surprise. Anytime anything went wrong—an early blizzard, a freak high tide, an outbreak of measles—the Moons were somehow to blame. Many claimed to speak in jest, but for those in certain circles, the rumors held a ring of truth. What Salem Creek lacked in worldly pretentions, it more than made up for with arcane superstitions and gaudy displays of religious fervor. The disappearance of the Gilman girls proved no exception.
A hotline had been set up and the press descended. Vigils were held, complete with Bibles, candles, flowers, and teddy bears. And then, just when the furor was beginning to die down, there’d been a knock at the door. Someone had called in an anonymous tip, claiming to have seen Althea dragging the girls, one at a time, into the pond, and then burying something nearby.
A warrant had been issued, a pair of small straw poppets found. Voodoo dolls, the paper had called them, because they bore an eerie resemblance to the missing girls, right down to the color of the coats they’d been wearing the night they disappeared. But they hadn’t been buried as the tipster claimed, only left out under a full moon, along with a small cloth bag of salt and caraway seeds. A protection ritual, Althea had explained to police, an offering to help guide the girls safely home to their parents.
They’d searched the pond next. An hour later, the bodies of Heather and Darcy Gilman had been dragged up from the bottom while half the town watched from behind a line of yellow crime tape. The ME’s findings hadn’t been long in coming: a fractured skull for one girl, a broken neck for the other. Both homicide.
Decades-old rumors resurfaced with a vengeance, sometimes whispered, sometimes not. Spells, potions, naked rituals held at full moon. Virgin sacrifices. Many circulated by people who’d known Althea all their lives. There wasn’t a shred of real evidence, which was why no case had ever been brought, but that hadn’t stopped the tongues from wagging. Or prevented the good people of Salem Creek from holding a candlelight vigil—one nearly half the town had shown up for—to pray away the evil in their midst. Innocent until proven guilty—unless your name was Moon.
And now the woman they’d suspected of murder was dead. Had there been a sigh of relief? A day of feasting proclaimed by the mayor?
Ding-dong, the witch is dead?
Yes. Definitely wallowing now, and maybe just a little bit tipsy. She should probably scare up something to eat, but the idea held little appeal. Instead, she headed down the hall with her purse and her newly filled glass, intent on a long, hot soak before bed.
She tossed her purse on the bed and peeled out of her clothes, then turned to retrieve her wineglass from the nightstand. The contents of her purse had spilled out over the comforter, including the journal Evangeline Broussard had sent along with her letter. The sight of it hit her like a blow to the solar plexus, the kind that doubled you up even when you knew it was coming.
Althea was gone.
Grief overwhelmed her as she sagged onto the bed and picked up the book, her tears so hot and jagged she nearly missed the sheet of paper that slid from between the pages and into her lap. She blinked at it, her tears shuddering to a sudden halt. The words were splotchy in places, but there was no mistaking Althea’s taut script.
My dearest Lizzy,
If you’re reading this letter, you know that I’m gone, and why I asked for your book to be sent. Your happiness was all I ever wanted—and all I want for you still—but it would be a lie to say I didn’t hope that happiness would be found at Moon Girl Farm. I’ve never stopped wishing you home, wishing that one day you would come back to the land we both love so well, and to the Path the Moons have walked for generations. You showed such promise as a girl, so many gifts. But you were afraid of being different—of being special. You wanted so badly to be like everyone else that you were willing to throw away those gifts. But gifts like yours can’t be thrown away. They’re in you still, waiting to be called up. Waiting for you to come home. Ours is a long and undiluted line, but I fear that line will soon be broken, our legacy lost forever. You’re all that’s left now, the last and best of us. But there are still