The Witches of Cambridge

Amid the increasing paranoia of the McCarthy era, which the students liken to a modern witch hunt, the Lilith Society begins meeting in secret. Now isolated from her friends, Lauren sees a painting of herself by Carrick in the window of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop and, not wanting to risk falling in love, works a forgetting spell so it will be as if she had never walked past. Deciding to pursue a man she cannot love, she performs a black magic love spell on her anthropology professor, Eugene Sharpe. Sharpe promptly dismisses his current research assistant, Emily Bright, and offers the position to Lauren, beginning an affair. Lauren spends her afternoons cataloging magical artifacts in the storerooms of the Peabody Museum. In a brief kitchen encounter, Emily tells Lauren that Sharpe did not care for her and doubts he will care for Lauren either. During their affair, Sharpe ties Lauren’s wrists ritualistically, but she easily escapes using a spell, which impresses him. After another spell reveals Carrick as her true love in a dream, Lauren visits his studio to have her new grimoire decorated. He stamps the word “Magic” in gold on the cover. Carrick notices marks on her throat and tells her not to return unless she can tell him the word he is looking for.

Ava finds Emily Bright sobbing in a bathroom. Emily reveals she had been involved with Professor Sharpe and that Lauren is his new partner. Shortly after, Emily disappears from Lilith House without a trace. Her distraught family blames the house, calling it cursed and convincing the incoming initiates to withdraw. Meanwhile, Lauren’s brother, Lionel Bell, finds her at the museum covered in red ocher—a powder used in funeral rites—and grows deeply concerned she is involved with someone dangerous. Detective Billy Healy begins staking out Lilith House as part of his investigation into the disappearances—though also hoping to get closer to Lionel through his sister, Lauren. Lauren confronts him in his car, suggesting that he must be in love with her since he seems to be following her, a claim he denies. He tells her that he wants to help her find her missing friends and that she can trust him because he knows what she is. Billy follows Lauren to a café, where she meets Lionel. It is revealed that Lionel and Billy know each other from Lionel’s past arrests at secret gay bars, where Billy acted sympathetically. Lionel reads tarot cards for the case, telling Billy he must choose the right path to find what he is looking for. Lauren realizes Lionel is in love with Billy and warns him of the danger of a relationship with a police officer. Later, Billy and Lionel go to the Bell family home on Brattle Street and begin a secret romance.

Professor Sharpe reveals to Lauren that he knows she is a witch and that he too has magical abilities like hers “three times over” (265). To prove he is one of them, he cuts his hand, showing her his black blood. In his room, Lauren discovers spite dolls resembling them and realizes he has been using magic to control her. She flees and performs a spell to break his influence, which inadvertently causes women all over Cambridge to find the strength to leave their own toxic relationships. Sharpe later confronts Lauren on the lawn of Lilith House. When she rejects him, he threatens to ruin her academic career by falsely accusing her of cheating. As he grabs her, Ava and her dog, Jack, intervene, and Jack attacks Sharpe. Ava forces Sharpe to retreat by threatening him with the legal power of Jamie’s father, Paul Mather. In the aftermath, Ava comforts a distraught Lauren in her room, and the two friends reconcile.

This section is a letter from Rose Bridewell, the first witch of Cambridge, recounting the tragic history of the Bell sisters. In 1695, a witch-hunter named Tom Boyle—who rode a horse from the Mathers’ stable and appeared to have been hired and bailed out of prison by Cotton Mather—attacked the two sisters on the Common. He seized 13-year-old Amelia and assaulted her; 15-year-old Cora struck him with a rock so Amelia could flee, but once Amelia had escaped, Boyle raped Cora and then hanged her from a tree. Cora’s devoted crow then attacked Boyle, plucking out his eye. Rose later encounters Boyle and, using her skills as a former pickpocket, steals the tin containing his preserved eye, thus stripping him of his power and luck. Overcome with grief, the girls’ mother, Suzanne Bell, drowned herself in the Charles River. The orphaned and traumatized Amelia builds a rustic shed of hazel wood and black stones that everyone calls Lilith House, and dedicates her life to the “Crooked Path” of left-handed magic.

Ava finds and reads the letter detailing the Bell family’s tragic history but decides to hide it from Lauren to protect her from the painful knowledge, though this also means denying Lauren the knowledge that her ancestor, Amelia Bell, was the original founder of Lilith House. However, Lauren is magically drawn to the letters, finds them under Ava’s bed, and learns that a Mather-backed witch-hunter was responsible for her ancestors’ suffering. Fueled by a desire for vengeance and a twisted sense of protection, Lauren resolves to permanently end Ava’s relationship with Jamie. She arranges a meeting with Paul Mather and urges him to break Jamie and Ava apart—warning that Ava will ruin Jamie’s life—while implicitly confirming what Ava is. The Mather family stages an intervention, threatening to disinherit Jamie if he stays with Ava. When Jamie refuses, Paul threatens to use his influence to destroy Ava’s scholarship and academic future. Jamie’s mother privately appeals to him to let Ava go and protect her from that fate; Jamie does not formally agree but acts unilaterally to shield Ava. With Paul watching from his car, Jamie goes to Lilith House and cruelly ends things with Ava. As the car pulls away, Ava locks eyes with Paul Mather, and both understand that their families’ centuries-old conflict is far from over.