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Zelda Spellman had no idea how she had come to be sitting on a couch in a room with absolutely atrocious modern design, opposite a woman who looked like she had more secrets than Greendale had coal.
There were many things wrong with this picture, but chief among them was that witches didn’t do therapy. They have a cup of tea and a cigarette and get on with it. At least, that was what Zelda was wont to do. In nearly three centuries of life, never once had Zelda felt the need to unburden herself to a complete stranger—and a mortal one, at that.
At least Dr. Bedelia du Maurier was peculiar enough herself that Zelda didn’t feel as though she was the only one in the room who knew what it was like to have her life go completely off the rails. There had been rumors when Du Maurier first arrived in Greendale that the woman was fleeing from the FBI, though Zelda had hardly believed them. The town needed a therapist, especially one who specialized in trauma, so whatever the woman’s past, the citizens of Greendale ought to just be grateful she was there at all.
“I wasn’t sure you would keep the appointment,” admitted Bedelia du Maurier, breaking what Zelda imagined to be an uncomfortably long silence after they had sat down.
“You think I’m the kind of woman who avoids her commitments?” said Zelda, narrowing her eyes.
“Not at all,” said Bedelia. “I simply meant that you seemed…uncertain…about therapy when we met for your triage interview.”
Triage. Zelda hated that word. It made her feel like she had been injured in battle, with little chance of survival. “Uncertainty doesn’t change the fact that I made a promise to my family. One I intend to keep.”
Bedelia nodded. “Of course. You mentioned that your main reason for seeking therapy was that your sister believed it to be necessary.”
Zelda wished the woman would stop repeating things they both already knew.
“Why do you think your sister was so insistent?” Bedelia continued, crossing her legs. Zelda’s eyes were drawn to the slit on the side of her skirt that exposed an indecent amount of the woman’s thigh and calf.
Why indeed? Zelda had survived all kinds of tragedies throughout her life. She had endured the deaths of her parents, her brothers, and friends alike, without ever once being so badly shaken that she needed to seek professional help. Over the years she had seen some of her closest childhood companions sacrificed and eaten during Feast of Feasts, and yet, she had made it through just fine. It was irrelevant that she always felt ill in the wake of the holiday, and could hardly even keep a piece of toast down for weeks after being forced to eat her best friend’s liver.
That was an intrusive memory, if there ever was one. The High Priest had noticed she was refusing to partake in the tradition, and singled her out in front of the entire coven. Her father had called her a disgrace to the Spellman name for humiliating him during a High Holiday, but she couldn’t hide her revulsion, no matter what threats he leveled at her. Zelda lost ten pounds that autumn, when she really didn’t have ten pounds to spare. She hardly spoke except to the mortals who came to the mortuary to make funeral arrangements.
But she certainly wasn’t traumatized—not in the least—no matter what Hilda said.
Nothing to do but move on. There was no bringing back the dead (at least, not without the Cain Pit and a body reasonably intact), and at the time, there was no changing the age-old traditions of the Church. Witches were numb to all sorts of traumas, or at least, Zelda had always believed they were.
“Ms. Spellman?”
Zelda looked up to see Dr. Bedelia du Maurier staring at her with an air of concern.
“You seemed far away for a moment. Would you care to share with me where your mind went?”
“No, I would not,” said Zelda, briskly. Mortals couldn’t hope to understand ritual cannibalism.
Dr. Du Maurier let the silence fester for several moments before she said, “Tell me, Ms. Spellman, do you have any specific goals you would like me to help you reach?”
I just want to forget, Zelda thought. But she had already debated using a memory spell to erase her time as Lady Blackwood, and decided that it was far better to remember and suffer than to obliterate an important part of her life.
“I would just like to be able to live normally again,” said Zelda, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.
“Could you describe to me what ‘normal’ is for you?”
Zelda searched her mind for a way to explain witch life to a mortal without revealing her true nature, but came up blank. Best to stick with the reasons why Hilda had twisted her arm to go to therapy in the first place.
“I want to stop having…what I guess you would call… ‘flashbacks.’”
Dr. Du Maurier tilted her head. Zelda was distracted, once more, by the way the sun streaming in from the window caught on her therapist’s wavy blonde hair. The woman was exceptionally beautiful, and it was not helping Zelda focus.
“This always goes better if I’m perfectly honest,” said the doctor, her clear blue eyes bright and calculating.
“What would be the point if you weren’t?” said Zelda, trying to keep the frustration out of her tone and utterly failing.
“The flashbacks are a symptom of post-traumatic stress. While I hope to help you work through your trauma, it is unlikely that you will ever be able to go back to being ‘normal,’ as you put it.”
“Then what exactly am I doing here?”
“You mentioned, Ms. Spellman—”
“Zelda,” she interrupted. She had felt an odd distance from the Spellman name ever since the wedding, despite the fact that she had never truly given it up in the first place. It wasn’t that Zelda Spellman-Blackwood suited her any better; it was just that the “Ms. Spellman” who had been comfortable in her own body and a credit to the Spellman name had not existed since her time in Rome.
“Does it bother you when I call you ‘Ms. Spellman?’” said Bedelia, curiously, “or do you simply wish to dispense with formality?”
“The latter.”
“Very well, Zelda,” Bedelia said, inclining her head. “You mentioned last week that you are afraid your family is being negatively affected by your post-traumatic stress. Would you mind telling me exactly how they are being affected?”
Zelda shifted her weight uncomfortably. “I’m having…nightmares. My sister and I—we’ve shared a room since we were children. She’s concerned that I haven’t been sleeping, and that it’s affecting my…work.”
“And what exactly is your work, Miss—excuse me—Zelda?”
Zelda thought about all of her duties as High Priestess, Headmistress of the Academy of Unseen Arts, and the lead executor of the mortuary. Only one of those jobs could be revealed to a mortal, but perhaps she could…bend the truth a little.
“I run the town’s mortuary, but I am also a retired midwife, and a…tutor.”
“That sounds like a lot of responsibility,” Bedelia observed. “What do you teach?”
“…Religious studies,” said Zelda, after a pause. She hoped Dr. Du Maurier didn’t notice, but it was impossible to get anything passed those piercing blue eyes.
“You sound uncertain.”
“I’m not,” Zelda insisted. “It’s just that…my ex-husband…he was a religious leader.”
“Does that make it more difficult for you to teach?”
“It shouldn’t. But my faith isn’t as strong as it used to be.” Zelda was shocked by her own admission. Hopefully Lilith wasn’t listening in on her High Priestess’ therapy session. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe whole-heartedly in Lilith’s reign in Hell—it was just that she had been raised her whole life to worship Satan, and now… well. It was a difficult adjustment to make.
“Could you tell me more about your ex-husband’s position? Was he one of many leaders, or was he your only religious leader?”
“I don’t see how that would make a difference.”
“The difference is whether or not he had sole power over your religious life.”
Zelda didn’t know how she could possibly explain her relationship to the former High Priest. They had been lovers when they were young, when they both had equal standing in the Church, but Faustus had always desired power, just like she did. To frame it as though he simply used his power over her to get what he wanted took away all agency she had in the situation. She made an active choice to get back into bed with him, figuratively and literally. It was just that that bed was unrecognizable from the original one they had shared.
“Let me rephrase the question. Did he ever abuse his power over you as your religious leader?”
Zelda’s mind conjured up the image of them in front of the fire, tears streaming down her face from confessing her sins to her High Priest, and then Faustus responding to her vulnerable state by suggesting that it wasn’t right for witches to go untouched, and that Constance was testing his faith. Zelda wasn’t a fool, she knew what he was doing… but in the end, she didn’t care if he used her, so long as she could use him right back.
“I suppose he did. We once had sex when I submitted to him for—confession,” Zelda just barely managed to avoid saying “unholy” confession. “But I could have stopped him. I’m not some child who can be manipulated so easily.”
“I didn’t intend to suggest that you were. Was that the only time a religious encounter ended in sex?”
Zelda didn’t think it was particularly necessary to tell her therapist all of the deliciously twisted games she had played with Faustus before their marriage. Having sex on the altar of the desecrated Church was definitely a memory for herself alone, though now the memory was warped by the shame she felt for ever putting herself back into his orbit.
“No.”
Bedelia seemed to sense that Zelda was not going to elaborate. “Was the sex always violent?”
Zelda Spellman felt vaguely ill, thinking of the ways in which Faustus had twisted her taste for violence during sex into something entirely different when he placed her under the Caligari spell. She only enjoyed it when it was mutual, and it had certainly not been mutual when she had been reduced to a sleepwalker.
But oh, there were times when they were younger when Faustus had been almost…sweet. She remembered their first Lupercalia, when he had touched her so tenderly, like she was the most precious thing in the world. She knew it was common for dangerous men to be charming, until they weren’t, but she wished she could gather her younger self in her arms and say: this pleasure won’t last.
“Not always. But recently…yes.”
“Were there weapons involved?” Bedelia said, as if it were a polite follow-up question in a normal conversation between colleagues, or even between friends, and not the first step down a road Zelda had no desire to tread.
Zelda closed her eyes, trying not to feel the cat o’ nine tails striking her back.
Thirty lashes.
Penance.
“Yes.”
“Did you agree to the use of weapons during sex?”
“Before we were married, yes.” Zelda was rather insistent on this point. She needed it to be clear that she and Faustus were well-suited, especially when it came to sex. When she had full control of her body and decisions, there was nothing more satisfying than pain combined with pleasure.
“And after?”
Zelda could feel her heart rising in her throat. She looked around the room, trying to find something to stare at to keep the memories from flooding in, but she just wound up looking right back at Dr. Du Maurier, with her tight skirt-suit and unreadable expression.
“I wasn’t able to consent to anything from the first night of our honeymoon until a few days after we returned from Rome.”
“And why was that?”
How to explain a Caligari spell? How to explain the humiliation, the degradation, the complete loss of self?
The silence stretched and stretched until finally Bedelia said, “If you’re not ready to discuss it, that’s perfectly fine.”
Zelda let out a shaky breath in relief as Dr. Du Maurier changed topics, but she found that the relief was extremely short-lived.
“Have you ever deliberately hurt yourself?”
How dare she? That…that was private. That was no one’s business but her own. Of all the intrusive, insensitive questions…
“I…”
“When was the last time you self-harmed?” Bedelia continued, as if she had gotten the answer she expected.
“I didn’t say that I did.”
“Your reaction told me all I needed to know.”
Zelda was really beginning to hate this woman.
“How do you harm yourself?” said Bedelia, not letting her off the hook.
Hesitantly, as if she wasn’t sure if responding was the best choice, Zelda said, “Flagellation…is an accepted practice in my religion.”
“As a form of penance?”
“Yes.”
“What have you done that you feel the need to punish yourself in this way?”
Zelda could feel her hands shaking. “I’ve failed my family.”
“When was the first time you deliberately hurt yourself?”
“When I was young…I had a taste for it. But I hadn’t done it in decades until…” Zelda paused. “Well... I fell back into old habits.”
“What changed?” Bedelia’s eyes were bright with knowledge Zelda wished she could steal away.
I did, she wanted to say. But no, that wasn’t quite right. She hadn’t whipped herself for nearly a hundred years before Faustus brought it back into her life. Once she had a taste of the whip again, she just couldn’t seem to let it go.
“My ex-husband…was fond of flagellation in the bedroom. But once I started using it again with him, I remembered how much I missed it.”
“Outside of sex?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever take the self-harm too far?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever tried to kill yourself?”
The question cut through Zelda like a dagger. “No!”
“Have you ever thought you’d be better off dead?”
Well… that was a different question. She had often wanted to put herself up for lottery during Feast of Feasts to save the women who seemed so terribly scared to die. The idea of death had never bothered her, and she would be happy to make the sacrifice, if it spared someone who was having doubts. And when Zelda was really low, usually after a decanter of whiskey had made its way down her throat, she would sometimes have idle thoughts of how nice it would be to go to sleep, and just not wake up. She would see her mother again, and her brothers…but she would never actually do something so…permanent. At least… “Not since Sabrina, my niece, was born.”
“And why is that?”
“I need to take care of her. Without me, she’d be lost.” Even if Sabrina didn’t seem to agree, it was the truth. “My family needs me.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that you have a very strong reason—”
“May I ask a question?” Zelda interrupted.
“Of course,” said Bedelia, looking puzzled by the interruption.
“How is any of this relevant?”
Bedelia’s mask of calm finally cracked into something real. “Excuse me?”
“I’m here because of a very specific trauma. What is the point of all of these unrelated questions?”
“What is the point—?”
“Yes,” said Zelda, standing up. Bedelia rose with her, slightly alarmed at Zelda’s sudden refusal to cooperate.
“These questions are meant to give me a better picture of your mental state—”
“The only thing wrong with my ‘mental state’ is that my husband repeatedly raped me on my honeymoon, and I was powerless to stop him. That’s it. There’s nothing wrong with me—that’s on him!” said Zelda, pacing in front of Bedelia, her fingers itching for a cigarette.
“Ms. Spellman—Zelda—would you care to sit back down?”
“No, I would not,” said Zelda, before rounding on Bedelia. It was then that she saw Bedelia flinch away, taking rapid steps back as if she expected Zelda to attack her.
That took the wind right out of Zelda’s sails. All of her anger was quickly replaced with shame. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to…to scare you.”
“Would you care for a drink, Zelda?” said Bedelia, suddenly turning and walking away, presumably towards the kitchen, without waiting for Zelda to respond.
Zelda was completely stunned for a moment, before she followed. “Is it common for therapists to offer their patients a drink?”
“The hour is nearly up, and I expect we’ve addressed all we can address for today.”
Zelda watched as Bedelia walked to the wine rack. Her eyes followed the sway of the woman’s hips a bit too closely, but she was beyond hiding such things, at this point. The woman was a beautiful, confusing enigma.
“Red or white?”
“Red,” Zelda answered, still completely baffled by the turn the session had taken.
“Good choice,” said Bedelia, grabbing a vintage Merlot and setting out two glasses.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand what’s happening,” said Zelda, as Bedelia handed her a glass filled with a generous portion of wine.
“I always end my sessions with a glass of wine. Granted, my last patient was a friend, colleague, and cannibal.”
Zelda nearly choked on her first mouthful of wine. “Was that…a joke?”
Bedelia looked at her for a long moment as she swirled her wine. “No.”
Zelda Spellman looked at the woman with far greater interest than she had before as Bedelia took a large sip of her wine.
“Is this patient the reason you’re hiding in Greendale?”
Bedelia looked surprised that Zelda would draw this conclusion, but nodded. “Does that bother you?”
“Not at all,” said Zelda, and Lilith knew, it was the truth. She stared a bit too long at Bedelia’s lips flirting with the rim of her wine glass before adding, “I’ve done a number of illegal and immoral things. I also find your beauty incredibly…distracting. Does that bother you?”
“No. Complicated patients are conducive to complicated relationships.”
Zelda hummed in response, feeling desire flicker inside her for the first time since her honeymoon.
“Are you really a therapist?” said Zelda, suddenly wondering if she was being played for a fool.
“I am a licensed psychiatrist. I have a doctorate and everything,” said Bedelia, her eyes dancing.
“Have you ever slept with a patient?” Zelda said, suspicious when she realized that Bedelia’s eyes were definitely roving over her in a decidedly unprofessional way.
“I’ve slept with a colleague who was also a patient.”
“The cannibal?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t people lose their licenses for that kind of thing?”
“I’ve also murdered a patient. I should think that would be more concerning.”
Zelda’s eyes went wide. “Really?”
“In self-defense,” said Bedelia, motioning to the kitchen table. “Shall we sit?”
And though Zelda knew she ought to refuse, she found herself sitting across from Bedelia du Maurier, sharing much more than a single glass of wine, long after their session was finished.