Chapter 23
Hudson.
As in Hudson Lamont? They obviously had to know each other, if he had her book. But—were they friends? I turned the next page to find it empty. I flipped through the book. Empty. Empty. Empty. So she only wrote one single page?
A knock came from the other side of the wall, drawing my eyes up from the diary.
I stared at the closed door when another low thump broke the silence.
Alistair’s warning echoed in my head as I slowly walked to the door, pressing my ear against the cold wood.
My heart thudded heavier in my chest as I listened, trying to make sense of what I could be hearing this time of the day.
An eerie feeling closed in around me, digging its claws into my skin. I was being watched, my instincts told me, yet I couldn’t see anything that would prove that to be true. I was just being paranoid again.
I hurried back to the bed, casting one last glance around the room and trying to shake off the feeling of surveying eyes. Pulling my legs to my chest, I opened my mother’s diary again, rereading the single page.
Vitalie. Alex. Hudson.
My mum’s friends, it seemed. If only I could contact them somehow… Maybe I would have the chance to talk to Hudson again. Maybe he could help me contact the others—but they probably haven’t talked with my mum since she moved away. I’ve never heard her mention any of their names before.
I sank into the brittle pillow, when a slow melody crept into the room—thin and discordant, as if played underwater.
I looked up from the book. Something moved on the chipped surface of the dresser.
I rose slowly, crossing the room, to see a tiny ballerina dancing in slow circles, her porcelain face frozen in time.
Her tutu was woven with black feathers, stiff and jagged like broken wings.
A swan curled at her feet, its eyes dark pinpricks staring into nothing.
Each note from the music box landed like the tap of cold bone on piano keys, then—silence. So abrupt it felt violent. The air turned dense, it pressed against my skin, thick and watching. The room seemed to lean inward.
I set the box down, as if it might bite me, and took a step back when the window snapped open.
A gust swept through the room, sharp and icy, and moonlight spilled across the floor, shimmering in an unnatural blue.
But my eyes locked onto the thing below the sill.
Petals, long dead, swirling in slow, soundless motion.
Not lifted by wind, but moving as if stirred by something…
Something breathing.