Chapter 13
I stood at my bedchamber door, one hand flat against the wood, listening to the sounds of the house settling around me. Footsteps echoed down the hall, masculine and moving with purpose. I had been waiting for what seemed like an eternity for Dr. Ambrose to return home.
I wondered where exactly he had gone, but I did not have time to examine that curiosity now.
I opened my door just a crack, peering through the narrow gap, and watched as he reached his bedchamber. He paused at the threshold, hand resting on the handle for a long moment, his shoulders carrying the tension of exhaustion or grief or perhaps both.
He entered and closed the door behind him with a soft click.
I waited, counting the seconds in my head, giving him time to assume the household had retired for the night. When I reached sixty, I slipped out into the hallway with my candle, the flame guttering in the draft. I closed my door behind me, wincing at every tiny sound the mechanism made.
The corridor was dark save for my small circle of light. My bare feet made no sound against the wooden floors as I crept toward the stairs, my stomach twisting with the knowledge that what I was doing was wrong on every conceivable level.
But I needed to know. I needed to understand what had happened to M., what had transformed her into the vine-ridden ghost that haunted the halls.
The study was dark when I entered, the greenhouse beyond it barely visible through the connecting door. I set my candle down on the desk, the small flame dancing over the scattered papers and specimen jars.
The journals waited on the shelf like silent witnesses poised to judge me.
I began the immense task of pulling them down one by one, starting with the dates directly following the Hawthorne volume. My fingers trembled as I opened each one, scanning pages by candlelight, searching for any mention of M., any continuation of their collaborative work.
The first one—dated two months after Hawthorne’s creation—contained only botanical observations and standard research on various plant species, their properties and potential medical applications. All in Dr. Ambrose’s handwriting. No sign of M.’s flowing script.
I replaced it and pulled down the next one.
It was more of the same—dry documentation of experiments conducted for various universities and medical institutions, professional and ordinary.
There was no mention of Verdant Vespera, no reference to M., or any indication that something miraculous had ever occurred in these greenhouses.
I worked through journal after journal, my disappointment growing with each page.
There was nothing. No further evidence they had continued to study the vine, no detail about an illness or accident his wife might have suffered.
Merely standard research and botanical compounds and the usual work one might expect from a brilliant doctor.
It appeared that the entire line of research had simply stopped, and after November thirtieth, eighteen forty-five, when Hawthorne had first stood and walked with his empty eyes, both researchers had decided never to speak of it again.
But why?
The most recent ones focused almost entirely on memory restoration—formulas and theories from his early research into the hypothesis. I scanned through those slower just in case there was anything important I could learn for my own purposes.
But there was nothing of interest.
I replaced the final journal, my shoulders sagging with disappointment. I had found no answers to any of my questions.
Why had she wanted me to come into the study? What else was here that she wanted me to see?
I stood, gathering my candle from the desk, and turned toward the door—only to stop short.
Dr. Ambrose’s wife drifted into the room, moving with that same eerie grace I had witnessed on the stairs. She wore the same simple dress, and I noticed now, as my candle haloed around her, that it was a deep shade of plum, similar to my own work gowns.
I glanced up at her face and braced myself, but it remained missing—smooth and blank.
She glided through the room, unmoved by my presence, passing me without acknowledgment. I stepped out of her path as she approached the desk, lifting my candle to watch.
She sat—though sat was not exactly accurate. She hovered over the chair, her form not quite solid enough to make contact with the furniture. Her posture suggested she was settling in for work, getting comfortable for a long night of research.
A strange sensation shot through me, pressing against my skull like a headache building. My vision tunnelled, the edges going soft while the ghost remained in sharp focus.
I had been here before, some irrational part of my mind whispered. I had watched this exact scene unfold. I was nearly certain of it, though I had no explanation for how I knew.
I pushed the thought away, focusing on the spirit as she began to… write.
Or at least, that is what it appeared she was doing.
Her hand slid across the desk surface, fingers curled as though gripping a pen and forming letters, but there was nothing in her translucent fingers and no parchment on the desk.
It seemed she was recording something that existed only in memory or spirit or whatever realm she now inhabited.
I circled to the front of the desk, squinting in the dim light, trying to get a closer look at what she was doing. I raised my hand cautiously and waved it directly in front of where her face should have been.
She did not react at all. She did not pause in her invisible writing or acknowledge my presence in any way. She simply kept working, her hand moving steadily across imaginary parchment.
After a long moment, she finished. Her hand stilled, and she appeared to read over what she had written with satisfaction. Then she stood, her movements suggesting she was opening one of the desk drawers, but the drawer did not actually open. Her hand passed straight through the solid wood.
She mimed placing something inside—her invisible journal, perhaps—and then straightened. She reached into her skirt pocket, revealing a small white flower that pulsed with a yellow-green glow. She stared down at it, stroking the delicate petals with tenderness.
The reaction inside my skull was immediate and violent.
My companion slammed forward with such force I staggered, my vision narrowing to a single point of focus—the flower, nothing but the flower, everything else in the room dissolving into irrelevance.
A wave of desperate, aching need crashed through me.
It felt like starvation, like suffocation, like every vital thing my body required for survival had been condensed into that single glowing bloom.
My hand shot out before I could stop it, fingers grasping for the phantom flower with movements I did not control. They passed through her translucent hand, through the spectral petals, touching nothing but cold air.
The scream that tore through my skull was raw. Grief and fury and longing twisted together into something that felt like it would split my skull apart from the inside. I stumbled backward, my palms pressing hard against my temples, trying to contain the pressure building behind my eyes.
Rage flooded my chest, spreading outward through my limbs with searing heat, burning away every thought except one primal demand.
Take it, claim it, make it mine again.
My feet moved without permission. I lurched forward, my hand sweeping out again and again, striking at her wispy palm with increasing desperation. Each failed attempt brought fresh waves of anguish.
Give it to me! the voice shrieked inside my mind. Give it back to me! MINE! IT’S MINE!
The ghost tilted her head, unbothered by the voice’s outrage, and replaced the flower in her pocket. She turned then, and moved toward the greenhouse door, fading with each step until she had vanished completely by the time she crossed the threshold.
I stood there gasping, my chest heaving, my hands still outstretched toward empty air. The voice continued its assault inside my mind until there was no distinction to where it ended and I began.
I shook my head sharply, trying to clear the chaos, and ran to the greenhouse door on unsteady legs. I pressed my face against the cold glass, searching for any trace of her presence.
It was dark and still inside, showing no sign of spectral activity.
She was gone. The flower with her.
My companion withdrew, disappearing into whatever depth it normally occupied, leaving a trail of rage and grief behind in its wake—emotions so vivid that tears burned in my eyes.
I gathered my candle, my shoulders sagging with a defeat that was not entirely my own.
I made my way back upstairs with heavy steps, exhaustion and disappointment weighing on me in equal measure—though I could not say for certain which belonged to me and which belonged to the thing living inside my skull.
When I reached my room, I locked the door behind me and collapsed onto the bed.
Sleep refused to come for hours. My mind kept replaying the scene—her fingers stroking those glowing petals, the flower pulsing with that hypnotic glow, alive and calling to me.
The image of that luminous bloom burned in my memory. I had to find that flower. Whatever it was, wherever it grew, I had to find it.
The voice let out a contented breath, satisfied at last.