Chapter 5 #2
For the first time, though, the idea of facing down this darkness feels like something she might be able to do. Not just because she has someone to hold her hand, but because Mallory never had to convince Ezra of anything.
He just believes her. And that’s enough to set her courage alight.
“If there are any spirits here,” Mallory starts, “please make your presence known.”
He leans forward, voice quieting. “Tell her you’ve brought a gift.”
“I have a…present,” she adds, and his thumb pushes against her pulse.
“You might need to be more specific.”
Mallory chews her lip. “I bring you my hair. And my blood.”
“One more thing.” Ezra leans even closer. His whisper brushes her ear. “Repeat after me.”
She nods.
“Redeo vita,” he recites softly, “mea tibi.”
“Is that Latin?”
“Yeah. I read it in a book about séances; it helps build a bridge between worlds. It means ‘return to life.’ ”
Mallory studies him, trying to imagine Ezra as a teenager curled beneath blankets with a dusty book. Underlining and highlighting, clinging to ideas others might call frightening but to him felt soothing. Like reaching for a hand in the dark and feeling it reach back.
“Okay,” she murmurs. “Redeo vita mea tibi.”
Something shifts in his stare, as though he can see the strings of her trust knotting in real time. He lowers his gaze, and Mallory wonders if the idea of someone simply believing him is hard for him to absorb, too.
But then, a distinct coldness pools around her, siphoning her thoughts.
It reminds her of that same cold from class earlier.
She imagines long icy claws scraping at her throat, stroking beneath her hair.
Pebbling her skin with goosebumps. Her exhale blooms white in the shadows, and she squeezes Ezra’s hands.
“Do you feel that?” she whispers.
He looks back at her. “Feel what?”
“It just got really cold,” she says. “Like a freezer.”
His eyes widen, disbelief fluttering across his face. Mallory’s shoulders ripple in a shudder as a numbing breeze whisks her neck. The candles flicker, threatening to plunge the room to black.
“I’m scared,” she admits quietly, twisting her hands in his. “Can we stop?”
“Wait, wait,” he counters. “Focus on me. Tell me something real.”
Her teeth clack together. “Real?”
“Like, ordinary.” Ezra rethreads their fingers. Tighter. “Do you like coffee or tea?”
“C-coffee.” Her breath fogs the air like she’s outdoors in winter.
“Any pets?”
“Um. I used to have a cat named Lucifer. Like in—”
“Cinderella. Cute.” Ezra squeezes her hands. “Now ask me something.”
Mallory wonders if her lips are turning blue. “When’s your birthday?”
“November twenty-first.”
“Hmm.” She narrows her eyes despite the cold. “That makes you a Scorpio.”
His response is amused. “Is that bad?”
“Depends who you ask.”
Warmth unexpectedly returns to the room, enveloping Mallory’s shoulders, smoothing her goosebumps.
If she’d been alone, she might have been able to convince herself the cold was a coincidence.
Her imagination. But with Ezra’s candles at her side and ancient words on her tongue, it’s hard to think of that chill as anything but a sign.
“Ezra,” she whispers. “What do you think she wants?”
Ezra is quiet for a moment. “If you were a ghost, what would you want?”
Mallory thinks about the ghost’s red-splattered dress, her empty stare. What would it feel like to be her, to wander the world in quiet rage?
“I’d want someone to know who I was.”
“That’s deep, Jules.” Ezra blows a lock of dark hair off his forehead.
“If I were a ghost, I’d probably only come back if I’d been in love with someone who was still alive.
Not to scare them—just to see them again.
I think intention can get lost in translation, though.
Maybe a ghost tries to make contact, to say, ‘Hey, I still love you.’ But it comes out wrong.
Like a long-distance call that doesn’t quite connect. ”
She turns his words over. “It sounds like you’ve thought about this a lot.”
Ezra laughs, but it only sounds sad. “Yeah. Maybe too much.”
“How would you do it, then? If you were a ghost, visiting someone you loved?”
The candles crackle between them. “Well, I’d wait until she was asleep. I’d intend only to watch her, but that wouldn’t be enough, would it?” His voice deepens the tiniest amount, and his fingers twitch against hers. “I’d have to touch her.”
“You’d scare her. Game over.”
“I’d try not to. I’d be gentle about it. Run my fingers through her hair, caress her skin—I’d do it in a way so she’d know it was me.”
Mallory narrows her eyes. “Even if she did know—a dead man would be stroking her hair. That’s always going to be scary.”
“Does it have to be? What if it was comforting? What if it was a chance to reclaim something you thought you had lost?”
She goes quiet at that. “What else would you do?”
Ezra holds her stare over the flames. “It depends. Would she…want me to touch her?”
He phrases the question carefully. Like they’re not talking about a pretend haunting anymore.
Mallory glances at Ezra’s hands resting in her lap, at the sheer length of his fingers, the width of them compared to hers. Braver in the shadows, she manages—
“She might.”
“Then,” he says, after a moment, “I’d touch her everywhere that once belonged to me.”
She’s suddenly grateful for the dim light that hides the blush in her cheeks.
“I wouldn’t be in a hurry,” he adds, and electricity jumps inside her when his thumb grazes hers. Absentmindedly, as if he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. “I’d take my time. Remembering how she felt. And I’d be so damn slow about it she’d question whether it was real at all.”
Mallory’s teeth find their way to her lower lip, sinking into strawberry gloss. A second ago they were talking about death and loss, but now perplexing butterflies are racing through her, creating a starburst of heat between her thighs. She holds her breath, frozen.
“Somehow, though, she’d know it was me.” Ezra’s thumb travels to her wrist, brushes the edge of her sleeve. “And she wouldn’t be scared. She’d say my name. And beg me not to stop.”
For a second, neither of them says anything. Tension seems to stretch the length of the room like rubber, growing tighter and tighter with every beat of silence. Ezra’s hands burn against hers, as though he’s wondering what the rest of her might feel like, too.
“Ezra—”
Her words are swallowed by a sudden crash behind her. Mallory whirls—and bites back a scream.
There, hovering in the dressing room mirror, is the ghost. The woman who used to slip between shadows in the blue house.
Her limp hair partially obscures her face, and her withered, purple-gray skin splits from bone.
She’s wearing a white dress, just like always, and the front is covered in blood.
As though someone has stabbed her right between her breasts.
But this time, there’s something new: The bottom of her skirt is caked with dirt. Like she’s been dragged through mud.
Like, Mallory can’t help but think, she’s been pulled from a grave.
Somewhere, Ezra is asking her something, but all she can hear is the wild hammering of her heart, the terror coursing through her.
And then, the woman’s mouth forms a silent threat. Like last night, but with a different word.
BURN.
A cry bursts from Mallory’s lips, and she rips her hands from Ezra’s.
The candles snuff out; the room plunges to darkness. The woman disappears.
Ezra’s hands come down heavy on her shoulders. “What was that just now? What happened?”
“Did you see her?” she whispers in the dark. “Ezra—did you see her?”
“Who?”
“My ghost,” Mallory answers, turning to him. “I think—I think we found her.” She swallows. “Or—she found us.”
Ezra holds her stare in the shadows. For a second, she worries he might not believe her after all.
But then his face splits into a boyish grin, triumphant. Like he just proved something to himself, too. And it was her who helped him get there.
“Aces,” Ezra says. “Now it’s time to figure out what she wants.”