Chapter 12
Mallory slams the door of the library’s archival room shut, sealing her and Saskia inside a frame of dusty shelves.
After rehearsal ended, she barely had to convince Saskia to come with her, as if what happened beneath the flickering bathroom lights had broken some kind of invisible barrier between them.
“I thought we were going to chat in your dorm or something,” Saskia says, tugging the chain on a banker’s lamp to illuminate the cramped space.
Mallory drops her bag on a rounded oak table with a hollow thunk. “Don’t you want answers? We can talk while we investigate. The archives room is only open for another hour.”
“Talk first,” Saskia says, grabbing Mallory’s wrist. “My head is spinning. My entire life, I thought there was something wrong with me, seeing things no one else sees, hearing voices no one else hears. And somehow you’re the same?
And we both got letters inviting us to apply early to Shore? What the fuck is going on?”
“I have the same questions,” Mallory says, gaze faltering momentarily to where Saskia’s fingers are clasped around her wrist. Her short nails are painted navy, and there’s a swirling turquoise mood ring on her middle finger.
Withdrawing her hand, Saskia slumps into one of the plush maroon chairs. “Alright.” She blows a loose strand of hair away from her face. “Let’s start at the beginning, then. Tell me what you know.”
Mallory sinks into the other chair, black pleated skirt blooming around her thighs. She fidgets with the rosary beads, wishing she had her mother’s locket instead as she prepares to share her worst secrets with another stranger.
But she lets it all out anyway. The nightmares at the blue house.
The corpse of a woman named Lily in mirrors and windows.
Her mother’s suicide. Everything she’s learned in the past few days.
Lily’s grave. The sanitarium. Rhode Island’s Vampire Panic.
Through it all, Saskia holds her stare, her expression shifting from curiosity to shock to, finally, fear.
“What I’m stuck on,” Mallory says, “is why me? Why my mother? It can’t be a coincidence that Lily’s heart was removed and my mother died by stabbing herself in the same place.
Lily basically told me I’d be next. Is it because my family has attended Shore since it was founded, just years after Lily was buried and dismembered on these grounds?
There are other legacy families out there. Why target mine?”
Saskia skews her mouth to the side, considering. “Did any other relatives experience this, besides your mother? Is your—sorry, I guess we’re getting personal here. Is your dad around?”
“No.” Mallory shakes her head. “I don’t know anything about him, other than he loved my mom.
But she wanted to raise me on her own.” She pauses.
“I think it’s because she knew what would happen to her.
I’ve been fighting this claustrophobic feeling lately, like I’m running out of time.
Maybe she felt the same thing because of Lily and didn’t want him to have to lose her.
” She glances down. “But me losing her was inevitable. I never understood why she didn’t send me to live with him, after.
Then again, maybe she tried. Maybe it was him who didn’t want me.
Didn’t want the reminder of what he’d lost.”
Saskia is quiet a moment. “I’m sorry about your mom. Is your grandmother still alive?”
“She died when my mother was young.”
“Really?” Saskia’s eyebrows lift. “How did she die?”
Mallory fiddles with the ends of her hair, the question sparking a flame of embarrassment as she realizes she doesn’t have the answer.
“I-I’m not sure.” She reaches for her phone. “Maybe my aunt knows. Well, she’s not really my aunt—she’s my guardian—but still. She was close with my mom.”
Saskia leans back as Mallory types out a message. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Of course,” Mallory replies, tucking her phone away.
“I know you were little, so maybe it’s hard to say,” she starts, “but in the weeks before your mom died…were there any warning signs? In retrospect, you know.”
Mallory swallows. Her thoughts skip over faded memories of twinkling December lights, her mother’s laughter in the snow.
But the images darken, conjuring her mother’s pale skin, shadows beneath her eyes like she hadn’t slept in days, the stale smell of the too-full ashtray in the living room.
The fragments of her undoing she tried so desperately to hide.
“I didn’t understand it at the time,” Mallory answers, “but I think there were signs. I would hear her in the night, sweeping the kitchen. Vacuuming the living room.” Mallory picks at a thread on her skirt.
“Toward the end, she took down all the mirrors. Like she was afraid of her reflection. She used to have friends who would come over. Book club. Tea. Dinners. Eventually, most of them stopped visiting.” She shakes her head.
“I think Lily wore my mother down. Isolated her. And then made her stab herself.”
Saskia considers this. “If you’ve been having visions of the same thing happening to you…what if it also happened to the other Shore alumni in your family?”
“Like a genetic thing?”
“More like a curse.”
Mallory falls quiet, fingering the rosary beads again.
A curse. The word sounds silly and childish, like one of the fairy tales her mother would tell her beneath the glow of her play tent.
She has free will, control over her own body.
She’d never pick up a knife and turn it on herself.
Would never slot the tip against her sternum, eyes milky and unfocused.
Mallory’s entire body tenses at the thought, the way the images take hold so viscerally in her mind.
She can practically feel the weight of the knife’s handle, can hear the whispering shadows that would gather as she pushed the blade straight through.
Lulling her into the final role she’s always been meant to play: a lifeless girl with a missing heart.
If ghosts are real, she thinks in defeat, perhaps curses are, too. Maybe she’s just a puppet, destiny-tied to something monstrous and unseen.
“Hold on.” Mallory shakes her head. “Before we start climbing up my family tree. Lily’s visited you, too.
” Her gaze flutters over Saskia’s willowy frame, her amber eyes, the freckles dotting her slightly crooked nose.
A stark difference from Mallory’s deep brown hair and rounder, softer features.
“We look nothing alike. There’s no way we’re related. ”
Saskia releases a soft laugh. “Well, thank goodness for that.”
Mallory frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I just—” Saskia’s eyes flutter skyward like she’s said something she didn’t mean to. “It would be kind of awkward to learn the pretty girl you just met is actually your cousin.”
“Why would that be awk—” Mallory falls quiet, cheeks warming. “Oh. Oh.”
“Never mind.” Saskia waves her hand quickly. “I get it. You’re straight! Forget I said anyth—”
“I’m not.”
Mallory doesn’t mean to blurt it out. It’s like her voice has taken on a life of its own, giving first breaths to something she’s always struggled to name. Her cheeks burn hotter, and she stitches together another new string of words. “I’m not straight.”
Saskia stares at her, the tiniest of smiles twitching on her mouth. “Okay. Good to know.”
For a second, Mallory swears her own body feels different. Like she fits inside it better, from simply saying it out loud for the first time.
“Alright, I guess it’s my turn to share,” Saskia says, drawing her Converse sneakers onto the chair and hugging her knees.
“You know how most people can trace their first memories back to preschool? I don’t remember that time at all.
I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia when I was a toddler.
The doctors didn’t think I would live past five.
But my mom got me into an experimental clinical trial.
It worked.” She tugs on her white, choppy waves.
“It also fucked up my hair. It used to be blonde.”
Mallory studies her. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s just hair.” Saskia shrugs. “My point is that for most people, the story of their lives starts when they’re a child. But mine didn’t start until the cancer went away.” She glances out the window. “I don’t remember anything that came before.”
Mallory goes quiet again. For as much as she’s tried to forget her past, Saskia has nothing to forget. She’s not sure which would hurt more.
“I got better, but everything else got worse,” Saskia continues.
“My mom died when I was fourteen. I had to move to my dad’s apartment in Boston.
They divorced when I was a baby, so he was basically a stranger.
I’m pretty sure he resented me disrupting his life.
And then I had to start a new school, which was a real treat as a lesbian teenager with white hair and no friends. ”
“Wait,” Mallory says, “your mom passed away, too?”
“Car accident,” Saskia mutters. “It sucks, losing a mom. No one ever says that. Everyone’s always like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, she’s gone to a better place.’ Screw that. I had a mom, and then I didn’t. For once, I just want someone to acknowledge how much it fucking sucks. You know?”
A realization hits Mallory: She’s never heard anyone say that, either. Most people just cluck with pity when they find out. Poor thing, their expressions always say. It’s never what she needs to hear.
“It does,” Mallory agrees. “It fucking sucks.”
Saskia offers a wry smile. “Amen to that.”
Mallory holds her gaze, considering. Yesterday, Saskia couldn’t get away from her fast enough. And now, there’s a thread. Something that links them in ways no one else could attempt to understand. The awareness puts a soft blush in Mallory’s cheeks, her skin warming in the bronze library light.
“So,” Saskia says, clearing her throat. “Lily.”
Mallory shifts in her chair. “Lily.”