Chapter 14
Sometime in the night, Mallory wakes in Ezra’s bed to a series of whispers.
She turns toward Ezra, still asleep. His dorm is freezing again, icy air pooling around her. Mallory sits up, clutching the comforter against her bare skin before carefully scanning the room. Desk, messy with books. Bureau, tidy. Back door, shut. Hall door—
Ajar.
Mallory’s skin prickles. A flickering light spills into Ezra’s dorm and overlapping voices drift through the air, like a hushed conversation is taking place in the common room.
Before she loses her nerve, Mallory wraps herself in the loose sheet and tiptoes toward the doorway. Her legs feel like jelly after everything she and Ezra did when they got back to his room, and she blushes at the reminder.
Fingers stiff with cold, she grabs the doorknob, prepared to secure the lock, but halts when she catches sight of the corridor.
Gone is the narrow hall with its dark floorboards and maroon runner.
Instead, Mallory peers into an ornate sitting room, furnished with emerald velour couches, floor-to-ceiling windows, and soft lamps.
She steps through, and when she looks back over her shoulder, Ezra’s bed seems far away, like a ship disappearing over the horizon.
“What’s happening?” Mallory whispers, words fogging the air. She must be dreaming. “Wake up, wake up—”
“This is preposterous.”
Startled, Mallory turns back to the couch, where two people are now sitting: a pretty young woman wearing a deep purple dress and a handsome man in a dark suit and tall hat. The woman has sable curls that tumble down her back; the man is about ten years older with gold hair and a beard.
“Rebecca, please,” the man huffs. He stands, pacing. “Think of Rose. Lily would want us to make sure this doesn’t happen to her, too.”
Mallory’s eyes widen at the names of Lily and her daughter, and she stares at the dark-haired woman with renewed understanding. Noticing her slightly upturned nose, the full shape of her mouth. Almost identical to her own.
She’d bet money Rebecca is Lily’s sister.
Which makes her Mallory’s relative, too.
Something tightens inside her at the thought, like an invisible string looping through time to secure Mallory to this grieving stranger. Rebecca, who also knows what it’s like to bury a family member and live the rest of her life with something missing.
Rebecca sighs, fingers pressed to her forehead. “I won’t hear another word of this, Tobias.” Lily’s husband. “You tell Jacob to leave Lily’s grave alone—or I’ll tell him myself.”
“Jacob?” Mallory echoes. She’s not come across that name before.
“Jacob cares about this family,” Tobias counters. “He’s trying to help us. Do you want me to be infected next? Do you want little Rose to die?”
“Listen to yourself!” Rebecca springs to her feet. “Jacob cares about nothing except money and power. He’s creating an absolute frenzy, convincing people to dig up graves for no reason other than it serves him. It’s superstition, Tobias. Nothing more.”
“Superstition? How do you explain what happened to the Wilkshires, then?” Tobias takes a step toward her. “Bram Wilkshire died of consumption, but his corpse wasn’t properly dealt with, and then a short while later, all the Wilkshire boys—one after another—dead.”
Rebecca’s jaw moves around like she’s grinding her teeth. Her frustration feels familiar. It’s the mounting anger of a woman desperate to be heard.
“Tobias,” Rebecca clips. “Consumption is a disease. It’s contagious.
Bram Wilkshire’s sons caught it from him.
There’s nothing more to it, no folktales, no legends.
Just a terrible tragedy. It’s not because of a”—she lowers her voice—“it’s not because Bram turned into a vampire and left his grave to feed on his children.
Or whatever nonsense Jacob is peddling.”
“Nonsense?” Tobias steps closer, tone darkening.
“This is real, and it will happen to my family next if precautions aren’t taken.
This isn’t up for discussion. Tomorrow, at midnight, Jacob is leading the exhumation ceremony, and Lily’s heart will be properly inspected.
If there’s blood found, it must be burned.
” He glares, undeterred by Rebecca’s furious expression.
“I will be there with Rose. Whether you join is up to you.”
“Let me be clear,” Rebecca says, voice terrifyingly quiet. “We’re talking about my sister—my dead sister. Someone must stand up for her since she’s not around to do it herself.” She gathers her skirts. “No one touches her grave.”
As Rebecca glides toward the doorway in a numbing breeze, she stops and looks directly at Mallory, pale eyes gleaming. Mallory sinks against the wall, but Rebecca only draws closer. When she speaks, her voice is a scrape.
“She wants you to see.”
Mallory’s chest clenches, but she follows Rebecca’s pointed finger toward the darkened corridor—and lets out a startled cry.
There, standing just a few feet away, is Lily.
She looks the same as always. White dress soaked with blood. Long hair matted to her shoulders. Decaying, withering flesh.
But this time, she isn’t alone.
Five women stand alongside her, all dressed in white. All with blossoming bloodstains on their chests. All staring in silent, furious rage.
“Do you understand?” Rebecca whispers. “Do you see what’s been done to them all?”
“Oh my god,” Mallory says as her gaze swings to the woman at the end of the procession. A woman she’d recognize anywhere—in faded photographs, in her dreams. Her voice drops to a whisper. “Mom?”
In an instant, she realizes. Her ancestors. All with their hearts cut out. Waiting for Mallory to join them.
Mallory glances again at this ghostly version of her mother, pallid eyes gazing into the distance.
For a moment, she sees the mother she remembers—laughing in pockets of sunlight across a cracked diner booth, covered in scarves from Mallory’s dress-up trunk—but the memory flickers in and out like a flame.
She swallows, scrambling to hold on to her.
“Mom,” Mallory says again. “Mom, can you hear me? Why did this happen? How do I stop it? How do I—?”
An ominous hissing snags her attention, and she whips her focus back to Lily.
Lily, who is staring directly at her now. Eyes milky white and glowing in the dark.
“Burn it,” she orders, raising a crooked, decaying finger. Pointing directly at Mallory’s chest.
“No,” Mallory says. “I won’t die like her. You can’t force me to—”
Lily lets out a deep, rattling laugh. Mallory gasps as something slithers out from between Lily’s lips, dark and fuzzy. It takes her a few moments to realize it’s a swarm of flies. Pouring and pouring from her unhinged jaw like a black, buzzing cloud.
Mallory whirls for Ezra’s door, fleetingly aware that she’s dreaming and it’s futile, but the scream pours out of her anyway—
“Help!” Fear floods her as the air turns impossibly colder. “Help, help, help—”
BANG—
BANG—
BANG—
Mallory’s eyes fly open with a terrified gasp at the thunderous knocks on the wall.
Heart pounding, she blinks at the realization that she’s back in Ezra’s bed. Fog-soaked daylight presses against the window. Traffic hums in the distance. And the clock on the nightstand is somehow frozen again at 3:33, despite the ashen morning light.
She stares at the ceiling, trying to chase the threads of her dream. The name Jacob echoes in her memory like a still-smoldering ember.
He’s the one, she realizes. The one who dug up Lily’s grave and took out her heart.
Just then, Ezra stirs beside her. “Morning,” he says.
“Hi,” she replies, turning toward him.
His gaze drifts over her face, lower to her bare shoulders. As if absorbing the exact picture of her, naked in his bed. A small smile plays on his lips, and he fingers the ends of her tangled hair before glancing at the watch he’s still wearing.
“I have to meet Hendrix in an hour,” Ezra says, his hand curving around the side of her neck. “What do I have to do to convince you to stay right here until I’m back?”
Mallory tries to match his playful smile, but her lips won’t stretch far enough.
In the stark daylight, she’s forced to confront the lingering taste of his dishonesty.
She thinks of all the times Ezra asked if she trusted him, the countless ways he promised to keep her safe, when all along, he was hoarding answers in his pockets, right next to the secrets he stole.
A note of shame expands inside her, both for how easily she was tricked and how much she still wants him anyway.
She’s not sure what kind of a woman gives second chances to a man who wields deception like an art.
She’s not sure it’s the kind of woman she wants to be.
But maybe people don’t get to pick who they are.
“Tell me,” she finally says, “why you lied.”
Ezra’s hand freezes. His grin flutters away. “You’re still angry with me.”
Mallory presses her lips together. She wishes she were angrier. “Why didn’t you just explain everything from the start?”
His jaw knots. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the truth after a lie has already taken hold.”
She nods, thinking guiltily of Arden. “That’s true.”
“Jules, I’m sorry.” Ezra laces his fingers through hers, and his voice hardens as he adds, “I’m so fucking tired of doing bad things for him.”
“Your father?” Mallory studies him. “What else has he asked you to do?”
Ezra shakes his head, the gesture clear. He doesn’t want to talk about it.
“You tell yourself at first that you don’t have a choice,” he says. “You’re still a good person—you’re just doing what you’re told.” His nostrils flare. “But after a while, it doesn’t matter why you’re doing bad things. You’re one and the same.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” she counters. “Maybe there is no good or bad. Maybe everyone is a little of both. Sometimes the bad parts may be louder, but there’s still good underneath.”
“Not for him,” Ezra says. “Not for me.”
Mallory’s brow furrows. “There is good in you, Ezra.”
“You don’t understand the kind of person my father is,” he says. “The kind of monster who raised me.”