Chapter 16
Mallory goes somewhere else when it happens.
Distantly, she’s aware of the white-hot pain at her neck, the warmth of Ezra’s mouth, the brush of his tongue as he draws her blood out and out and out.
But in her head, she’s lying in a pile of glittering snow beside Kiki, silhouettes turning into angels beneath a sable sky.
A fire crackles nearby, punctuated by a wild horse’s whinny.
Just ahead, a wooden dock with engraved flowers leads to the ice-dusted bay.
The vacation she took with Kiki and her mother, the last one before Kiki vanished from her life like a dream.
Don’t forget me, Kiki whispers.
I could never, Mallory replies in her mind.
Kiki smiles, fat flakes decorating her gold curls. Maybe we’ll see each other again in heaven. Do you believe in heaven?
No, Mallory thinks now. Only a stretch between living and dying. A ghost realm.
She can feel herself slipping from consciousness, head lolling against the desk as Ezra drinks and drinks.
His hungry swallows echo in her ear, but she tries to hold on to the memory of Kiki, the solace it brings.
The last time she truly felt like she was home.
Because home wasn’t ever the blue house.
Home was her mother. Home was her first friend.
Home, she thinks, could have been Ezra, too.
A sob breaks loose from her chest. And at the sound, Ezra unlatches from her throat. A rush of cold air replaces his bite.
“Jules…?”
His voice. His normal voice.
“Hey—hey, look at me.”
But she can’t. Mallory buries her face against her knees and lets herself come undone.
“Jules, what’s wrong?” Ezra asks, his palms curling over her shoulders, her neck.
“Don’t touch me—” She lashes out blindly. He catches her hands, attempting to fold her into his arms. “Stop,” she pleads, flailing in his grasp. “Ezra, let go, let go, let go—!”
And when she finally focuses on him, she gasps.
His eyes are fully green again, mouth devoid of fangs.
His lips aren’t wet or red, and the only bit of blood left is a tiny smudge beneath his nose.
Her hand flies to her collarbone; the rosary beads are there, beneath his Caligo sweatshirt, and when she touches her throat, she can’t find any open wounds.
“What?” she whispers.
Ezra sits back on his heels, identical shock on his face.
“What just happened?” he asks. “A second ago we were on my bed. I was having a nosebleed. And now—”
“No.” Mallory rises to her knees. “No.”
But when she leans to inspect the back of his shirt, she freezes.
The fabric is perfectly intact. No shreds. No rips. No feathers.
As if it never happened at all.
But it did. It did.
“I know what I saw,” she says. She fixes him with a thorny stare and springs to her feet. “I’m leaving.”
He stands just as fast. “Wait—let’s just talk, okay?”
“Talk?” A furious laugh shudders out of her. “You attacked me!”
“Attacked y—?” Ezra flinches in horrified confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Are you serious right now?” She doesn’t even bother swiping at her tears. “I thought you were going to kill me.”
The panic on his face multiplies. “What? Jules—”
“Why did you say that about my mother?” Mallory snaps. “She must have thought she was so clever. What did you mean by that?”
Ezra flings her an incredulous glance. “I—I didn’t say that.”
“And witches?” She continues as if he hadn’t spoken. “What witches? What else do you know about my family that I don’t?”
His reply is infuriatingly calm. “Nothing. Only what you’ve told me. I—”
“Stop lying to me. I know what I saw, Ezra. I know what you did. I know—”
“For god’s sake, Jules—you’ve been hallucinating since we met!”
His words land like a gunshot, careening them both into silence.
Mallory can’t hold back the fresh tears that follow.
Like she’s five years old and realizing for the first time that she’s different.
A girl who death clings to like a wisp of smoke, a curse burned into her soul.
When it catches up with her, she’ll be all alone, bleeding from a blade in her chest. Just like every woman who came before her.
How foolish to wish this was a shared haunting, that their ghosts were somehow aligned. She’s always known that hope is a traitorous thing. She should have kept hers locked up.
“Hallucinating,” she echoes, voice quiet and dark.
Ezra’s eyes flash with the alarm of someone who just accidentally swallowed poison. “Fuck, that came out wrong.” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “I meant, from the start, you’ve been seeing things. Maybe you just had a vision now, maybe you—”
“Hallucinating?”
“I didn’t mean to say that—”
“You want to know something? That day we traded secrets, that was the first time in my life I felt like somebody saw me. Me, the real me.”
Pain splits his face. “I do see you—”
Mallory shakes her head. “Everything about us has been a mess from the start. You lied to me, and I foolishly looked the other way because I liked you. Because I had a pathetic crush. Because you made me feel things I’ve never…
” Her exhale is only laced with anger. “But there’s something else, isn’t there?
I’m not just a relic for some old historical society.
There’s something you’re hiding, something even more fucked-up. ” She glares. “What is it?”
“There’s nothing else,” he says.
She throws up her hands. “So, what then? What have you been doing with me this whole time? Was it just some game to convince me to fuck you?”
Ezra drags a palm down his jaw. “You know that’s not true.”
“Cute little freshman girl,” she barrels on, voice biting and cold.
“Could have made a killer story to tell your fancy fraternity friends back home. Oh wait.” She knows she’s about to go too far, swallowing the razor-sharp sting of the words as they slash out.
“They all think you’re a monster, don’t they?
Maybe they’re right. Maybe that’s exactly what you are. ”
For a moment, neither of them says anything. But she’s not oblivious to the hurt that swims in his eyes, the muscle working in the side of his jaw. The way the sadness in his face flattens, too quickly, into fierce indignation.
Because Mallory just used a secret as a weapon, and now the battle is a war.
“That,” Ezra growls, “is rich coming from a girl who lies to everyone. How many friends do you have? Can you count them on two hands? One? Can you even count them at all?”
She scoffs. “How can you say that? You made me lie to them!”
“I never made you do anything you didn’t already want to do!
” Ezra shouts right in her face, so close his breath stirs her hair.
“Don’t you dare act like you’re some innocent schoolgirl I manipulated into bed.
Everything you’ve done—staying up all night with me, telling fuck all to your roommate—you made those choices on your own.
” He narrows his eyes. “And the sex? Don’t pretend you didn’t want that, too.
The sound of you begging for it is seared into my brain.
” His nostrils flare, pupils blown black.
“You can blame me all you like, but when you’re completely alone—and you will be—because you’ve pushed everyone away?
You’ll only have yourself to blame for that.
” Something vicious stirs in his stare, like he’s reaching for the final blow.
“Isn’t that what you’re really afraid of, Jules?
Not just that you’ll die like her, but that you’ll be lonely like her?
Unknowable? A mystery in life and in death?
Allow me to be the one to break it to you—you already are. ”
She stares at him. Distantly, she realizes they’re even now, but fury spins in her blood all the same. “Fuck you.”
Ezra blinks, like he’s trying not to appear wounded. “For the record,” he says, “I would never hurt you. I’ve been trying to protect you.”
Mallory shakes her head as she snatches her bag. “I don’t believe a thing you say anymore.”
Ezra’s eyes harden, the final thread cut.
“Fine. Decide I’m a monster if it makes this easier.” He leans in to add, “I’ll be one for you, Jules.”
She glares at him, stone in her eyes to hide the fear, before stalking toward the door. She half expects Ezra to call after her, to plead with her to stay.
Instead, he lets her walk out into the storm.
Mallory doesn’t cry until she’s back in her room.
She takes the stairs three at a time, everything blurring through rain and tears. She avoids eye contact with a group of students coming down the hall, and runs straight to her dorm, slamming the door.
Once inside, she drops her bag and sinks to the floor, burying her face in her hands.
She never thought of trust as something that existed outside of her body, but that’s what it is—a fragile object, made of porcelain or glass, that she’d kept tucked in a secret place until she offered it to him.
She’s not sure if she was foolish to give it away or brave to let it go.
Perhaps, she thinks with a sob, it’s both.
It takes her several moments to realize that her room wasn’t empty when she barged in. Because when she raises her gaze, it’s to find Raf and Arden staring at her.
They’re lying on Arden’s frilly pink comforter, a smattering of books to one side as though they attempted to study but gave up.
“I-I’m sorry,” Mallory stammers, face flushing as she registers Raf wearing only his jeans, belt undone, Arden in shorts and bra. “I didn’t mean to interrupt—”
“What happened?” Arden asks, unfazed. She tugs on a T-shirt and sails across the room, crouching on the floor beside her. Raf pulls on his sweater, eyes rounded in concern.
“Are you hurt?” Arden demands, searching her gaze. “Was it Ezra?”
Unable to come up with an answer worthy of the torn-up feeling inside her, Mallory just nods and rests against Arden’s shoulder as a new rush of tears spills loose.
Arden strokes her wet hair in response, tucking stray pieces behind her ears.
For a moment, they stay that way. Just the soft sound of rain and puffs of Arden’s Gap Om fragrance, making Mallory think about sneaking cigarettes beneath tiled walls, back when they belonged to each other and no one else.
The pain in her chest throbs with remorse.
“You don’t have to tell me right now,” Arden says. “You don’t have to tell me at all. I’m here, Mal. I’ve always been here.”
“I’m sorry,” Mallory manages. “For lying, for keeping so many secrets, for breaking our pact, for—”
Arden shushes her, hugging her tighter. The gesture feels like the gentle wave of a white flag. Maybe she and Arden will never be put back together again perfectly, but complete enough.
“What about a new pact?” Arden asks, like she’s thinking the same thing. “ ‘Never leave each other in the dark.’ ”
Mallory sniffs. “I think that sounds perfect.”
“Why don’t we—”
But then Raf cuts in with a question drenched in alarm. “Mal. What the hell is that?”
Mallory lifts her head. “What?”
“On your neck,” he adds, pointing. “What is that?”
She leaps up and races to the mirror—and gasps when she sees it.
Two puncture wounds on the side of her throat. Nestled in the dark cloud of a bruise.
Mallory should feel a jolt of panic, but all she feels is an electric surge of vindication. It starts in her chest and spreads like a live wire until her whole body is pulsing with the pure satisfaction that she was right.
For a second, the woman in the mirror looks less like her and more like a woman who might have lived a hundred years ago. Not a corpse, not a ghost. Just a woman who is tired of being silenced, of feeling like her body isn’t hers.
A woman, she thinks, who’s about to take her power back.