Chapter 22
twenty-two
OLEANDER
The light in the living room was too harsh, cutting through the haze of the last hour, stripping away the warmth we'd built until there was nothing left but the four of us and the silence. I stood by the window because I didn't know how to sit. My skin felt too tight for my body.
Julian was on the sofa, his hands pressed so hard between his knees I thought he might break his own fingers.
Theo sat across from him, clutching his camera like a shield, though he hadn't taken a single shot since the temperature in the bedroom dropped.
We were all dressed now, the fabric of our clothes feeling like an insult against skin that had been so open moments ago.
I looked at Rowan. He was standing near the door, his arms crossed over his chest. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the floor, his eyes fixed on a point only he could see. He was prepared, which was worse than angry.
"I have to tell you something," I said. My voice sounded thin. "I should have said it before. I should have said it the night I met you."
Rowan's eyes snapped to mine. He didn't move, but the atmosphere in the room shifted, the pressure dropping until my ears popped.
"My husband didn't just die," I continued. "Dominic wasn't who I thought he was. He was involved in things. Occult things. This town, this apartment, it wasn't a secret he kept for a rainy day. It was a workshop. He was looking for something, or trying to open something. And I think he found it."
Julian went completely still. He looked up at me, his brown eyes searching mine for a lie I couldn't give him.
"What do you mean, open something?" Theo asked. His voice was steady, but his knuckles were white where they gripped the camera strap. "Oleander, we saw him. In the bar photos. In the shadows. That wasn't just the town. That was him."
"He opened a door," I whispered. "And whatever came through it followed me here. My grief, my guilt, it's connected to me. I don't know how, but it's connected to me. Whatever is hunting this town, whatever is making the buildings rot in spirals, it's here because I'm here."
Rowan took a step forward and something behind his eyes shuttered, a door closing that I didn't know how to unlock.
"How long?" Theo asked. He stood up slowly. "How long have you known that the thing we've been trying to protect you from is a thing you brought with you?"
I didn't answer. The truth was written on my face, in the way I couldn't meet his gaze. I had stayed silent because I was a coward who wanted to be loved more than I wanted to be honest.
"Too long," Rowan said. He turned away from me, his hands fisting at his sides. "You let us in. You let us put our hands on you, let us think we were keeping you safe, while you were carrying the very thing that's been poisoning this town."
"Rowan," Julian said softly, but the warning was there. He stood up and moved toward the piano, his movements stiff. He didn't look at me either. The trust fractured quietly, a thousand hairline cracks spreading through the room.
Rowan walked to the door and grabbed his coat. He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway without a backward glance. The click of the door behind him was the loudest thing I'd ever heard. Rowan had left his own home because he couldn't stand the sight of me.
Julian sat on the piano bench and pressed a single key, a low, mournful C that rang out until the vibration died in the wood. He stared at the keys.
"I have the photos," Theo said, his voice cracking the quiet. "I have a timeline. The anomalies, the sightings. They match the dates in your papers. I've been building a map of the rot, Oleander. I thought it was the town. But it's a trail leading straight to you."
"I'm sorry," I said, but the words felt hollow. I stood there for another minute, waiting for one of them to tell me to stay, to tell me we could fix it, but the piano note was the only answer I got.
I walked out. The hallway smelled like dust and old wood, but as I descended the stairs, the scent changed into something familiar, so thick it felt like I was walking through a cloud of it.
I stepped out into the night. Hollow Vale was swallowed in fog, the streetlights glowing like drowned stars. I walked toward my apartment, my hands shoved deep into my pockets. Every shadow seemed to stretch toward me.
My apartment was waiting. I could feel it from the street, a cold, dense pocket of air that sat over the brick building like a shroud. I climbed the stairs and unlocked the door, the brass key feeling like ice against my palm.
The temperature inside was hovering just above freezing. I walked into the living room and sat on the edge of the sofa, my breath blooming in white plumes in front of my face. The notebook was in my bag. I didn't reach for it.
Then, the cold shifted. It felt like a blanket, a pressure on the cushion beside me, the slow, deliberate sink of someone sitting down. The scent of sandalwood intensified, wrapping around me.
I looked to my left.
He was there, Dominic sitting on the sofa beside me, close enough to touch.
He looked like a photograph left in water too long, the edges of him blurred and running, but the center was sharp.
The jaw. The clean fade. The shoulders I used to press my face against when the world felt like too much.
He was wearing the shirt he'd been buried in, the dark one I'd chosen because it was his favorite, and his hands were resting on his knees the way they always did when he wanted to appear patient.
His eyes were wrong. They were holes, deep and lightless, two pits where the warmth used to be.
And his mouth was pulled into that smile, the one I'd been seeing in mirrors and photographs for weeks.
It stretched too wide, the corners pulling past the point where a human mouth should stop, and the teeth behind it were too white, too perfect, too many.
His words came to me, a vibration in the base of my skull.
"They were always going to leave, Oleander."
I couldn't move. The cold was inside me now, filling my lungs, slowing my blood.
A phantom touch traced my cheek, a streak of numbing cold that felt like a caress.
I knew I should run. I knew I should scream.
But the voice was so familiar, and the apartment was so empty, and the three men I'd just destroyed were somewhere in the fog, learning how to hate me.
"I'm the only one who stays," he murmured. "You know how this ends. It ends with me. It always ends with me."
I closed my eyes and Dominic stayed exactly where he was, a dead man sitting on a couch in a rotting town, waiting with the infinite patience of something that had already won.