Chapter 17
The following afternoon brought with it an onslaught of spring storms, leaving the world painted in grim, dark colors.
Hawthorne moved at his usual carefree pace ahead of me on the garden path as we carried several potted plants to the secondary greenhouse.
It emerged before us through the misty air, smaller than the main structure connected to the manor, but no less beautiful in its construction. Glass panels shimmered from the rain, transforming the building into something that glowed softly against the gray afternoon.
Hawthorne pushed through the door without pause, and I followed, grateful for the warmth that enveloped me upon crossing the threshold.
The moment my feet touched the greenhouse floor, my little companion surged forward.
My vision sharpened to painful clarity as it pressed against my eyes, searching and cataloging every new plant visible in the space.
It guided my gaze from specimen to specimen—ferns and mosses, climbing vines and flowering plants, rows of seedlings still too young to identify, mature specimens in various stages of bloom and decay.
Where is it? The thought was not mine, burning through my consciousness with the heat of obsession.
My head turned of its own accord, scanning the greenhouse systematically, taking inventory of everything present, but whatever it sought was not here.
The voice retreated, withdrawing with such abruptness it left an ache behind my eyes and a hollowness in my chest that felt like disappointment and mourning.
I stood very still for a moment, my hands gripping the edge of a worktable, steadying myself as the world returned to its normal proportions and my vision belonged to me again.
The flower.
The knowledge passed through my mind, my companion flashing the image behind my eyes, and finally revealing what it had been looking for all this time. It was searching for the flower the ghost had held—that small, luminescent bloom that had pulsed with yellow-green light in her spectral hands.
But why? What was that flower? What did it mean to me—or whatever lived inside me.
I had no answers, only the lingering sense of frustrated longing that coated my thoughts like residue, making it difficult to think clearly about anything else.
Hawthorne set his burden down and departed without acknowledgment, leaving me alone with the salvaged plants. I began the work of arranging them in their new home, giving each specimen adequate space and light according to its needs.
The door opened behind me some time later and Dr. Ambrose entered carrying another armload of pots.
I kept my attention fixed on the fern before me, tucking its roots more firmly into fresh soil, though every nerve in my body had become aware of his presence the moment he crossed the threshold.
The tension between us was palpable, thick enough to feel against my skin like humidity before a storm.
We had not spoken since the day before in his study, and he had, as always, left the prior evening and had not returned until some time in the early morning hours.
I still had no idea where he went each night, but I soon meant to find out.
I sensed him watching me as he set the plants down. I adjusted a fern’s position and silently cursed my body’s betrayal as my cheeks heated.
I forced myself to focus on the plants before me, but my mind kept circling back to him—to his shoulders moving beneath his shirt as he worked, to the angle of his jaw when he tilted his head in concentration, to the memory of his fingers tangled in my hair and the heat of his breath against my ear.
To the question of whether those same hands had killed his wife.
I glanced at him from beneath my lashes, watching as he arranged a climbing rose with movements that spoke of genuine care. His expression was focused, peaceful even, absorbed in the work, making him appear harmless, but I knew better than to trust appearances.
My thoughts turned as I studied him, my mind working through the logistics of what he must have done.
Had he killed her before the procedure? Administered some compound that would stop her heart while keeping her tissues fresh and receptive?
Had it been an accident and he had tried to use the vine to revive her?
Or had he attempted the grafting while she still lived, hoping it would take hold and transform her into something that was neither fully alive nor properly dead?
Had she died during the procedure itself? Had he watched her convulse as the tendrils spread through her system—as the woman he claimed to love bled out before him?
Why hadn’t it worked?
Hawthorne existed, after all. The vine had successfully animated dead tissue and created something that functioned despite having no heartbeat, no breath, no true life. The research had succeeded, so what had gone wrong with her?
I realized I was staring at Dr. Ambrose, my hands still and forgotten on the plant before me, my mind so consumed with these dark calculations that I had lost all awareness of my surroundings.
He looked up at that exact moment, his eyes meeting mine across the greenhouse. For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. The air between us was charged with everything unspoken—attraction and suspicion and secrets too dangerous to voice aloud.
Then the temperature dropped.
The change was instantaneous, the warm air transforming into something that pulled the heat from my skin. My breath fogged before my face in small, dissipating clouds.
Dr. Ambrose’s brow furrowed, his gaze breaking from mine to scan the greenhouse. “The heating system—”
But I was no longer listening. My attention had caught on a point just behind his left shoulder, where the air had begun to shimmer and distort.
She materialized from mist this time, her form bleeding into existence rather than appearing all at once. Dr. Ambrose’s wife stood close enough to him that her bloodstained nightgown nearly brushed his sleeve, her posture bent toward him with terrible intimacy.
He was oblivious to her presence. He had turned his attention to examining the heating pipes that ran along the greenhouse’s foundation, his forehead creased with concern but not alarm, unaware of the specter that leaned close enough to whisper in his ear.
I watched, captivated, as her translucent hand reached toward his face with the knowledge of someone who had performed this gesture countless times before and knew exactly how it should feel. Her fingers tangled in his dark hair, the motion possessive and loving in equal measure.
Then her jaw began to open.
It unhinged with that same horrible grinding I had witnessed before, the bones separating beyond any natural range of motion. Her mouth gaped impossibly wide, and her tongue emerged—long, serpentine, and glistening with moisture that caught the dim light and made my stomach clench.
Her tongue traced along his jaw with obscene slowness, moving down the column of his throat, lingering over his pulse point. I observed the wet trail it left behind on his skin, imagining the cold, dead weight of it against living flesh.
Dr. Ambrose continued his examination of the heating pipes, still completely unsuspecting.
Then the vines began to emerge.
They pushed past her extended tongue, escaping from her throat—one by one they appeared, growing longer as they descended, winding their way down her chin, then wrapping around his throat, coiling with confidence.
I stood motionless, my breath caught somewhere in my chest, unable to look away from the sight of those pale tendrils encircling his windpipe, tightening incrementally, seeking the pressure points where breath was most easily restricted.
My hands ached at my sides, itching to replace the vines.
I wanted to step forward, reach out, wrap my fingers around his throat and feel the cartilage flex beneath the pressure, counting how many seconds it would take before survival instinct overrode his scholarly absorption.
I would watch his face change as oxygen deprivation set in—the widening of eyes, the flush of color followed by its absence, the specific moment consciousness began to flicker and fade.
You should cut him open and see if his insides match yours, the voice suggested.
I wanted to.
The voice wanted me to.
But I did not move. I simply stood there, watching the ghost’s vines encircle Dr. Ambrose’s throat with increasing tightness.
His wife finally pulled back, the tendrils retracting just as they had emerged.
They wound back up his throat, across his jaw, disappearing between her crimson lips, swallowed and reclaimed, drawn back into whatever darkness resided in her spectral form.
Her tongue followed, that impossible length sliding back into her mouth.
Her jaw closed with a nauseating click I felt more than heard.
She turned her head toward me, her neck rotating beyond normal range with the ease of something no longer constrained by living anatomy.
Her eyes were brilliant green, the exact shade that looked back at me from every mirror and reflective surface.
She smiled with satisfaction, the gesture of someone who had revealed a secret and was pleased with the revelation’s effect.
I stared at her face, stunned by the resemblance—the same jaw.
The same cheekbones. The same slight asymmetry I had traced in my own reflection countless times.
The same hair, the same shoulders, the same features arranged in the same pattern.
She was me. Or I was her. Or we were both fragments of something that had been broken apart and scattered across the boundary between life and death.
Then she vanished.
The temperature normalized, humid air rushing back so suddenly it made my head spin. The frost that had begun to form on the glass panels melted, moisture running down in clear rivulets.
Dr. Ambrose straightened from his examination of the pipes, his brows furrowing before his gaze found mine across the greenhouse. Whatever he saw in my face made his expression shift from puzzlement to concern. “Miss Reed. Are you quite alright?”
I realized I was gripping the edge of the worktable hard enough that my knuckles had gone white, my breath coming in short gasps, my entire body rigid with the effort of remaining upright.
“Yes,” I managed, though my voice sounded strange to my own ears. “Perfectly fine. The cold simply caught me off guard.”
He studied me for a long moment, skepticism clear in his amber eyes. He knew I was lying, knew something more than a temperature fluctuation had left me standing frozen among the ferns, but he did not press.
We worked in silence for the remainder of the afternoon, but I sensed his attention returning to me at intervals—brief glances when he thought I was focused elsewhere.
By the time I had finally composed myself, the afternoon had melted away into evening, flashes of silvery-blue lightning crackling overhead. I finished lining a row of oleander seedlings that had managed to escape Hawthorne’s rampage unscathed before moving toward the door.
“Good night, Dr. Ambrose,” I said, avoiding his gaze when he looked up.
“Good night, Camellia,” he replied, my name softened upon his lips. I met his eyes briefly, then forced myself to turn away and leave the greenhouse—but sleep was the furthest thing from my mind.