Chapter 18
The rain continued its relentless assault, drumming against the windows with a monotonous persistence that frayed nerves and made time feel distorted.
By late-evening it had lessened to a steady drizzle, but the damage was done—the grounds had transformed into a morass of mud and standing water, the gardens sodden and colorless beneath heavy clouds that refused to lift.
I stood at my bedroom window as darkness fell, watching the rain streak down the glass, waiting.
Dr. Ambrose had retired to his study hours ago with instructions not to be disturbed.
Agnes had served a quiet supper in the dining room—just the two of us, the silence heavy with things neither of us addressed—before retreating to her own quarters for the evening.
The house had settled into its nighttime rhythms, floorboards creaking as they cooled, wind rattling the shutters like bones shivering against the glass, rain providing constant accompaniment to the small sounds of an old building at rest.
I had already prepared. My heaviest cloak lay across the bed, my sturdiest boots waited by the door, their leather treated against moisture though I doubted anything might truly withstand the deluge outside.
I had bound my hair tightly to keep it from my face, had dressed in my darkest clothing—practical considerations for what I intended to do.
I was going to follow Dr. Ambrose.
The decision had crystallized sometime during the previous sleepless night, solidifying into certainty as I replayed the ghost’s knowing smile, her face that matched my own, the vines that had wrapped around Dr. Ambrose’s throat.
I needed to understand what he was doing, where he went when he thought no one was watching, what secrets he kept that might explain the terrible similarities between his dead wife and his living assistant.
Movement below caught my attention.
The door leading from the study to the garden path opened and Dr. Ambrose emerged, already cloaked against the rain. He moved with purpose through the drizzle, heading toward the front gate with a stride that carried both urgency and familiarity with his destination.
I waited until he had disappeared beyond the garden wall before moving.
My hands found my cloak, pulling it close. I slipped from my room and descended the stairs, avoiding the boards I had learned would creak beneath my weight. The front door opened silently, and I crept out.
The rain hit me with force, cold and insistent despite the drizzle’s gentle appearance. Water soaked through my cloak within minutes, finding every gap in the fabric, seeping down my neck in rivulets that made me shiver. The ground squelched beneath my boots, mud sucking at my feet with each step.
I followed at a distance, keeping to the shadows where possible, using the rain and darkness as cover. Dr. Ambrose walked steadily ahead, his form barely visible through the curtain of precipitation, a dark shape against darker night.
We walked through the sleeping village, past houses with shuttered windows and darkened doorways. The streets were deserted—no one ventured out in weather like this unless necessity demanded it. Our footsteps were muffled by rain and mud, any sound we made swallowed by the storm’s constant drone.
He led me away from the residential area, following roads that grew narrower and less maintained as we left the village center behind.
The path became treacherous, rutted and flooded in places, forcing me to navigate carefully to avoid twisting an ankle in some hidden depression.
Mist curled from the ground, flanking a tall gate, iron and ornate, the metalwork elaborate even through the rain’s distortion.
They stood open, welcoming or perhaps simply uncaring, leading into darkness that the storm made impossible to escape.
The cemetery.
Dr. Ambrose passed through without hesitation, disappearing among the headstones and monuments that crowded the space beyond the gates like a stone forest. I paused at the threshold, my breath coming fast, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Go, the voice urged, eager and insistent. See what he truly is. See what he does when he thinks himself unobserved.
I stepped through the gates.
The cemetery sprawled before me in the rain-soaked darkness, an endless maze of monuments and markers.
Bare trees overhead provided no shelter from the drizzle, their skeletal branches reaching toward a sky hidden by heavy clouds.
Water pooled everywhere—in the paths between graves, in the depressions where earth had settled over old burials, against the bases of headstones where it gathered and overflowed.
I followed the disturbed mud where Dr. Ambrose had walked, staying low behind larger monuments when possible. Rain ran down my face, blurred my vision, soaked through every layer of clothing until I was wrapped in cold and wet.
I watched as he knelt beside a fresh grave in the newer section of the cemetery, his dark form barely visible through the rain.
His hands worked at something I could not quite discern from my hiding place behind a weathered stone angel, its wings spread in permanent benediction over graves it could not protect.
I crept closer, using monuments as cover, until I was near enough to observe without being detected. Dr. Ambrose was not digging or disturbing the grave itself or attempting to access whatever lay beneath the mound of rain-soaked earth.
He was collecting something that grew upon it.
A vine.
Even through the rain and darkness, I could make out delicate tendrils spreading across the fresh grave in intricate patterns, glowing with a pale green luminescence that seemed to illuminate the wet darkness. It was ethereal and beautiful and deeply unnerving all at once.
Verdant Vespera.
I continued to watch as he produced small shears from his coat.
He examined the vine’s structure before making each cut, selecting specific sections with obvious expertise.
Each cutting was wrapped in damp cloth—protection against the elements or perhaps preservation of some quality the plant possessed—before being placed in his pocket.
It was clear he had done this many times before.
My mind raced through the implications I did not want to consider.
He was continuing his research with the same plant that had killed his wife—or transformed her, depending on how one categorized what the ghost had become.
Despite the horror of what Verdant Vespera might do to human tissue, he was still collecting specimens, still working with compounds that blurred ethical boundaries.
Why?
Did he intend to try again? Had he not been deterred by whatever had happened to his wife, determined to perfect the process regardless of cost?
Moreover, who was he planning to use the vine on?
You, my companion answered.
My pulse prickled beneath my skin at the realization.
What if it was right?
I was living in his house, working in his greenhouses, deteriorating steadily from some illness no physician could diagnose or treat. A woman with botanical knowledge, isolated from family, showing symptoms that seemed to interest rather than concern him.
A woman whose face matched his dead wife’s with an unsettling resemblance.
He chose you, the voice said with disturbing certainty.
I pressed my hand against the headstone base, steadying myself against the wave of nausea that accompanied the knowledge.
The pieces fit too well to dismiss as coincidence—the specific requirements in his advertisement, his lack of surprise at my symptoms, how he had examined my hands that first day, his wife, whose ghost haunted the halls, whose eyes matched mine, whose face I wore like a mask borrowed from the dead.
My heart pounded behind my ribs uncomfortably, the sound of it beating against my brain.
Dr. Ambrose turned to leave.
I ducked lower behind the headstone, pressing myself against it, my breath held until my lungs burned. His footsteps squelched through mud dangerously close to where I crouched, close enough that I heard his breathing, rough and uneven with emotion held barely in check.
I waited until his form had disappeared into the darkness before allowing myself to breathe properly. My legs had gone numb from crouching in the cold and wet, my fingers stiff inside gloves that had long since soaked through. Water dripped from my hair and ran down my back.
He’s going to do to you what he did to her, the voice said, its tone carrying satisfaction rather than warning. He’s going to cut you open and plant the vine inside you and watch what grows.
I needed to leave. I needed to return to the house before he discovered my absence, before he realized I had followed him, before he guessed that I knew what he was planning.
I stood, my stiff joints protesting, and turned to retrace my steps toward the gates.
My boot caught on something hidden in the mud—a root perhaps, or a piece of broken monument buried beneath accumulated earth. My foot slid sideways, finding no purchase on the slick ground. My ankle twisted with a sickening wrench that sent lightning bolts of pain shooting up my leg.
A sound escaped me before I was able to force it back—high and sharp, a squeal of surprise and agony that cut through the rain’s constant patter.
I fell hard, landing in cold mud that immediately soaked through my cloak and skirt, finding skin with a shocking cold. Pain pulsed from my ankle in waves that made my vision blur and my stomach lurch.
Footsteps approached rapidly, splashing through standing water.
I looked up through the rain streaming down my face and found Dr. Ambrose standing above me. Moonlight broke through the clouds, illuminating his features with cruel clarity. His expression was unreadable through the rain.
“Miss Reed,” he said, his voice carrying no inflection at all. “What an unexpected place to encounter you.”