Chapter 5
Mallory isn’t used to this kind of secret. The kind that isn’t just hers to hold.
She’s on edge in her Intro to Psych class the following morning.
Sitting between Jessica and Arden at the back of the dusty lecture hall, Mallory half listens to Professor Spaulding talk about cognition, mostly doodling and staring out the window.
She feels hungover, her head aching and stomach in knots.
Like her insides are on the outside, vulnerable and exposed.
Just then, a sound cuts through her thoughts. A low rumble, vibrating against her ear, coupled with a sudden icy breeze that brings the hairs on the back of her neck to attention. The noise grows louder, morphing into a growl.
And for a moment, it sounds like her name.
Mallory whirls. But there’s no one there. Just the cinder-block wall with its chipped paint. Her pulse hums as she tries to convince herself it was simply the wind. A draft. She doesn’t hear voices, has never heard anything like that before—
“Mal.” Jessica’s alarmed whisper snags her focus. “What are you doing?”
Mallory turns back. And her breath catches.
She hasn’t stopped drawing this entire time. Mallory drops her pen with a clatter, blinking at the furious scratches of ink in her notebook.
At first glance, it looks like nonsensical scribble, covering the width of the page. But the longer Mallory blinks, the more it looks like the silhouette of a wing.
Like a raven’s.
Ignoring Arden’s and Jessica’s incredulous stares, Mallory tears the notebook paper loose and crumples it in her fist. She takes a long swig from her water bottle, trying not to flinch at the way her throat burns.
Trying equally hard not to think about her mother’s notebook from Shore, filled with things Mallory is certain she didn’t intentionally write.
“Mal, are you—?”
“I’m fine,” Mallory says, flipping to a new page.
Fine. A lie that slips out so easily, she can almost believe it’s true.
At rehearsal that evening, Mallory silently practices the excuse she’ll give Arden—Hendrix and Pierce asked me to stay late to practice my soliloquy—but when it comes time to say it, the statement feels flimsy.
Arden fixes her with a questioning stare while buttoning her coat, as if quietly weighing each syllable.
But eventually she shrugs and says, “Okay, Mal. See you at home.”
When Mallory makes it into the dressing room, it’s to find Ezra sitting on the counter, reading a book like he’s been waiting for hours. Several bulbs are out along the mirror behind him, and the dim light sends a soft shadow across his pale skin.
“Here you are. Finally.”
She glances at her watch. “This is exactly when we said we’d meet.”
“But we’re in theater.” Ezra closes his book. “If you want to be on time—”
“Show up early,” Mallory finishes with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll be sure to remember that.” She closes the door carefully. “What if someone finds us?”
“Doesn’t that make this more fun?” Ezra cracks an amused grin. “Custodial crew doesn’t come until later. I checked. We’ve got two hours.”
Mallory drops her bag on the counter and tugs at her sleeves. “So, what’s the plan? Just wait for something bad to happen?”
“Not exactly. We have to set the scene.”
Ezra rummages in his messenger bag before pulling out a handful of objects: three black candles, a silver lighter, a piece of chalk—and a pocketknife.
Mallory narrows her eyes as he slides off the counter, peeling away the rug that stretches across the wooden planks.
She kneels beside him, watching as he rolls up the sleeves of his black shirt and draws a large chalk circle in the floor.
“What in the world are you doing?” she asks, tucking her pleated skirt around her thighs.
“Creating a liminal space to allow for spiritual entry.”
“I’m sorry—what?”
A wisp of dark hair falls over his forehead as he glances at her.
“I watched a lot of scary movies as a kid, which turned into reading horror novels and eventually nonfiction. Accounts of hauntings, exorcisms, that sort of thing. There was this one woman in Germany—she was exorcised sixty-seven times in one year before she died. That kind of shit fascinated me. I started studying theories of demonology, methods for séances, you name it. I guess you could say it was a bit of a hyper-fixation. Medicinal, in a way.”
Mallory studies him. “Like an escape.”
“Exactly,” Ezra says. “When your real life is already scary, horror films or books don’t give you nightmares. Instead, they can be weirdly comforting. There’s always that one character who survives, right? Who makes you feel like you can survive anything, too.”
She searches his gaze and nods, thinking of how she’s numbly sat through slasher movies with Arden in the past, the fake blood onscreen unable to touch her, not when the last memory of her mother is permanently etched in her brain.
“Yeah,” Mallory says softly. “I know what you mean.”
Ezra completes the chalk circle and sits back to blow dust from his hands. “Anyway, this is the first thing you’re supposed to do when contacting a spirit: Make a circle.”
Mallory eyes the knife. “What’s the second?”
His expression grows darker. “Offer it something.”
“Like…what?”
Ezra’s gaze rakes over her, considering. And then he reaches forward, grazing the layered ends of her chestnut waves.
“My hair?” Mallory manages, trying not to notice how close his hand is to her sweater, practically brushing her chest. She swallows. “You want to give it my hair?”
“You’re right. That’s not good enough.” Ezra lowers his arm. “How do you feel about blood?”
Mallory instinctively touches her bandaged palm. “Blood?”
“Just a little,” he says. “A pinprick from your finger, like they do at the doctor. A dash of blood with a lock of a beautiful girl’s hair—now that’s a decent offering.”
She shakes her head, ignoring how his voice sounds around the word beautiful, the way it causes warmth to spread deep in her stomach. “I don’t like it.”
“Look, in movies, people just hold hands and call a spirit,” Ezra says, “but it’s not that simple. The accounts I’ve studied all say you have to give a spirit a reason to make contact.”
Mallory hesitates. “It feels a little too easy. And cheesy. How do you even know it will work?”
“I don’t.” Ezra shrugs. “But we might as well try it and see. What’s there to lose?”
She squints. “My hair and blood, for starters.”
“I think you can handle it.” Ezra holds up the knife. “Do you trust me?”
Mallory holds his stare as he leans closer, the faintest hint of electricity sparking between their grazing limbs.
She chews over the question of what it means to gather trust in her palms like confetti and hand it over to a man she barely knows.
She forces a nod, just in time for Ezra to wrap her hair around his long fingers and drag the strands firmly over the blade.
A significant chunk falls away, and her chest tightens.
“Did you need to take that much?” Mallory touches the uneven spot. “It’s gonna look weird now.”
“Can you find a string or ribbon?” Ezra nods toward the counter. “There’s gotta be something in there.”
Mallory rummages in the drawers until she finds a roll of crimson lace. Ezra slices a section with the knife and ties a knot around the hair.
She sinks back to the floor. “Now what?”
He eyes her closely. “Trust. Right?”
“Right, but—”
He moves the knife fast. So fast, it’s several seconds before she realizes he’s slashed the tip of her middle finger on her uninjured hand. A pearl of blood blooms, spreading beneath the nail.
“Ezra!”
“Press it here.” Ezra guides her hand to the knotted ribbon, smearing her blood across the lace. “Like that.”
“You should’ve warned me first,” she says, finally registering the sting.
“So you could’ve worried about how it would hurt?” Ezra gives her a sidelong glance. “Isn’t it better to get it over with?”
Before she can respond, Ezra bends to blow a soft stream of air onto her slashed finger. Time seems to slow to a crawl.
In the quiet, Mallory has no choice but to be painfully aware of his full lips, the shadows clinging to his ivory-toned cheekbones.
The darkening in his emerald eyes when he blows on the cut a second time.
Slowly. Purposefully. For a nonsensical moment, she thinks he might bring her reddened fingers to his mouth.
For an equally confusing moment, she hopes he does.
Instead, he releases her hand, and she curls it against her stomach, face flushed.
She watches as he lays the ribbon in the center of the circle before reaching for the candles.
He sets them ablaze, then stretches to turn off the lights.
The dressing room falls into darkness, punctured by a flickering glow, and Mallory finds his gaze in the shadows.
“Is this the part where we hold hands and chant?” she asks, but the joke doesn’t do anything to quiet her racing pulse.
“For a girl who says she’s haunted, you’re awfully skeptical.” Ezra extends his hands, palms up. “This won’t work unless you believe it will.”
Mallory stifles a sarcastic response and settles into a similar cross-legged position, facing him.
It’s not that she doesn’t believe it will work—she knows it’s possible to whisper to creatures between worlds.
Perhaps, then, it’s more a fear of what might whisper back.
Before she can change her mind, she slides her hands on top of Ezra’s, locking their palms together.
There’s no hiding from the warmth that creeps up her neck at the press of his long fingers between hers, the cool metal of his rings brushing her knees. She can’t tear her stare away from their joined hands, convinced he can hear her pounding heart.
“Jules,” he whispers. “Call to her.”
“Why me?”
“She’s your ghost.”
Mallory hesitates again, palms sweating as she absorbs the hidden weight of his words. For so long, she believed that blood-drenched woman was her mother’s ghost. That she was gone for good. But there’s no escaping the truth: This nightmarish wraith belongs to her now.