Chapter 13
Instead of going to Ezra’s dorm that night, Mallory sits in the theater lighting booth and stares at the ghost light until her eyes burn.
At the library, Saskia had tried to offer an explanation. From what I remember, Ezra’s dad is pretty old, she shared. But he looks much younger. Ezra once said his grandfather lived past a hundred. Good genes, I guess.
Mallory only felt foolish as she picked at a thread on her tights and asked, Why didn’t he tell me his dad’s company built Shore?
Maybe, Saskia said, he wanted to be around someone who didn’t know about his family. Or his past. Sometimes that can be freeing, you know?
Mallory did know, but it didn’t ease the sense of betrayal bubbling inside her.
As she sits on the counter in the lighting booth now, she can’t help but replay every word Ezra has ever spoken through a new lens of deceit.
How he blinked with practiced confusion when she told him about Lily’s grave.
The way he stared at her in the chapel today, like she was someone he didn’t want to lose.
Gazing into the haloed glow of the ghost light, Mallory wonders if more than one thing can be true at once. If ugly truths and beautiful ones can coexist, tangled and mismatched, a tapestry of things that shouldn’t fit—and yet.
Her phone buzzes inside her bag. She grinds her teeth, expecting a text from Ezra, but finds a message from Penelope instead.
Answering her question from earlier, when she’d asked how her grandmother died.
This is not a conversation for texting, Penelope’s message reads, and Mallory narrows her eyes.
Why? She pauses, mustering her courage. Was it suicide? Like my mom?
Her phone buzzes immediately with Penelope’s reply. Let’s talk in person after my retreat.
Mallory stares at the message so long it blurs. Penelope’s evasiveness feels loaded. Does this mean her grandmother also died by suicide? Could it be the same way her mother did? The same way Lily’s corpse was mutilated after her death?
Perhaps it’s true. A genetic curse, woven into her bloodline. How far does it go back? And why her family?
Mallory shoves her phone into her bag, just as the door clicks open.
Ezra enters the lighting booth, long coat on, collar upturned.
“There you are,” he says, closing the door. “I was worried when you didn’t show up.”
Mallory settles against the counter. A fresh wave of anger washes over her. “Were you now.”
Ezra frowns at her detached tone. “What’s wrong?”
“Good question.” Mallory leans back on her hands. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
He peels off his coat, drops it onto a chair. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Fine.” Mallory swings her legs down, standing. “I’ll spell it out for you. Were you ever going to tell me that your father built this school?”
Something shifts in Ezra’s expression. “How…did you find that out?”
Mallory huffs an incredulous laugh. “You’re not even going to apologize for lying?”
“I didn’t exactly lie,” Ezra says, but she doesn’t miss the way he starts rolling up the sleeves of his black sweater. As if the accusations are making him uncomfortably warm. “I just didn’t…tell you everything.”
“A lie by omission is still a lie,” Mallory says. “I went to the library with Saskia. We looked up old Shore records. It was right there.”
“Saskia?” Ezra arches a brow. “Are you two friends now?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Saskia isn’t someone you can trust.”
“Oh, and you are?” she snaps. “Tell me something: Did you know about the cemetery under the hedge maze? The exhumations during the vampire panic in the eighteen hundreds? Everything that happened to Lily’s grave?”
His gaze softens. “I did.”
At that, Mallory explodes.
“What the fuck, Ezra?” She curls her fingers into her palms. “You’ve been using me as a supernatural science experiment for weeks, and all this time—you knew?
I’ve been trying to piece together what happened to Lily and what it has to do with my mom, with this place, and you’ve been keeping it a secret that your father’s company built a freaking garden over Lily’s grave?
You kept talking about figuring out what Lily wants, when you had all these details, knew who she was and what happened to her from the start.
How could you say you didn’t know? How could you not tell me? ”
“I didn’t—” Ezra’s jaw tightens. “I didn’t want you to find out this way.”
Her anger deflates, peppered with sudden apprehension. “Find out what?”
“You,” he says. “You’re my ticket out of here.”
She blinks. “What are you talking about?”
“My father, he—” Ezra drags a hand through his hair.
“He’s not just the CEO of a real estate company, okay?
He’s a philosopher, of sorts. An occult historian.
And, for lack of a better term, a wannabe necromancer.
He’s been studying Shore’s connection to vampire hysteria for as long as I can remember.
He believes the spirits of the people whose graves were exhumed have lingered here, which is why, year after year, people are convinced the campus is haunted.
So, he’s been trying to track down the living descendants of those who died, to archive this corner of the past before it’s fully lost, and”—Ezra pauses, looking at her almost apologetically—“make contact with the spirits that remain. If he can find evidence that there’s supernatural activity at Shore, he wants to go public with it.
He thinks it will immortalize him: The Man Who Proved Ghosts Are Real.
Not to mention the money I’m sure he would make.
” Ezra rolls his eyes. “He’s part of a historical preservation society that’s focused on all of this.
They meet once a month in the chapel to conduct séances.
Something about a holy place allows for easier contact.
And…” He pauses again. “And I’m part of it, too. ”
Mallory scrambles to make sense of what he’s saying. A historical society? Séances in the chapel?
“My father told me—” Ezra clenches his teeth. “He asked me to bring you to the historical society’s annual gala—it’s the same day as opening night. He said if I didn’t obey, he’d cut me off financially.” He drags a palm over his jaw. “Fuck.”
Mallory stares at him. “Ezra,” she says, “why me?”
His expression only looks pained.
“Come on, Jules,” he whispers. “You know why.”
She sorts through everything, turning his words over and over—and her heart sinks as it clicks.
Living descendants of those who died.
Mallory’s gaze falters, but there’s no hiding from the truth. She thinks of Saskia’s terror in the hedge maze, the way she called her Lily with such conviction. You know you look just like her, right? The documents they found today, granting Lily’s daughter admission to Shore College.
The way every woman in her family has gone to this school.
The way, she’s beginning to suspect, all of them died shortly thereafter.
“Lily Hubbard is my ancestor,” she says. “And you knew this whole fucking time.”
Ezra barely has to nod for her face to crumple, and she turns so he won’t see. She thinks of the inexplicable solace she’s found with him, all the pathetic, embarrassing, humiliating ways she’s wondered if his broken, distorted heart is somehow a perfect match for hers.
And none of it was real.
“Everything that’s happened between us,” she starts, swiping at her eyes, “is because of Lily? Because of your father’s research?
What, does he think he can use me to talk to her or something?
Like your ‘game’ the other night? Invoke the name of a dead person in your family?
” She shakes her head. “Have I been a pawn this whole time?”
Ezra steps closer to her. “Just let me—”
“And séances. All the things you taught me, things you said you read in books. You learned them from your father, didn’t you? From this…group?”
“No—no. That part wasn’t a lie.”
Mallory faces him, that hardened anger returning. “Ezra. I saw him in the chapel today. When you found me in the confessional booth—I was scared because of him.”
“My father spoke to you? Jules, what did he say?” Ezra’s expression dims. “He better not have touched you.”
“And that’s why you were at the chapel, too,” she barrels on, ignoring his questions. “To meet with him. Why? To talk about me? To laugh at how fucking gullible I am?”
“Of course not—”
“You hate your father, yet you wear his family rings with pride. You’re part of the same club.” A bitter laugh cracks loose. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care anymore to figure you out. You used me.”
Ezra’s eyes flash. “I didn’t.”
“You manipulated me, got me to tell you things I wouldn’t have otherwise—” Mallory cuts herself off with another sour laugh. “I thought we were trading secrets. But it was never a trade at all.” Her tone becomes knife sharp. “It was a heist.”
Ezra shakes his head. “It’s not like that.”
She exhales her frustration. “You just said as much! You set out to find me. For money! Was drinking my blood part of the plan? What about getting me to take my top off in a church? Was that some kind of sick joke with daddy?”
His face twists in disgust. “Jules. That’s fucked-up.”
“So are you. So was this.” She gestures between them, snatching her bag from the counter. “Whatever this was.”
His jaw tightens again, the past tense of her words heavy. “If you’d just let me explain—”
“What is there to possibly exp—?”
“The whole plan went to hell the second we met!” Ezra shouts, and she plummets into silence.
“Fuck my father, fuck his theories, fuck his research. Every night we spent together, everything we did—I did it because I wanted to. Because I can’t go a damn minute without thinking about you, and it’s making me insane.
” He steps closer, voice lowering. “I ruined the plan. Because you ruined me.”
Mallory’s tailbone connects with the counter, the steam sucked straight from her anger. “What?”
“Do you realize,” he seethes, “that it has been absolute fucking torture to touch you every night and not really touch you?”