Chapter 21 #3
Mallory slams her gaze to Saskia’s. A stale taste spreads in her mouth, like molded fruit, and that hollow feeling expands in her stomach. Like a clawing hunger, widening into famine. She doesn’t need to take her temperature to know she’s burning up again, her fever climbing to dangerous levels.
“Is there…another spirit with us?” Saskia asks.
NO.
“What?” Mallory whispers, teeth suddenly chattering. The puncture wounds throb on her neck. Her mouth is like sandpaper. “What could it—”
The planchette moves again. WORSE.
“Worse?” Saskia reads. “Worse than a spirit?”
That frostbitten cold sharpens around them, the stench of decay overpowering. Lights dance along Mallory’s vision. She’s suddenly so thirsty. Like her throat is closing in on itself, desperate for water, for food, for—
“Something’s wrong,” Mallory whispers. With me, she adds silently. “We should go.”
“One more question.” Saskia moves the planchette along the sheet, now covered in letters, nearly impossible to read. “Lily. Is Mallory fated to die like her mother?”
The planchette hurtles across the surface, emitting a keening screech. Like nails on a chalkboard, forcing them both to cover their ears—just in time for the pencil to snap in two, and the candles to snuff to darkness.
The loft is instantly filled with their matching screams, and Mallory isn’t sure who scrambles to the other first. But in the next breath, Saskia is clawing at Mallory, pulling her closer and closer until she’s all but draped in her lap while a terrible knocking reverberates from the floorboards.
“What’s happening?” Mallory cries.
Saskia’s response is drenched in fear. “I don’t know—what is that sound? Wh—”
Almost as soon as it started, the nightmarish choir ends, replaced by an uneasy quiet.
Ominous. Like the calm before a storm. As the silence expands, Mallory has no choice but to confront the fact that she’s clinging to Saskia like a life raft.
No choice but to notice Saskia clutching her, too, their chests pressed together as they chase their breath.
No choice but to register the intoxicating smell of her, floral and sweet and right below her nose.
Mallory desperately tries to fight the awareness, but she can’t hide from the hypnotizing consequence of Saskia’s scent, the way it draws Mallory’s attention to her throat like a moth to a flame.
There’s too much exposed skin, a breath away from Mallory’s lips.
From her teeth. Her mouth waters. Her stomach churns with something wild and voracious. Like she hasn’t eaten in a century.
There’s no running from it this time. Not when Saskia is in her arms, all soft curves and tangled hair and creamy skin slick with sweat. A fire of broken shame rages inside Mallory, illuminating the sickening truth she’s been avoiding all week:
She’s hungry, but not for food. She’s ill, but not with the flu. It’s bloodlust.
It’s been bloodlust this whole time.
Ezra did this. He infected her somehow. He—
“We’re okay,” Saskia whispers, stroking her hair, devastatingly unaware of how Mallory is falling apart.
The soft cloud of her breath makes the sheer desperation in Mallory’s stomach worse, and she nearly cries out at the discomfort.
It would be so easy to brush her lips over Saskia’s neck, so easy to puncture her skin for the tiniest, sweetest taste.
Mallory bites the inside of her cheeks instead. She won’t do it. She won’t fucking do it.
But a quiet part of her wonders what Saskia would do if she did. If she’d let her. If she’d hate her. If it even matters, if she already hates herself.
As if to prove she can handle being near Saskia without hurting her, Mallory presses closer, fists clutching the thin fabric of her top. She lets her forehead rest against Saskia’s, voice shaking as she forces herself to echo, “We’re okay.”
Saskia releases another exhale that lands on Mallory’s cheek, lips achingly close to touching. Her gaze drops to Mallory’s mouth, pupils electric. The gentle hand at Mallory’s shoulder travels up her neck, her jaw, holding her carefully in place.
They’re going to kiss if she doesn’t move away, Mallory realizes with a jolt. In a moment, Saskia’s glossy lips will be on hers, her tongue in her mouth, and there will be no more pretending after that. She’ll have to face what she really wants—what she inexplicably needs.
There won’t be any going back.
Saskia dips closer. And closer. And—
A chilling, metal-ripping sound floods the loft, slashing their breathy silence, stealing their kiss before it starts.
Mallory and Saskia scream in tandem just as something crashes beneath the entrance of the loft with a sickening thud.
They scramble to their feet; Saskia shoves the planchette into her bag.
Mallory dashes for the doorway before skidding to an abrupt halt. Saskia is one step behind, and they see it at the same time—
The spikes of wood sticking up, nails bent at unnatural angles.
The ladder has been ripped clear from the floorboards.
The same ladder that is now across the stage in pieces, with Arden lying motionless underneath.
Mallory unleashes a scream.
“No, no, no,” she wails, hurling toward the ledge. She swings her feet through the opening and vertigo pummels her. “Fuck—I think we’re too high up.”
Saskia lunges for her. “We have to call nine-one-one.”
“There’s no reception!” Mallory heaves a breath. “We need to get down.”
“I can do it,” Saskia says, shimmying through the opening. She grasps the ledge with her hands, lowering her body carefully. Mallory watches, her inhales coming faster and faster as Saskia lets go and falls to the stage, landing deftly. “Now you. I’ll spot you.”
Heartbeat racing, Mallory turns, backing out of the small space, letting her legs dangle into the theater. She squeezes her eyes shut, and on Saskia’s cue, lets go, plummeting to the stage. She lands much less gracefully, fall broken by Saskia’s reflexive, steadying grasp.
“I’ve got you,” Saskia says. “Gimme your phone, I’ll call.”
But Mallory doesn’t even hear her, fixated on the pool of blood widening beneath Arden’s head. It spreads and spreads, surrounding her like flowers at a burial. One of her legs is twisted at an unnatural angle, and a shard of bone has ripped through her torn tights.
“Arden!” she cries, crouching beside her. “Arden—!”
But Arden doesn’t move. And the circle of blood is only getting bigger.
“Oh god, I think she’s dead,” Mallory says.
A white haze burns at the corners of Mallory’s vision, and her ears fill with a ringing sound that quickly drowns out Saskia’s cries for help. A thunderous roar of footsteps skitters down the hall, and she closes her eyes and goes completely limp against Saskia’s chest, seeing—finally—only black.