Chapter 26
The theater lobby swims as Mallory collapses on a bench by one of the large windows. She pushes a shaking hand through her hair, unable to make sense of what Golden just told her.
Saskia sits beside her. “I don’t understand. Your aunt is a witch? Your mom’s sister?”
Mallory shakes her head. “They’re not sisters. I just grew up calling her aunt, I—”
She suddenly thinks about Penelope’s jewelry box, littered with moonstones and amethysts.
The satchels of herbs she kept in the house yet never cooked with.
The way she’d disappear for some yoga or Pilates conference four times a year—always, Mallory realizes now, coinciding with a solstice or equinox.
The way she would constantly change the subject whenever Mallory asked about her mother.
Not because she didn’t want to talk about it.
But because she didn’t want Mallory to know.
Mallory grabs her phone, smashing Penelope’s number. She grinds her teeth as it rings and rings and rings and—
Hi, you’ve reached Penelope. I can’t come to the phone r—
“Let’s just go to your house,” Saskia suggests. “We can ask—”
“She won’t be there; she’s been on some kind of wellness retreat since move-in day.
” Mallory curses under her breath as Penelope’s voicemail beeps.
“Aunt Penelope, it’s me. I need to talk to you.
It’s an emergency. It’s about my mom. About—” She swallows.
“About everything. I know what you did. Call me.”
She stands, pacing.
“A wellness retreat?” Saskia echoes.
“I think it’s a lie,” Mallory says, voice hardening. “She’s been going on these ‘retreats’ forever. I bet she’s been on Mercy Island every time.”
“Let’s go find out,” Saskia urges. “There must be a ferry or a water taxi or—”
“There’s nothing.” Mallory paces faster. “There’s a ferry to Prudence Island but not Mercy. I’ve lived in Rhode Island my entire life. Mercy is rocks and forest. No residents.”
“But Golden said Penelope was from Mercy Island.” Saskia shakes her head. “If she’s a witch, does that mean the stories are true? That real witches settled there fleeing the Salem trials? Did Penelope ever say anything about this?”
“Not a single word.” Mallory pushes her hands through her hair again. “Fuck. Opening night is next Friday; Ezra’s dad’s gala is next Friday. We’re almost out of time.”
Saskia frowns. “Why do you keep calling it a gala? I mean, I know Victor’s been calling it a gala, but that must be a cover, right?”
Mallory sits again, defeated. “Of course it’s a cover.”
She doesn’t have to say it to know they’re thinking the same thing. There’s no fancy party planned, no celebration in store. It’s a countdown to Mallory’s death, a gleeful ceremony of a life cut short. She shudders to think what they have planned for her.
“What about Ezra?” Saskia says. “He has to be in on it, too.”
“No.” Mallory shakes her head. “He hates his father. He’s so desperate to get away from him.
I doubt he’s aware of the full extent of what his father is planning.
Ezra wouldn’t go along with some plot to…
kill me.” She hates the way she phrases it.
Like she can only hope she’s right. “But I do think he might be able to help us.”
Saskia leans back against the window. “Mal. Come on.”
She turns. “We have to. We need to figure out what the link is between Jacob, the demon, and Ezra’s father’s…club. We’re out of options.”
“That’s not true.” Saskia’s expression hardens. “We can do this on our own. We’ll find Penelope. We’ll get to the bottom of what happened with the spell. We’ll figure out how to cure your bloodlust, we’ll—”
“But what if we can’t?” Mallory asks, turning to her.
“Saskia, if I got to your dorm two minutes later, you’d be dead.
” She searches her gaze. “And I feel okay right now, but what about when it comes back? What if I need more blood next time? What if—” She swallows, trying to push away the thought but it slips in anyway. “What if I hurt you?”
Saskia chews her lip.
“Trust me,” Mallory says.
“I do,” Saskia replies. “I just don’t understand how you can trust him.”
“Maybe I don’t. Maybe I’m just trusting myself.”
Saskia hesitates.
“Hell Week starts tomorrow with the cue-to-cue,” Mallory pushes on. “Let’s talk to Ezra after. He can’t ignore us if we’re both—”
“Mal.”
They whirl, and Mallory sighs at the sight of Raf walking toward her, headphones around his neck.
“Hey, Raf,” she says, “I know we were supposed to run lines, I just—”
“We need to talk,” he interrupts.
“Can it wait?” Mallory asks. “We’re kind of in the middle of—”
“No.” He crosses his arms over his denim jacket. “I’ve been trying to stay out of whatever’s going on between you and Arden, but this is too much. I don’t understand why you haven’t gone to visit her in the hospital. It would mean so much to her if you—”
“What?” Mallory interrupts. “Raf, I was there all night. I saw her this morning.”
Raf tips his head. “When?”
“I don’t know, early. We had an entire conversation. She was upset, but we talked. I brought her a bunny, I—”
“Wait—” Raf’s eyebrows shoot up. His face twists in abhorrence. “The fuck, Mal? That was you?”
Mallory snaps her gaze to his. Next to her, Saskia goes still.
“Why…why would you say it like that?”
“Mal.” Raf’s nostrils flare. “Arden found a dead rabbit in her bed.”
Mallory’s breath thins. Impossible. Impossible.
“No—I didn’t do that.”
“Well, someone did!” Raf gestures with the rounded base of his Discman. “Arden woke up screaming, nearly reopened all the stitches in her scalp. Doctors had to give her a sedative. Happened right as I was bringing her breakfast.” His eyes cloud over. “I’ve never seen anyone scared like that.”
Mallory shakes her head. Raf is saying words, but they don’t make sense, because there’s no way, no way she—
“No,” Mallory says again. “Raf. It was a stuffed bunny from the gift shop. It had a little bow around its neck, and if you squeezed its ear, it—”
An image of a warm rabbit in her lap flutters to life in her mind. Soft gray fur. Twitching black nose. Tiny, buzzing heartbeat. Bones like twigs. Her knees, cold and wet in the field behind the hospital lot. Two damp half-moons in her thigh highs, a rip that wasn’t there last night.
The way her fever subsided that morning at the hospital, as though she’d gotten a dose of medicine she didn’t remember receiving.
Mallory swallows a crescendo of bile. Raf stares at her.
“Oh god,” she works out. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Next to her, Saskia’s hand flattens on her back. “Mal? Did you…?”
“I don’t know,” Mallory whispers. She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to imagine her mouth coated with rabbit’s blood, but the image is fuzzy, blurring with Lily’s red-soaked cough.
Was she so desperate for blood that she’d hunted for it and then blocked out the memory?
Did that demonic beast laugh and laugh, watching her from afar?
Raf shakes his head. There’s pity in the gesture, resolution. “You need help, Mal.”
“Raf,” she pleads. “You know me. You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Arden. Not on purpose.”
His expression only looks sad when he says, “If she’s hurt, does it matter whether it was intentional?”
Raf doesn’t wait for her response. He stands, slipping his headphones back on, and continues up the stairwell. Mallory turns her terrified gaze to Saskia, finding her already staring.
“I didn’t do that,” Mallory whispers. “Did I?” She thinks of that deep growling voice, how it chuckled in her ear and promised to make her beg for death.
The way she felt in the prop loft, drowning in Saskia’s scent and weighing the risk of sinking her teeth into her throat.
How she was so outside herself she nearly did. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Saskia studies her. The breath she heaves is resolute. “Fine. Let’s talk to Ezra. Whatever’s happening to you…we need to fix it.”
But Mallory isn’t oblivious to the fact that Saskia is saying it like she’s trying to convince herself.
Like she can sense every ounce of danger that might lie ahead.
And as Mallory follows her out of the theater and into the evening autumn air, there’s nothing she can do about the fear rolling through her. Heavy as stone, rotten as a plague.
A plague, she can’t help but think, on both our houses.