Chapter 36
Mallory bursts into Corwin Hall feeling as though her lungs are about to explode. She takes the stairs two at a time, heart pounding. In the distance, she can hear sirens.
Are you okay? one had asked, crouching in the wet leaves. Another maniacal laugh nearly bubbled from her chest at the question. She was covered in ash and bleeding, but sure. She was fine, fine, fine—
Mallory didn’t wait for the EMTs to arrive. Didn’t wait for the fire trucks. Didn’t wait to answer questions or have lights shined in her face this time. She’d stumbled to her feet and dragged herself to Saskia’s dorm.
If that dark creature died in the chapel with Ezra, then the curse must be lifted, she reasons as she flies up the stairwell. The idea should fill her with hope, but instead, all she feels is violent trepidation.
And when she swings Saskia’s dorm door open, confirmation of her worry hits her like stone.
Saskia is sitting up in bed, staring out the window in silence. Her eyes are fully opal, and her skin has turned an even deeper shade of grayish green. Mallory’s stomach flips as she spies the scarves that have been fastened upon Saskia’s wrists and ankles, the knots digging into discolored flesh.
“Sas!”
“Oh my god,” Arden breathes when she sees Mallory’s appearance. “What happened to you?”
“It didn’t work,” Mallory whispers, ignoring Arden’s question. She starts across the room to Saskia, each step heavy with defeat. Maybe there’s no way to end this cycle. Maybe everyone she’s ever loved is meant to be ripped from her life.
Maybe Ezra was right. She will end up alone.
“Mal.” Raf grabs her shoulders, halting her. “Do you know what ‘rainbow box’ means?”
She blinks. “What?”
“Saskia kept saying it. Rainbow box, rainbow box.” His eyes shift to her. “Now, she won’t say anything.”
Mallory slowly registers the way Arden had been crouched at Saskia’s desk, rummaging through drawers. The closet is also open, hangers on the floor. They’ve been searching for something, tearing apart the dorm in an urgent hunt.
“Rainbow box.” Her thoughts spin. “Rainbow b— Wait.”
Whirling, Mallory scans the room until she spots Saskia’s backpack.
She combs through it until she finds something hard and square: the little wooden box she noticed the other day.
She rubs her fingers over the faded rainbow stickers, tracing the outline of the letters on the lid: ICOE.
It’s just something my mom gave me before she died.
“In case of emergency,” Raf reads over her shoulder.
Mallory’s gaze slips to the padlock. She frowns.
There aren’t any numbers, no hidden keyhole.
It’s just a silver sphere encased in a black holder.
She fiddles with it, realizing that the ball can be pushed in a variety of directions, clicking after each turn.
There must be some sort of code, some key with arrows—
Arrows.
“Wait. I think I know how to open this,” Mallory says, shoving the box into Arden’s hands. “I’m going to read you the instructions, okay?”
Arden offers an apprehensive nod as Mallory darts to the bed, studying Saskia’s faraway expression.
“Your arrow tattoos,” she whispers, swallowing nervously. “I need to look at them.”
Mallory reaches for Saskia’s arm, bare in a clean white dress Arden helped her into in the dressing room. Unease ripples through her at the coldness of Saskia’s skin, the way her flesh is textured and scaly, like her body is decomposing while she’s still alive.
Just as Mallory turns to study the arrows, Saskia begins to hum. It’s an eerie, familiar lullaby, one that causes goosebumps to rush across Mallory’s skin.
“My mother used to sing that same song,” Mallory murmurs.
The melody dies out. Saskia stares ahead, unblinking. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
Mallory freezes at the unexpected sound of her voice. It’s distant and thin. Not rattling like the demon’s, but far-off and hazy. As though Saskia herself has begun to disappear.
“Sas,” she whispers. “It’s me.”
“You…” Saskia finally turns her pale eyes to Mallory. The lights flicker. “This is your fault. You did this to me. You’re just as bad as him.”
“No,” she whispers. “That’s not true.”
“Give me a knife,” she singsongs, milky gaze aglow. As if in a trance. “Let me end this, let me—”
“Stop!” Mallory yells, splaying her hands on either side of Saskia’s unrecognizable face. “Jacob is dead! Victor is dead! Ezra is dead! I burned him alive.” Tears spill over her lashes. “The thing inside him should be dead, too. Why is this still happening, why—?”
But then, the lights start flashing, electricity buzzing and buzzing and buzzing. Arden whines her name.
With a cry, Mallory grabs Saskia’s elbow again. Glancing at Arden, she works out, “Ready?”
Arden shudders in Raf’s arms. She tightens her fingers around the box. She nods.
The lights continue thrashing and shuttering and—
“Left,” Mallory commands. “Up. Right. Right. Down. Left. Up. Up. Up.”
The bulbs in the ceiling explode, popping one at a time, raining shards of glass over them. Saskia throws her head back, her keening wail piercing the newly darkened room.
Arden hands Mallory the open box.
Saskia’s scream cuts off. The sudden quiet is somehow worse. Mallory’s head swims as she pulls out a slip of parchment paper, studying it in the silver moonlight.
An address is written on it, along with a hand-drawn map. A shaded picture of a cottage. The rounded edges of a beach. A wooden dock with three flowers engraved.
The seashore. The wild horses. Her mother. The vacation they took with Kiki—
Why would Saskia have this?
But then she glances at the words, and suspicion creeps in.
Because the address is for Mercy Island.
Penelope Vass
7 Laurel Road
“What is that?” Arden asks.
Mallory can’t find the words to answer. Because there’s something else in the box—
A photograph.
Her hands shake as she realizes she’s looking at a picture of herself as a child.
In the photo, Mallory is sitting on the shore next to her mother, dressed in white, a flurry of switchgrass tangled behind them. Chipped pink polish on her toes. A crown of twigs and petals in her hair, and—
Next to her in the picture are Kiki and her mother.
Just as she remembers them. They’re also wearing white, and Kiki clutches a stuffed bear beneath her arm. A bear with bright blue fur.
The same bear, she realizes, that’s on Saskia’s bed right now.
Because—because—
Saskia. Kiki. Saskia. Kiki.
Saskia is Kiki.
And on the bottom of the photograph is the final confirmation she needs, right there in handwritten letters. Mallory and Saskia, August 1985.
She flips the photo over to find another message.
Saskia: Show this photo to Penelope. She’ll remember you.
Mallory stares at the image for so long the colors run in a blurry mess.
How did she not put it together before? The beach, the women around the fire.
The way she and Kiki weren’t allowed to play together afterward.
All of it, an agreement. A deal, a bargain, a switch: the transfer of Mallory’s curse to Saskia, who was presumed to die within months from the cancer ravaging her tiny body.
Perhaps Saskia’s mother wanted to give Mallory a future away from death and pain because her own daughter was already enduring both.
She couldn’t have known that Saskia would recover.
That, impossibly, Saskia would grow up to be a girl with hopes and dreams that could never be achieved with a shadow at her back.
Mallory is vaguely aware of Arden and Raf trying to get her attention. But she’s far away in her own thoughts, weighed down by the revelation that has been staring her in the face this whole time. She wants you to see, Rebecca had said to her. She wants you to see.
And then, as if the box contained another spell meant to be broken, the door bursts open and a woman rushes in.
Mallory exhales, relief and frustration coursing through her all at once as she gasps the name of the woman she’s been desperate to reach for days—
“Aunt Penelope?”
Penelope’s pale blue eyes fly to Saskia on the bed.
“Come with me,” she says. “There’s not much time.”