RoseBlood(35)

“I’ve heard her talk to them,” Sunny murmurs.

“To the dead things?” I ask as we both stare up in petrified wonder.

“Yeah, sometimes when she’s in here with the door closed. Or maybe she’s talking for them. Maybe she’s one of those . . . what do they call that again?”

“Ventriloquists?”

She nods. “Yeah. And they’re her marionettes.”

“Or maybe she’s theirs,” I half joke, eyeing a white rabbit head still attached to its front torso and forelegs. Bouchard has carved a window in the rabbit’s chest where it’s hung flat against the wall, embedded an oval wooden frame within, and inserted an image of her holding the prized bunny years earlier, when it was still alive. She’s younger with no wrinkles, without that trademark layer of French powder and rouge. A white lab jacket covers a casual button-up shirt. It’s unsettling how happy she looked back then. Not even a trace of the stern bitterness I’ve come to dread each time I’m in her class.

“She flunked out of veterinarian school,” Sunny whispers. “That picture was taken before. She obviously didn’t ever get over having a scalpel in her hand or her love for the scent of blood.”

I cringe. Neither one of us notices that the Bride of Frankenstein herself has stepped up behind until she shouts: “Get out!”

We both yelp in surprise and spin around.

Her eyes are glossy and glaring, like pointy blue beads. She might as well have pulled them out of one of her projects. She wields a frighteningly sharp pair of scissors as she backs us into the hall. “How did you get in?”

Sunny stammers, vowing the door was already ajar. Only I catch the implication of her hand tucked inside her skirt pocket where she earlier dropped the key she’d lifted.

Headmaster Fabre appears at the top of the staircase. “Is there a problem, Miss Bouchard?” His commanding presence ignites a blush through Bouchard’s rouged cheeks—coloring them the same shade as the dye in her hair.

“Whatever it may be,” the headmaster continues, “I think we could solve it without physically threatening our students.”

Bouchard slaps the scissor handles against her palm. “The problem is a deplorable lack of respect for other people’s belongings and privacy. In my experience, the best way to make an impression on the uncivilized is by giving them a taste of their own barbarism.” She stomps back into the room, mumbling in French about shoving marble eyes into a hedgehog. The door slams shut.

Sunny repeats her excuse for us getting into the room. Unable to prove otherwise, Headmaster Fabre sends us to the last fifteen minutes of lunch with only a warning.

Friday comes to an abrupt end when Mom leaves for the airport. We stand out in the foyer, saying our good-byes while everyone else is at dinner. I make a marked effort not to look at the mirrors . . . not to let in that uneasy sense of being watched. The chauffeur gathers Mom’s bags and offers to wait outside with the limo. As he opens the door, the scent of wet roses and foliage drifts in and the room brightens with the sunset’s soft blush. In the parking lot and the foyer, the academy lights are set on timers to conserve energy—from six thirty until nine thirty every evening.

Mom tucks an unruly wave behind my ear. I admire how pretty she is in the pink haze, and think of the gauzy, romantic dress she found at a chic Parisian shop this week. She’s planning to wear it for her wedding in December, when I’ll be home for Christmas break. A smile inches across my lips. Her fiancé is picking her up from the airport when she lands tomorrow. “Ned’s got to be dying to see you.”

She smiles and shrugs. “Nah. Only mildly eager. You know his true passions are en suite bathrooms and hand-carved mahogany millwork.”

I laugh at her realty humor, but it’s forced. I’m going to miss her. I’ve become accustomed to sharing my dorm room. She hadn’t been willing to take the bed every night, so we’d alternated, but her presence was the one thing—other than my dreams—that made me feel safe.

“I’ll call you on the landline,” I say, in lieu of what I want to say: Please don’t go.

“Not if I call you first,” she teases.

I grin. Then, against everything telling me not to, I ask, “So, when you slept in my bed this week . . . did you hear anything weird?” Granted, I’d only heard the sounds in the vent that first night, but maybe she’d heard them since.

She frowns, looking pale as the lights in the foyer switch on. “No, sweetie. Like what?”

Startled by the worry clouding her eyes, I change tactics before she decides to stay another week. “Oh, nothing. Just . . . the air filtering through the vent. It’s noisy. Maybe I’ll ask Aunt Charlotte if maintenance can look at it. It might be stuffed with lint or something.”

“Okay.” She grins and her cheeks warm again with a healthy flush. “It’s been so nice having this extra time with Lottie. I’m glad you’ll finally be getting to know her, too. She sees so much of your father in you.” Mom’s eyes tear up a little. “He’d be so proud of you. How you’re facing your stage fright. And how you’re making friends.”

I manage a bright smile by thinking only of my new friends and blocking out all things operatic or phantasmic. Ever since yesterday morning, I haven’t seen any movement within the mirrors; but I don’t think my shadow’s gone. Not for a second.