A Lesson in Vengeance(46)

“A school just for Godwin girls,” I muse aloud, saying what I know they want to hear. “We’d establish our own new theoretical perspective on the classic literary canon. They’d cite us in books.”

“Invite us to speak at conferences.”

“Interview us in the Times.”

“Debate whether we’re idiots or geniuses.”

“We’re both,” Leonie says, and even Kajal laughs.

But I can’t share their levity. A year ago Alex and I left this same party, went back to Godwin with the stolen Margery Skull concealed under my coat. We lit candles and spilled blood and called up the darkness.

This year, Samhain itself doesn’t fall until later in the week. But I can feel it approaching, the veil between this world and the next stretching ever thinner.

What might cross over when that veil splits?

I wish Ellis was here now, her arm looped through my elbow and her lips grazing my ear as she murmurs secrets. It’s easier to forget my ghosts when I have her.

The event is well under way by the time we arrive. We’re greeted by a girl wearing a top hat and a sour expression; clearly she drew the short straw for door duty tonight. The girl takes our coats and our bags and ushers us into the house proper, watching impatiently as we shuck off our shoes.

I regret that part soon enough. The floor is already sticky with spilled beer, red plastic cups are stacked on nearly every flat surface, and a few students dance with themselves in the living room where someone’s pushed all the furniture up to the walls.

“It’s a good thing Ellis didn’t come,” Kajal says, and Leonie neatly sidesteps an intoxicated girl who almost stumbles into her on her way to the drinks table.

She says it because she thinks Ellis wouldn’t like this kind of party, but I’m not sure I agree. I could see Ellis perfectly at home here; even with her dress shirts and suspenders, even in shiny bespoke shoes, she would inhabit this space the same way she does every other: like she belongs.

“I’m going to get a drink,” I say, and shoulder my way past a knot of rowdy Claremont House students to peruse the libations on offer. Almost every bottle left contains tequila.

This party is nothing like the Boleyn House fête at the start of the year, but I’m reminded of that night all the same. Clara is talking to Leonie about something inane, using gesture as punctuation, like she thinks everyone in this room ought to stop and listen to what she has to say, like she thinks she’s more important and more interesting than anyone else here. The murders Ellis and I are plotting might be hypothetical, but I can’t help thinking that one day, someone will get sick of Clara and push her down the stairs.

The tequila sloshes over my fingers when I pour it into a cup. Cheap clear liquor, the kind that burns on the way down and on the way back up, but erases the memory of everything that happens in between. I start drinking, and once I start, I find it hard to stop.

Just like your mother, a voice murmurs in the back of my mind. It should be enough to inspire sobriety, but thinking of my mother only makes me drink more.

The party slides into a blur of faces and bodies. I’m with the Godwin girls for most of the beginning; I remember that much. But then somehow I end up in the Lemont backyard under glittering market lights, slow jazz playing on vinyl, swaying with my hands reaching toward the sky. I find a beautiful girl who has eyes like night and skin cool as water. I tell the girl that, as I slide my touch along her cheek. A serial killer sort of thing to say—I love your skin—but she smiles at me.

“So forgiving,” I murmur. Her hand has caught my dress, thumb pushing a button free at its collar.

She looks nothing like Alex. Her hair is brown, not red. Her complexion is dark, not pale. But when I kiss her, I see Alex all the same.

Possession, I think, just for a moment. But is it really such a strange possibility as to be impossible? This girl’s hands are Alex’s hands, her tongue Alex’s tongue. I want to lace our souls together and make her forgive me.

The kiss breaks, and the girl touches my lips, our breath shallow and hot between us. “Do you want to go upstairs?” she says.

The answer rises to my mouth, but before I can say yes, I spot her: Ellis Haley, a slim figure in a tweed suit, watching us from across the backyard with her cigarette burning down to ashes in one hand.

“What is it?” asks the girl who isn’t Alex. When I look at her, she has her brows knit together and uncertainty written all over her face.

I take it back. This girl isn’t possessed. Alex has never been uncertain about anything in her life.

My gaze flicks back over her shoulder. Ellis is already gone.

“I have to go.” I extract myself from her arms and chase after the spot where Ellis had stood. The air still smells like her cigarette smoke, but the crowd has swallowed her up; I spin around, but all I see are strangers.

It’s freezing out here. How had I not noticed how cold it is?

Everyone out in the backyard exists in their own little world; I have to shove my way through with sharp elbows to get back inside. But inside is worse. Bass thumps through the floor, the windows sweating with the humidity of so many bodies; I trip over someone’s discarded shoes and hit the ground hard enough that it sends shock waves ricocheting up from my knees.

“Are you okay?”

It’s Hannah Stratford, of all people. She crouches down next to me, her mouth in a little pink O of affected concern.