A Lesson in Vengeance(54)

And then I hear it: the soft patter of snow falling on the church roof.

Leonie lets out a startled yelp—and when I open my eyes, she’s laughing, face turned up. Beside her Clara has gone still and wide-eyed, arms wrapped around her middle and hugging herself close. If her curves became edges, if her curls were wild and tangled instead of neatly restrained, she might be Alex come back to life.

“It worked,” Leonie exclaims, already on her feet and spinning in place, like a child who just learned that school has been canceled. “Felicity! It’s snowing!”

My gaze flicks over to Ellis, who has a tiny smile settled about her lips as well, although her smile is harder to read. I can’t tell if she believes me, or if she’s mocking me.

Leonie darts across the church to throw open the doors. A flurry of snow scatters in across the floor, and I’m on my feet, too—we all are—abandoning the candles and crystals and holly berries to stand there on the edge of the night with winter stinging at our skin.

For some reason, it doesn’t feel cold anymore. Or maybe that heat is from the flask Leonie presses into my hand, the rhythm of Ellis’s voice steady like a heartbeat when she pulls out a book of poetry and reads to us, our bodies flung on the church floor like discarded dolls.

Leonie’s flask empties, then Ellis’s, and it’s twenty minutes until the feeling hits. But then the euphoria pours over me like cool water, and I’m alive, I’m alight, sliding my fingers through sugar and tasting it on my tongue, snow falling on our faces through a hole in the desecrated roof.

This is better than any Boleyn party, I think, and let my fingers twine together with Ellis’s, my other hand linked with Leonie’s, Ellis’s thumb rubbing heat against my knuckles and the air gone thick like syrup. I’m drunk enough now that the world has gone to watercolor—all shapes and motion without texture.

We end up back in the woods somehow, Clara with a torch held high overhead. I don’t remember where she found such a big stick, or how she managed to ignite it with the wood so damp, but we follow that flame through the darkness, wandering in circles and curving lines with blood searing our veins.

I touch a tree trunk and am amazed by how rough the bark feels, how much I want to press my face against it. Leonie trails her fingers through my hair, and I could kiss her, almost do. Only then we’re moving again, reciting poems in shouts to the shadows and daring the ghosts to come out and play.

I don’t know how long the high lasts. It could have been all night; it could have been an hour.

But I wake up the next morning lying on a bed of bracken and melted snow. There’s frost on my lips and crystallized on my lashes. I’m cold enough that I’ve forgotten how to tremble.

It’s several seconds, several gulping breaths, before I convince myself I’m not dead.

What happened?

I’ve been drunk before, but it was never like this. Did I really have that much? I can’t remember how many times the flask was passed into my hand, how many times its mouth met my lips.

The forest is quiet as the interior of a mausoleum. Whatever protection last night’s spell had given me is gone now, melted like ice.

Last night didn’t summon snow.

Last night summoned death.

I stare into the trees, waiting for her to reappear: The spirit with white eyes and poisoned fingertips. Alex with her tangled hair and lake-drenched dress. I know she’s there, because I can feel her watching me; every shift of wind through the pines is her voice whispering.

I need to leave. I can’t be here. I need to leave.

I stagger to my feet and almost trip over the body.

“Shit!”

It’s Leonie, her dark skin silvery beneath the light dust of snow that covers it. She’s still, so still—a corpse in bespoke—and we never should have come here, never should have let ourselves fall asleep.

Only then she moves, curling her fingers into a fist, mouth twisting with discomfort. I glance away, and that’s when I realize we’re all here: Ellis huddled under a tree with her coat tugged in tight, Clara asleep in a pile of leaves with her cheeks gone pale and damp.

Her red hair in the snow is bright as spilled blood.

I gag and whip away. Don’t think about Alex. Don’t. Don’t think about—

There’s movement in the trees. Oh god—I see it. I see her. Barely more than a shadow, but I’d recognize her anywhere. I press my hand over my eyes so I don’t have to see. Only then memory is painted across the black velvet space behind my eyelids: Alex on that cliff, hair knotting in the bitter wind, her cheeks flushed in anger—and she was shouting at me, she wouldn’t stop shouting, and so I reached out and I pushed—

“Felicity?”

That’s Ellis’s voice. And so it must be Ellis’s touch that finds my shoulder, turning me away from Clara, from the bodies scattered on the forest floor like discarded trash.

“Felicity,” she says again, and cold fingers slide up the nape of my neck to grasp my skull. “It’s okay. It’s all right. We fell asleep. But everyone’s fine.”

I can’t breathe. The air is too thick out here, oxygen-poor and stinging like broken glass. It floods my lungs like cold water. How long can one survive without air? How long until my body collapses in on itself like Alex’s did? Twenty minutes? Thirty? The lake closes overhead. I sink into the dark. The earth swallows me whole.