A Lesson in Vengeance(59)

“Don’t be a coward, Felicity; we’re perfectly safe.”

I shut my mouth over my response. What I want to say is that even Ellis Haley can’t control the weather—but I have the feeling it’s going to be a long drive, and I don’t want to irritate her this early.

The radio station Ellis has chosen plays the blues, mournful notes that make me think of smoke. I wonder if the music is another thing Ellis is trying to make herself like, the same way she’s forcing herself to enjoy whiskey. Or perhaps this is one of those rare glimpses into who Ellis Haley really is, something organic that grew from her heart.

I realize where we’re headed after we’ve turned off toward Kingston and follow a slim road skirting outside the city and into the wooded hills. But I almost don’t want to believe it. I stay silent in my seat, gripping the handle above the window, until Ellis rounds a corner and the cemetery gates come into view.

“No,” I say. “No. I’m not…Why would you bring me here?”

Ellis shifts the car into park and twists around to grasp my wrist and say, “It’s okay. You can do this.”

But I can’t. I can barely even breathe; it feels like something is crushing my chest, my bones, my lungs.

“It’s just a grave,” Ellis says. “You can visit a grave.”

“I can’t.”

“Didn’t you go to her funeral?”

I went to Alex’s funeral. Of course I did. That was right after the accident; I was still floating in the numb, medicated haze of trauma. But I remember enough. I remember how empty Alex’s house felt without her; how Alex’s mother flinched away from me at the wake. Even the reverend looked at me like I was original sin herself walking among them.

It takes me a long time to nod. “Yes. I…Yes. But that was a long time ago.”

“Then it’s time to pay your respects.”

Ellis reaches into her satchel and passes me a book. The Secret Garden. An older edition, the spine cracked and the pages gone the color of saffron.

“You told me this was one of her favorites,” Ellis says softly.

I take the book and hug it close to my chest. All at once my face feels tight, a pressure building behind my eyes.

Maybe Ellis is right. Maybe I do need closure.

“Come on,” Ellis says, and opens her car door. I sit there a moment longer, breathing the overhot, dry air, then make myself follow.

The cemetery is small and out of the way; I doubt most of the people who live in Kingston even know it exists. This is what Alex’s family could afford. The wrought-iron gate creaks when Ellis opens it. When I curl a hand around one of the prongs, the metal flakes against my palm and stains my skin rust.

Alex’s grave rests under the shadow of an oak. Although the snow has melted everywhere else, it’s still chilly enough here that ice clings to the tree’s roots and laces the curve of Alex’s headstone. Ellis has brought a lantern; she sets it down by the stone; it casts a dull gold light for five feet in every direction before the darkness swallows all sight.

We stand at the foot of her grave. alexandra irene haywood, beloved daughter. She died six days before her eighteenth birthday.

“The coffin’s empty,” I say. “They never found her body. Well, not empty. We all left something for her. A favorite necklace, a square of lace sprayed with her perfume…”

“What did you leave?”

I swallow hard. “I wrote her a letter. Ridiculous, I know. She’ll never read it. But…”

“It’s not ridiculous,” Ellis says. She reaches over and grasps my shoulder, squeezing once. “I’ll give you a minute. All right?”

She heads for the car and I crouch low, toward the frozen earth. A spray of black hellebore grows by Alex’s headstone. I offer a thin smile. Hellebore, in witchcraft, is used for banishment and exorcism. If Alex’s body were in fact here, maybe the presence of that flower would have been enough to keep her spirit confined.

“I’m sorry,” I tell the grave. It feels so inadequate. It feels like a lie. “I…I didn’t know what else to do. I was scared. I tried to save you—I tried. I tried to help, but you…you weren’t…You have to understand.”

I can practically hear her voice: I don’t have to understand anything.

“It was the séance. Margery Lemont cursed us, because we trapped her in our world.”

Saying it aloud here, to Alex, it sounds insane.

I get down on my knees, tilting forward to press one hand against the cold dirt. I try to summon her spirit. I wish I had wormwood or dandelions, herbs good for evocation. Not these god-awful hellebore, taunting me in an ironic twist of fate. I’d tear them up if it weren’t for the fact that touching hellebore is bad luck—and irritating to the skin, besides. Some part of me feels guilty, too, at the prospect of ripping up the only flowers that adorn Alex’s grave.

Please, I think in the direction of that darkness that hovers, omnipresent, on the fringes of my awareness—the darkness I’ve come to associate with Alex’s ghost. Please listen to me.

Silence answers.

At last I sigh and settle back onto my hips, opening Ellis’s book in my lap. The pages are hard to turn; age has stuck them together and stiffened the binding.

“Chapter One,” I read aloud. “There Is No One Left.”