A Lesson in Vengeance(65)

I don’t know how to believe her. The Ellis I know—the Ellis I thought I knew—wouldn’t do that, it’s true. But…

“Then explain the book,” I demand. “If the ghost isn’t real, explain that to me!”

She shakes her head very slowly. “I can’t. I…I’m going to have to think about it. I’m sure there’s a normal reason behind all this.”

“Right. The only normal reason I can come up with is that you put the book in my room.”

“Yes, you’ve mentioned that option.” Ellis makes a harsh noise, exhaling through clenched teeth. “But I don’t know when I’m meant to have chased down this book of yours. We’ve been practically inseparable since that graveyard trip—you’re always with me. And if you aren’t with me, one of the other girls is.”

Only that isn’t true. Yes, we’re together a lot; Ellis and I are constantly studying, or working on our project. Other times we’re with the rest of the girls: on a Night Migration; in the common room, reading poetry; on an outing to a nearby farm to pick up fresh meat and dairy, fascinated as the farmer shows us the beehives on her property, a thousand buzzing insects settling over our arms and the nets over our heads.

But we still have to sleep. Ellis could have crept out at night and returned to the graveyard for the book, carried it back home, and bided her time until she could slip it onto my bookshelf.

Ellis wouldn’t do something like that, I tell myself. She might be a lot of things, but she isn’t malicious. The whole point of this project outside of researching for her book is to prove to me that ghosts don’t exist—so why would she do something to convince me that they do?

Alex, a voice in the back of my mind insists. It was Alex. That was your first instinct, and it’s true.

“I’ll show you,” I say. “Come up to my room, and I’ll show you the book.”

Ellis takes a shallow breath and says, “Tomorrow. Yes, I want to see it, but…Felicity, it’s really late. I was half-asleep when you knocked.”

Of course. I can only imagine what a madwoman I looked throwing myself against her shut door at one in the morning, crying about books and ghosts. Accusing her of torturing me. I scrub both hands over my face, rubbing away what’s left of my tears. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Ellis says.

“No. No, it’s…Sorry. I’ll let you sleep.”

She gives me a thin smile and trails her fingers along my cheek, her hand dipping back toward my ear before falling to her side. “Tomorrow,” she says again.

I have no choice then but to take myself back up the stairs to the room and that horrible book still lying discarded on the floor, the pages all bent now and the smell of Alex’s perfume still pungent in the air. I refuse to touch that cursed thing. I leave it where it lies and grab a handful of dried dandelion from my stash of herbs, sprinkle it in a circle around the book, as if that could keep her ghost at bay.

I can’t sleep in here.

I grab my pillow and duvet off the bed and head back downstairs, this time into the common room, where I make up a temporary bed on the sofa and curl up there, facing the hearth. Even here, I’m afraid to have my back to the room.

Eventually I rock to an uneasy sleep. In my dreams I’m chased by monsters with long, reaching hands, flickering lights, and blood on ice.

I lurch awake hours later with my heart in my mouth and cold sweat damp on my lower back. But it’s already daylight, the sun streaming in through the east-facing windows. Leonie and Kajal are in the kitchen. I can hear their voices chattering as they clang about with pots and pans; that must be what woke me.

I drag a hand through my sweat-salty hair and press my brow forward against bent knees.

Maybe I dreamed what happened last night. Maybe it was all some horrible nightmare. Maybe—

“There you are,” Ellis says, standing over me. “I was looking for you. You wanted to show me that book, right?”

She’s already dressed, in a jacket with elbow patches, like some absentminded professor. Still in the couch, in my wrinkled yesterday’s clothes, I feel like a child caught out-of-bounds.

“Right.” All the terror of last night seeps up like groundwater—diluted now but still nauseating, still potent. I shove the duvet aside and bundle it and the pillow under my arm, carrying them up with me to the third floor.

Ellis trails behind like a tall shadow. I find myself glancing back, as if to make sure my Eurydice still follows.

“I still can’t explain it,” I tell her as we turn onto the landing. “I don’t know how it got back here. And we both…we’ve been here. We did leave it there, right? I’m not imagining things?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Ellis says, firm and confident, as usual. More confident, I note, than she’d sounded last night.

I push open my bedroom door and step inside, and the duvet falls from my arms.

The book is gone.

The circle of dandelion petals is still there, a ward against evil spirits, but the book itself has vanished. The only thing left is the hellebore, fallen in the middle of my ward like an ill omen.

“It was right here. It was right—”

I’m breathless, light-headed. It’s a feeling like being eviscerated.