A Lesson in Vengeance(67)

A quavering smile rises to my lips despite myself. I shake my head. “I wasn’t trying to invite myself, for the record.”

“Duly noted. Please say you’ll do it.”

I’ve never wanted anything more in my life. “Yes. I’ll stay.”

Ellis grins and swats my leg before her hand retreats back to her own lap. I find myself bereft in the wake of her touch. I want more. I want her touching me everywhere.

I want more, I suspect, than Ellis has the capacity to give.





With the campus empty and Godwin all to ourselves, being at Dalloway feels like summer again.

Ellis and I play records in the common room with the volume turned up loud, hang out of bedroom windows with lit joints and our heads full of stars.

I know that I’m unwell. I know I shouldn’t keep denying it. I’d hoped distance from Alex’s death would erase the fear scrawled on the walls of my mind, but it hasn’t. Dr. Ortega once described psychotic depression as being like a gun: my genetics loaded the chamber with bullets, my mother passed the weapon into my hand, but Alex’s death pulled the trigger.

So maybe I imagined the book. Maybe Ellis is right and it was never there—maybe I wanted it to be there. Maybe I wanted Alex to punish me.

And maybe it’s all right to admit that.

Ellis’s sibling arrives on the third day of Thanksgiving break, their vintage Mustang barely visible through the trees around Godwin. From the third-floor hall window, I watch them ascend the path on foot, a narrow figure silhouetted against the setting sun.

“Ellis,” I call out, just loud enough to be heard from the floor below, where Ellis is hard at work on her novel. “Quinn’s here.”

Even from upstairs I can hear her chair scrape against the floor, then the clatter of her feet on the hardwood as she races down the stairs. I follow, trailing belatedly after Ellis out into the cool dusk, where she has thrown both arms around the newcomer, who squeezes her tight enough that Ellis’s feet lift off the ground.

They’re dark-haired, like Ellis, and tall—also like Ellis. But when they set Ellis down and I catch sight of their face, I realize they’re nothing like their sister at all. Their face is too open, too heart-on-their-sleeve. I don’t know how I can tell such things from a glance, but it feels true. Our gazes meet over Ellis’s head; Quinn’s is steady and black-hued.

“Felicity, this is Quinn. Quinn, Felicity,” Ellis says at last, a saving grace. “My friend from school that I told you about.”

“All lies, I’m sure,” I say, and when Quinn offers their hand, I shake it.

“I imagine Ellis didn’t talk about me very much at all,” Quinn says.

There’s no good response to that; it’s true, after all. Ellis only mentioned them twice. I know they’re much older than Ellis, by about ten years. I know from Ellis’s use of gender-neutral pronouns that Quinn is nonbinary. And I can tell by looking that, aside from their basic appearance, they have a lot of other things in common with their sister—at least if the blazer and flamboyant gold cravat are anything to go by.

“I know a little,” I end up saying, and Ellis folds her hands behind her back, smiling like a proud gallery curator who has just introduced a patron to a brand-new work of art.

Quinn gestures to the house. “Shall we go in and get to know each other, then?”

We head inside and to the common room, Ellis pushing me down into my favorite plush burgundy armchair. Quinn takes the seat opposite, lounging on the chaise and lighting a cigarette. I find myself unsurprised they’re smoking indoors; Ellis does it often enough that the shock has worn off. Perhaps she got the idea from Quinn.

For her part, Ellis heads directly to her hidden stash of bourbon—the bourbon, I recall, that Quinn had gifted her. My gaze lingers too long, watching her elegant hands move to drip bitters into three crystal glasses. I manage to look away only when I realize Quinn’s watching me, assessing.

I clasp my hands together in my lap and attempt a smile. I feel like I’m trying to impress someone’s parents on a first date. Not that I’ve ever had one of those. Not really.

“Tell me about yourself, Felicity,” Quinn says.

What is this, a job interview? I dig the side of my thumbnail into my hand to keep from saying something I’ll regret. “I don’t know how much there is to say. I’m not a very interesting person, I’m afraid.”

“Felicity’s being modest,” Ellis says. “She’s the best academic in Godwin House, and I include Housemistress MacDonald in that assessment.”

I don’t blush easily, but I blush now. I hope the light here’s dim enough that Quinn doesn’t notice. “That’s not true.”

“What is your favorite class?” Quinn asks.

“English literature, broadly,” I say. “But I’m doing my thesis on the portrayal of witchcraft and mental illness in genre novels.”

Ellis frowns over her shoulder at us. “I thought you said you were writing about horror novels or something.”

“I am, but…I did so much work before, when my thesis was still about the Dalloway witches. It seemed a shame to let that all go to waste.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Ellis says, stirring one of the drinks. “After…”