A Lesson in Vengeance(85)

Ellis blows past me with her arms full of typewritten pages and a feverish glow in her cheeks.

“I did it,” she says, clutching the book to her chest and staring at me like she doesn’t really see me at all. “I finished the book, Felicity. I finally finished it.”

I stand there in the doorway, wishing I had something to hold in my hands. A weapon, maybe.

“Clara’s dead.”

Ellis shoots me a sharp glance, something almost disapproving to the set of her mouth as she shuts my bedroom door. “I know. You don’t have to say it so loudly.”

She watches me like she’s expecting a specific kind of response to that. I have a feeling it isn’t the response that creeps up the back of my throat, bilious and sick:

“You killed her. You…You…”

Ellis sighs, and at last she moves to set the stack of pages down on the corner of my desk. “Okay. I suppose if we must have this conversation…yes. I killed her. And it worked, Felicity. It worked! I’d spent months trying to push through this scene. You don’t even know how many sleepless nights I wasted trying to eke out just one more word, to find the perfect phrase or image.”

The knot in my chest loosens slightly. It was her. It was Ellis. Not the curse, not the witches, not my fault.

It wasn’t my fault.

She draws closer, and I cannot move, not even to pull out of reach. Her hands curl around my wrists, drawing my arms up to press my fists against her chest. She’s near enough that I can smell the cigarette smoke that clings to her hair. I can see new shades layered in her eyes: pale-gray water over black stones, lurking below the surface.

Ellis smiles.

“It’s done now. I did it. Thanks to you. I can’t even tell you how much I…This book. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written. You understand, don’t you?”

I don’t know how to reply to that. What is there to say? I can still see Clara’s cold body in the back of my mind. The blood on her stomach. Her blank gaze.

“You killed her,” I say again.

Ellis drops my wrists. Her arms fold over her chest, and she shifts onto her back foot, her attention suddenly gone clinical. “Yes. I shot her, in fact. Twice, in the gut. And then I slit her throat.”

If that admission is intended to make me feel sick, it works. I shake my head as if I can shake that knowledge out of my mind.

“I used Quinn’s hunting rifle,” Ellis goes on. “The same gun you used to shoot that coyote. It has your prints all over it.”

The air in the room goes still.

I don’t know how I’d imagined it happened. But now all I can see is Ellis with that gun, Ellis’s hands wrapped in gloves, Ellis pulling the trigger.

“Why?” I croak. “You…Why?”

“Because I had to be sure,” Ellis says evenly. “It’s the same reason I had you go to Kingston and dig up her grave: to place you at the scene of the crime. I can’t have you running off to the police and telling them what I did, can I? I’m sorry, Felicity. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I don’t want to betray you. Please don’t make me.”

I pace toward the window and look out. Ellis says something behind me, but I don’t hear her. Static roars in my ears, my lungs gone breathless. I press a hand against the frigid glass. Not that it helps.

Never mind the dirt in the rental car. Never mind the dug-up grave, or my cell signal pinging off the tower in Kingston, or Clara’s body in Alex’s coffin. Ellis doesn’t play by half measures. Whatever she’s done, she will have left no weakness in her plan.

I sense her coming up behind me; it’s all I can do not to whip around to keep her in my line of sight. Ellis grasps my shoulder, squeezing very slightly.

“Don’t touch me.”

Her hand falls away. I hear the soft shifting sound of her breath. The hair on the back of my neck prickles.

“I want to make sure you have the full picture,” Ellis says, “so listen carefully.”

I don’t need the full picture. I don’t want to know how thoroughly Ellis has shackled me. But I can’t stop her from talking, either, so she goes on:

“Think how it comes across. Clara and Alex…they could be twins. Or sisters, perhaps. It’s not just the red hair—they have remarkably similar features. After that hospitalization, your mental instability is established. Everyone in this house has seen it—your obsession with those old dead girls, thinking you’re cursed. Of course, the police won’t need to make such inferential leaps. I wrote a letter to Clara in your handwriting. It’s a very…well. Let’s just say it wouldn’t look good for you if that letter were found in Clara’s room, among her things. It would be easy to slip the letter into a notebook or under her pillow.”

I turn around. Ellis has taken a step back, thumbs tucked into the pockets of her pin-striped trousers. Her words reverberate through my head, playing and replaying until they lose all meaning.

“A letter,” I echo.

“Yes. And the fingerprints on the gun, naturally—mine are on file from my arrest a few years ago, you know, so I’m accounted for. Clara’s body will be found in Alex’s grave—the grave of your own ex-girlfriend, the girl everyone thinks you killed. Not to mention your cell phone places you at the scene of the crime. My phone, on the other hand, was in my room the whole time.”