A Lesson in Vengeance(9)

“I see,” I say. “And why is that?”

She might be afraid of me, but now it’s for a different reason entirely. I know how to adopt my mother’s crisp consonants and Boston vowels to effect. It’s an introduction without ever having to repeat my name.

The girl’s cheeks flush as red as her cardigan. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It wasn’t my decision. It’s just…you took this all so seriously, you know.”

It’s a comment that demands a response, but I find myself voiceless. So seriously. As if the skull, the candles, the goat’s blood…as if that was all a joke to them.

Or maybe it was. Alex would have said that witchcraft was about aesthetics. She would tell me that this coven was created for sisterhood—for the Margery girl with a knowing smile at that corporate gala introducing you to the right person at the right time. Connections, not conjure.

My smile feels tight and false on my lips, but I smile all the same. That’s all we ever do at this school: insult each other, then smile.

“Thank you for the explanation,” I say. “I understand your position completely.”

Time for another drink.

I make my way back into the kitchen, where the gin has been replaced by an unfamiliar green drink that tastes bitter, like rotten herbs. I drink it anyway, because that’s what you do at parties, because my mother’s blood runs in my veins and, like Cecelia Morrow, it turns out I cannot face the real world without the taste of lies in my mouth and liquor in my blood.

I hate that it’s true. I hate them more.

My thoughts have finally tilted hazy, all blue lights and blurred shapes, when I see her. Ellis Haley has arrived, and she’s brought her new cult in tow: Clara and Kajal and Leonie. None of them dressed for the theme, but somehow they become the knot around which the rest of the party shifts and contorts. I’m no better. I’m staring, too.

Ellis is wearing lipstick for the occasion, a red so dark it’s almost black. It will leave a mark on everything her mouth touches.

Our eyes meet across the room. And for once I’m not even tempted to turn away. I lift my chin and hold her gaze, sharp beneath straight brows, somehow clear despite the empty absinthe glass she holds in hand. I want to crack open her chest and peer inside, see how she ticks.

Then Ellis tilts her head to the side, bending down slightly as Clara rises up to murmur something in her ear. That rope tethered between us draws taut; she doesn’t look away.

But I do, just in time to catch the twist to Clara’s pink lips, the brief and brutal gesture with two fingers: scissors snapping shut.

Something cold plunges into my stomach; even chasing it with the rest of my drink doesn’t thaw the ice. I abandon my empty glass on the table and push my way through the crowd, using elbows where words fail.

I make it all the way outside before lurching forward to spill my guts across the lawn. I’m still gasping, spitting out bile, as someone yells from the porch: “Go to rehab!”

Oh. Right. It’s only nine p.m.

I wipe my mouth on the back of a shaky hand, straighten up, and dart down the walkway toward the quad. I don’t look back. I don’t let them see my face.

At Godwin House I brush my teeth, then pace the empty halls, a terrible restlessness crawling up and down my spine. I can’t sleep yet. I can’t climb into my chilly bed and stare at the wall, waiting for the rest of them to get home, craning my ears to hear the sound of my name on their lips.

I make a cup of tea instead, stand at the kitchen counter sipping it until some of that dizzy drunk feeling fades. That gets me to nine-thirty, and then I have to put the dishes away and figure out something else. I draw a three-card tarot reading: all swords. I glimpse a light on, through the crack beneath Housemistress MacDonald’s door, but I’m not quite so pathetic yet as to seek her company.

As usual I end up in the common room.

The problem is, I don’t have anything I want to read. I peruse the shelves, but nothing jumps out at me. I feel as if I’ve read everything—every book in the world. Every title seems like a reiteration of something that came before it, the same story regurgitated over and over.

I make a fine literature student, don’t I?

This house seems too quiet now. The silence bears down on me like a weight.

No, it is too quiet—it’s unnaturally quiet—and when I glance back I see why.

The grandmother clock that sits between the fiction and poetry shelves has gone silent. Its hands are stuck at 3:03.

The same time I had the nightmare.

I draw closer, steps slow. The floorboards creak under my weight. I stare at the white face of that clock, at those black blades pointing nearly at a right angle to each other, mocking me. The silence thickens. I can’t breathe; I’m suffocating in thin, depressurized air—

“I suppose we’ll have to get it repaired,” someone says, and I spin around.

Ellis Haley stands behind me, both hands tucked into her trouser pockets and her attention fixed past me at the grandmother clock. She’s still wearing that red lipstick, the lines of it too crisp and perfect to have just come from a party. After a moment her gaze slips down to meet mine.

“You left early,” she comments.

“I felt sick.”

“They didn’t sweeten the absinthe enough,” she says, and shakes her head.