A Lesson in Vengeance(96)

“I don’t know if this is quite my genre.”

“Literary fiction? That should be everyone’s genre, I hope,” the woman says with a little laugh. I want to hit her in the face. “But if it’s any consolation, this particular book crosses over into the territory of mystery and thriller. It’s about a female psychopath who falls in love with a beautiful woman who appears innocent at first glance but who”—she glances down at the marketing copy printed on the poster—“harbors deadly secrets of her own.”

“Thank you. I’ll think about it.”

The woman at last seems to get the hint; her cheeks flush pale pink, and she retreats back behind the counter, peeking up at me occasionally from over her wire-rimmed glasses as she riffles through paperwork.

I turn my attention to the book in my hand.

So this is it. Ellis’s magnum opus. The book she cared for enough to sacrifice anything: Clara’s life. Her own. And all the rest of us bit players in her masterpiece.

I open the cover, flipping past the title page.

For Felicity. I did it all for you.

I snap the book shut. Abruptly the air seems to have been sucked out of the shop—the cashier and the shelves and the London street outside all falling away and plunging me into the darkness of oblivion.

Once again it’s just me and Ellis, two figures emerging on opposite sides of a stage. Once more I feel her take my hand, drawing me into the night. It’s been three years, but all at once it feels like I never left that place, Godwin House with its dark history and wicked shadows, magic drenching the stones and murder like a legacy passed from generation to generation.

I did it all for you.

I drop the book onto the table and leave, tumbling out of the bookstore and into the street. A bus blares past, and I’m blinded, I’m deafened, I’m falling and falling and falling through the cold.

I don’t remember how I make it home.

Talia is in the kitchen when I do, a wooden spoon held in hand like a conductor’s baton, surveying the bolognese that simmers on the stove with a moue of disapproval that suggests that if the sauce is a metaphorical orchestra, it’s playing several measures behind cue.

“Felicity,” she says, putting the spoon down as soon as she catches sight of me. “You look terrible. Did something happen?”

“Nothing. I’m just tired.” The excuse falls from my lips like honey wine as I pull my pill bottle out of my purse and swallow one tablet; I’ve learned from experience never to be late on doses. “Is dinner almost ready?”

Talia seems happy to see me. She’s a chef—or she wants to be, anyway. She has a job as a line cook at a small restaurant in the West End, hopes to work her way up. I’ll miss her food when she’s gone.

“All ready,” she says. “Your mother called, by the way. She wanted me to tell you.”

I make a face, and Talia rises up on the balls of her feet to kiss my temple. “I don’t know why she bothers,” I say. “I was clear the first time: I don’t want her to be part of my life anymore.”

Talia smells like nutmeg. When she steps away, I brush a bit of flour from her cheek and she smiles. She always smiles. “Maybe one day you’ll feel differently.” I won’t. “Will you carry the wine up, darling? I don’t think I’ll have enough hands.”

I kiss her again and obey.

We take the food up to the roof, which is strung with market lights and has a view toward Hyde Park, the city sprawling out below us, glittering as if with thousands of fireflies. Talia pours the wine and we toast to another year together, to wherever we go next, to the future Talia has constructed in her mind: the both of us, desperately in love.

After we finish the food, I watch her standing by the edge of the roof, gazing out over the streets so far below. Her hair tangles about her ears; she’s kept it short lately, sensible. I step behind her and kiss the nape of her neck. My hands find her hips. Her bones feel fragile in my grasp, so easily fractured.

Alex felt the same way, her body docile, surrendering to the force of my weight when I pushed her off that ridge.

Talia leans back against me, warm and trusting, and says something about how cold the air is this high above the ground. A lock of her hair, black like Ellis’s, catches on my lips.

What would Ellis say if she could see me now? A perfect character for one of her stories. Perfectly predictable.

I think about drowning, about euphoria, the red orchids I planted on Ellis’s grave. I think how falling would be worse.

And here, my heart beating fast and the taste of ink on my tongue, the city opening wide below us like a waiting mouth—

—

It begins to snow.





Acknowledgments


Once upon a time, this book was a collection of disconnected ideas scribbled in a notebook: lesbian dark academia, or plan the perfect murder but one of them takes it too seriously. These ideas might never have expanded into this book if not for a phone conversation I had with my friend Tes Medovich, who loves The Secret History and elbow patches and Gothic architecture just as much as I do. I remember lying on my bed on my stomach, phone pinched between my ear and shoulder, and it was uncomfortable but I didn’t care because it felt like my brain couldn’t stop: each idea fed into the next, a cascade of plot points and scenes and little snapshots that perfectly encapsulated that tea-drenched, blurry-eyed, book-drunk aesthetic that is dark academia. So thank you, first of all, to Tes, for encouraging me to take these ideas and make them real.