The Death of Jane Lawrence(101)

“You cannot control everything,” Mrs. Cunningham added, more quietly now.

“I just wanted to keep things simple,” Jane whispered, hunching in on herself.

“And look at what it’s brought on,” Mr. Cunningham said, tapping his cigar ash onto the floor. “You forced a man to marry you so that you could remain small and unremarkable, and now you have killed him because he would not bow to your wishes. Worse, you are bringing all of Larrenton down around you. We should never have taken you in.”

“I never said—I never said I killed him—”

Mr. Cunningham harrumphed. “How else could it have gone? You have always been selfish. I imagine it is because you learned at a young age that you deserved to live when others stayed behind to die. Ruined from the first.”

“Why are you doing this?” Jane begged.

Mrs. Cunningham touched her shoulder, drawing her attention. She smiled. She was kind.

“Because,” she said, “we are starving, my dear. Our hunger is endless compared to yours.” Her features smoothed out, becoming featureless stone from the cheeks up. Below was carved into an emaciated jaw and exposed teeth.

And then Mrs. Cunningham was herself again.





CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE


JANE STARTED FORWARD, focusing her eyes so hard that her vision blurred, but it was only Mrs. Cunningham before her. Panicked, Jane rose, but Mrs. Cunningham seized Jane’s wrist.

“Jane, do settle yourself. We did not adequately prepare you for the world—that is our failing.” Her voice was sweet and light, a mockery of the woman who had raised Jane.

“Let me go, fiend,” Jane whispered.

Mrs. Cunningham let go, eyes wide and soft tears welling up inside of them. “Fiend? Oh, Jane—”

“Stop.” She glanced at Mr. Cunningham, but there was no trace of stone to him, either, no more cruelty in the set of his mouth. Her resolve faltered. Had she really seen that, really heard it? Hungry—Mrs. Cunningham had said she was hungry. And what should a ghost hunger for?

She was exhausted. She was falling to pieces. Her guardians were dead, dead and gone, and so was Augustine, and …

And Mrs. Cunningham had not crossed the circle, had she?

“Leave,” she mumbled, thickly. She needed space. She needed air. “You must leave. I do not want to see you.” She struggled to remember. She had knelt there, and Mrs. Cunningham had come to the very edge of the circle. She had reached out a hand, and Jane had taken it, but had her hand crossed the boundary?

“Sit down, darling,” Mrs. Cunningham crooned.

Her hand had not crossed the boundary. Jane was sure of it; she had been the one to reach out. Mrs. Cunningham had not crossed the circle.

Orren had not crossed the circle.

Whatever Augustine had been, then, he was not the same as the Cunninghams.

She tore at her hair, falling back one step, another. Her head pounded.

“You’re overwhelmed. You’re seeing things. We will send for the doctor.”

“No!” Thoughts of these creatures wearing Dr. Nizamiev’s face drove her to her feet. She threw her aching, wrung-out body toward the hall.

They followed behind her, hunting dogs that had scented prey.

She broke into a run, through the bisected foyer and up the stairs, staggering into the banisters and hauling herself up, step after step. “Cease your childish flight, Jane!” Mrs. Cunningham called from behind her, voice echoing in the vaulted space. “It does not become a young lady! It does not become a new wife!”

“You are not her!” Jane cried, crashing onto the second-floor landing. “You may have died as her, but you are not her now. Something has happened to you!”

“The girl’s gone mad,” Mr. Cunningham said. “I will send for Dr. Nizamiev.”

“And how do you know her?” Jane hissed, then tore herself away. She could not get drawn into this. She had to get to a safe place. But where was safe? She could not afford to build a circle so high as to obliterate the sound of their voices.

She climbed to the third floor. They followed, but they did not run. They proceeded, arm in arm, as if out for a stroll by the river. They fell away below her, but Jane’s flight bought her only a few minutes, a brief reprieve.

She had to find a way to banish them.

Whatever these starving creatures were, however the spirits of the dead had been twisted, they came from what had been done to Elodie. Hadn’t they? Everything began with Elodie; the ritual had been worked with Elodie’s flesh. Jane needed to find her, to demand answers, demand solutions. But Jane had not seen Elodie in days. Since the blankness had replaced Elodie in her hallucination, there had been no trace of the fair-haired, red-eyed ghost in any window. Why?

Was it connected? It had to be.

Jane ran for the third-floor bedroom, slowing only to turn the gaslights up to full brightness. She had found Elodie’s journal here, the only trace of her left in the whole house. If Jane was to find Elodie anywhere beyond the crypt, it would be here.

But the rooms were empty, and Jane could not bring herself to look at the windows, too afraid of seeing something other than fields and farms beyond. Even with every light turned up to full brightness, there were only walls and ceilings and floors, ghost-empty furniture with no trace of character, of inhabitance. Jane found herself standing in what had been the bedroom, staring at a tarnished, floor-length mirror, helpless, wishing Elodie would appear.