The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(48)

The pink-haired girl’s name was Vega, and it didn’t take much prompting to get her to tell me how I could summon a ghost.

“You could lay out a dish of cat’s milk,” she said, ticking it off. “Just don’t let your reflection show in it, whatever you do. Reciting poetry can do it, if the ghost likes your voice. Burn a bridal bouquet, that one’s easy. Pull out your eyeteeth and hold one in each hand. Let’s see, what else?”

“I think that’s enough,” I said hurriedly. “Really helpful, though, thanks.”

I started to walk away, then stopped.

“Did you take my picture earlier?”

“Um.” She fiddled with the ends of her hair. “Yes?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re her, right? Alice-Three-Times? The one who…” She made a series of furtive hand motions. “You know.”

“I’m nobody,” I said firmly. “I didn’t do anything. If anyone asks, if anyone talks about it, you tell them that. And watch out for yourself, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, looking disgruntled. Then, in a louder voice as I neared the door, “Another thing you could try is having sex. Ghosts are drawn by desire. Or they might just be nosy.”

Faced with the decision of coming back with a bunch of flowers or downloading a dating app, I headed to the good bodega a few blocks away, where flowers were sold but cat’s milk was in short supply. I grabbed a bouquet and a dollar lighter and a carton of whole milk just in case, and threw in two Kit Kats because I hadn’t eaten in ages.

Back at the hotel, Vega had left her post. I dropped a thank-you Kit Kat next to her bell and headed upstairs.



* * *



YOU’RE NOT LISTENING, said the message in the mirror. I hadn’t been. To the voice following me in and out of dreams, to the Trio, the words of the little one in white: Every story is a ghost story. If you’re looking for answers, seek out your ghosts. But I was ready to listen now.

I could attempt the summoning in the lobby, but Vega struck me as nosier than a pervy ghost. And I didn’t like the idea of inviting the dead into my room. The hallway, I decided. I’d head up to my floor and pick a patch of carpet.

I waited till dark, then crept out of my room, a clutch of cheap carnations hanging from one hand and the milk in the other. In a bag around my wrist was the lighter and a paper coffee cup. The hallway had the aggressive, destabilizing sameness of hotels everywhere, even the haunted kind. I walked down and around, till I found a little alcove holding a dusty rubber plant and a sconce with one burned-out bulb. I pushed the plant into the corner. Then I knelt, filled the coffee cup with milk, and lifted the lighter.

And realized I hadn’t thought this through. What would I do with the flowers when they really started to burn? How quickly could I stamp out the carpet if it caught?

Fuck it. I held the lighter up to a carnation’s frilly cup. The flame lapped at the petals, but they didn’t catch. Then it popped and blinked out, the lighter’s hot metal burning my thumb. I dropped it, cursing, and tried again. And again. Finally I pulled the receipt from my pocket and lit that, sticking it in among the flowers.

The flame took. The flowers released the barest breath of green before starting to stink. When they were just fiery enough to make panic bite at my neck, I started to recite.

“I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire—”

I shook my head and started again.

“Out of the ash,” I whispered. “I rise with my red hair. And I eat men like air.”

Daphne flashed in front of my eyes. I blinked her away.

And I thought of the ghosts who might be gathering over my head, even now. Thumbprints on their throats and bellies bright with blood. Yellowed lace, embroidered slippers. Eyes full of retribution. Or jealousy, because I lived.

Good thing I’d had a goth period. Or maybe I was a goth period. At any rate, I could still dredge up some Poe.

“The ring is on my hand, and the wreath is on my brow.” I raised my voice, and the hand holding the bou quet. “Satin and jewels grand, and many a rood of land, are all at my command, and I am happy now.”

The words were already spooky in the quiet room. But the last handful of them bent, refracted as they hit my ear, making my voice sound strange to me. The flowers smoldered, orange rills and blackening petals. I waited.

“Do you think it worked?”

The voice, right by my ear, made me shriek. I looked at the girl sitting cross-legged beside me and almost did it again.

She was, in fact, a bride. Her hair had been red, I think, her face lushly freckled. A wedding dress gripped her by the neck. She was a glass chess piece in a thousand shades of blue, hands resting on her knees.

She nudged at the milk with an incorporeal toe. “What am I, a fairy?”

“I … um…”

“Why don’t you try pouring it on the flowers.”

It took a few startled seconds for me to understand. Then I dropped the flaming carnations and tipped the entire gallon over them. Milk doused the flames, drenched the carpet, splashed and seeped onto my jeans. The bride rose a few inches off the ground, as if the milk might damage her dress.

“Sorry,” I gasped. “I didn’t mean to…”

“No harm. I hate this dress. I didn’t even die in it.” She looked down its long white body. “I died in a nightgown.”