A Darkness Strange and Lovely (Something Strange and Deadly #2)(6)

“But not better!” she cried. “A few months ago, I never thought further than the end of the day.

Now, I see my whole life before and my death at the end. Just tell me what happened, Eleanor. I deserve the truth.”

“The truth,” I repeated. The word tasted like ash. I took a deep breath. “The papers said it was the

Spirit-Hunters who killed Clarence. But it wasn’t.”

Her spine deflated. “Who then?”

I twisted my face away and watched the neighborhood pass by. I’d always imagined looking into

Allison’s eyes when I told her this, but, in fact, I found the words wouldn’t come if I met her stare.

“It all began with our fathers. They were once very good friends, you know. Then your father, Clay, decided to run for city council, and he . . . well, he was one of the Gas Trustees, who controlled most of the city’s jobs—meaning he also controlled most of the city’s voters.” I inhaled deeply. “Clay offered my father a position in his ring of council members, but my father refused and opted to run for city council the honest way. He wanted to stop Clay from corrupting the city.

“Then—” My voice shook. I tried again. “Then your father decided to force mine out of the race by destroying his railroad supply company. He hired thugs to blow up my father’s latest dy***ite shipment, and he also told Clarence to make my brother’s life a living hell.”

Allison’s breath hitched, but I didn’t look her way. At this point in the story, Mama had already begun shrieking her denial. She would hear nothing against the Wilcoxes—the past was the past, she had said. All that mattered was the future and regaining the Wilcox family’s favor.

She’d stopped screaming once the whole truth came out.

Shifting in my seat, I wet my lips and resumed my cold account. “The man . . . the man raising the

Dead across the city,” I said, “was my brother. Elijah killed Clarence out of revenge for our father.”

Allison’s body turned rigid, but she made no other indication that she’d heard. So I kept talking.

“After Clarence died and I learned the truth, I went with the Spirit-Hunters to Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Elijah was there, trying to raise our father’s corpse. I—” My voice broke, and I had to grit my teeth to keep going. “I stopped Elijah, but then . . . he died.” I glanced at Allison, finally meeting her eyes.

They were hard—unnaturally so—and it took me a moment to recognize the emotion she wore.

Revulsion.

Yet before I could think how to react, we turned onto a new street and Allison spoke. “Why couldn’t you simply tell me that all this was happening? While it was happening?”

“Would it have changed things?” I rubbed my wrist. “Clarence would still have died, and it would still be my brother’s fault.” And Mama would still have cracked, and I would still be friendless, handless, and fleeing Philadelphia.

Allison clenched her jaw and didn’t answer for several long seconds. Then she said, “Why are you going to Paris all by yourself?”

I tensed. “How did you know Paris? I only mentioned France.”

“Lucky guess.” She frowned. “Now explain. ”

“Do you . . .” I gulped. I had to keep talking—and I had to keep shoving my feelings aside as I did.

“Do you remember the séance my mother held in June? The one where all the guests fainted?”

“Of course.”

“Well, Mama did let in a spirit that night.”

Allison’s brows drew together. “So it wasn’t all theatrics as you claimed?”

“I wish . . . but no. The spirit was a dead necromancer named Marcus. He’d been waiting for years to reenter the earthly realm. His time in death had made him strong, and once he was out of the spirit world, he found my brother. Marcus used Elijah’s magic against him. When Elijah cast a spell to bring

Father back to life, Marcus was able to use the spell instead to bring himself back to life . . . and he was able to possess the nearest corpse.”

“Your father’s body?”

“No. Elijah’s.” I cringed as an image of my father’s skeleton, its jaws latched onto my brother’s throat, formed in my mind. “My father’s skeleton killed Elijah, thereby giving Marcus access to the freshly dead body. And the spell—a spell to bind a ghost to a corpse—was Marcus’s ticket to a new life in the earthly realm.”

A life I would end as soon as I had the chance.

Allison’s eyes grew wide. “So you’re saying your brother’s body is walking around with this

Marcus spirit inside?”

“Yes.” Yellow eyes and howling dogs flared in my mind, sending a ghostly pain through my wrist.

Distractedly, I massaged it.

“And your hand,” Allison said, her nose curling up slightly, “what happened?”

“One of the Hungry Dead bit it.” More memories, more flashes of blood and chaos, flooded through my mind. The Hungry who had bitten me—a long-dead Civil War soldier—had been so fast.

So rabid. There’d been no chance for me to escape.

“By the time I broke free,” I added softly, “it was too late. My hand was destroyed, and I had to have it amputated.”