Page 126 of She Haunts Me Still

An address is written on it, along with a hand-drawn map. A shaded picture of a cottage. The rounded edges of a beach. A wooden dock with three flowers engraved.

The seashore. The wild horses. Her mother. The vacation they took with Kiki—

Why would Saskia have this?

But then she glances at the words, and suspicion creeps in.

Because the address is for Mercy Island.

Penelope Vass

7 Laurel Road

“What is that?” Arden asks.

Mallory can’t find the words to answer. Because there’s something else in the box—

A photograph.

Her hands shake as she realizes she’s looking at a picture of herself as a child.

In the photo, Mallory is sitting on the shore next to her mother, dressed in white, a flurry of switchgrass tangled behind them. Chipped pink polish on her toes. A crown of twigs and petals in her hair, and—

Next to her in the picture are Kiki and her mother.

Just as she remembers them. They’re also wearing white, and Kiki clutches a stuffed bear beneath her arm. A bear with bright blue fur.

The same bear, she realizes, that’s on Saskia’s bed right now.

Because—because—

Saskia. Kiki. Saskia. Kiki.

SaskiaisKiki.

And on the bottom of the photograph is the final confirmation she needs, right there in handwritten letters.Mallory and Saskia, August 1985.

She flips the photo over to find another message.

Saskia: Show this photo to Penelope. She’ll remember you.

Mallory stares at the image for so long the colors run in a blurry mess. How did she not put it together before? The beach, the women around the fire. The way she and Kiki weren’t allowed to play together afterward. All of it, an agreement. A deal, a bargain, a switch: the transfer of Mallory’s curse to Saskia, who was presumed to die within months from the cancer ravaging her tiny body.

Perhaps Saskia’s mother wanted to give Mallory a future away from death and pain because her own daughter was already enduring both. She couldn’t have known that Saskia would recover. That, impossibly, Saskia would grow up to be a girl with hopes and dreams that could never be achieved with a shadow at her back.

Mallory is vaguely aware of Arden and Raf trying to get her attention. But she’s far away in her own thoughts, weighed down by the revelation that has been staring her in the face this whole time.She wants you to see,Rebecca had said to her.She wants you to see.

And then, as if the box contained another spell meant to be broken, the door bursts open and a woman rushes in.

Mallory exhales, relief and frustration coursing through her all at once as she gasps the name of the woman she’s been desperate to reach for days—

“Aunt Penelope?”

Penelope’s pale blue eyes fly to Saskia on the bed.

“Come with me,” she says. “There’s not much time.”

37