Page 130 of She Haunts Me Still

Mallory suddenly looks up. “Can I take it back?”

Penelope tilts her head in confusion.

“The curse. Can you transfer it back to me?”

“Mallory, sweetheart, no. Saskia is deeply infected. Transferring it to you now…youbothmight not survive.”

“We have to try,” she replies, dizzy but energized. “It’s supposed to be me. This should be happening to me.”

Mallory pauses, holding space for the next words.

“I love her. Let me take it back.”

Suddenly, a thunderous banging rails against the front door. Fear rips straight through Mallory’s sadness, and she sprints to the window. She struggles to see through the dark, but Penelope seems to recognize the figure outside, because she turns to Mallory with frightened, accusing eyes.

“I thought you said Ezra Pierce was dead.”

38

Atornado seems to erupt around Mallory as Penelope and several others rush through the cottage in a blur. They dump a line of salt at the doorway. Form a circle with an array of crystals. Drop a cluster of burning herbs into a small canister in the hall.

Ezra is alive. He’s alive, he’s—

He pounds at the door again. There’s urgency in the sound, desperation mounting with every crack of his fist. “Open the door!” Ezra yells. “I know you’re here.”

“Donot,” one of the women orders.

But Mallory barely hears the warning, inching closer to the window.

She needs to see for herself.

Mallory peers through the willowy curtains, breath catching at the sight of him on the porch. His profile is illuminated by the flickering lamp, casting a glow on his tortured expression.

“Jules, open the door—please!”

She watches as his determination slips into despair, witnessing the exact moment he realizes she might not answer.

“Please.” Ezra’s forehead tips against the wood. “Jules, there’s not much time.”

Midnight swirls around his shoulders. Sadness pulls at his face. For once, he doesn’t look like a man who battles death, a man capable of murder.

He just looks like a man she could have loved.

“He’s telling the truth,” Mallory says.

“You don’t know that,” Penelope cautions. “Do you know what happens if you invite a demon into your home?”

“He’s not a demon.”

Or maybe he is. Maybe he’s both, all of it, at the same time. Maybe everyone is just everything they’ve ever been—good and bad, fused as one, impossible to separate. “We don’t have to invite him in. I’ll go outside.”

Mallory pushes past the women in white, ignoring their pleas. Snatching her coat, she opens the door and steps onto the porch.

Ezra looks up, eyes flashing as though he didn’t expect to see her ever again. For a moment, there’s only the quiet breeze, the distant cry of an owl.

“You’re alive.” The words are obvious and foolish, but she blurts them anyway.

He nods. “I think…I thinkhesaved me.”