Page 132 of She Haunts Me Still

“Ezra,” Mallory interjects. “Are you sure—?”

A sudden, keening scream interrupts her. In the next instant, the blonde woman in white appears on the porch with blood smeared across her face, patches of it along her neck.

“She’s in trouble,” the woman exclaims, breathless. She grips a crystal, pressing it once to her lips. “She’s trying to claw out her heart with her own hands!”

Pulse spiking, Mallory bolts inside. She’s vaguely aware of Ezra’s attempt to follow, the way Penelope tells him to wait on the porch. Mallory sprints down a darkened corridor toward the raised voices, and barrels into the orchid room—where she cries out before she can stop herself.

Saskia kneels in the middle of a canopy bed, wrists adorned with dangling ribbons, as though she’d been tied up but ripped herself free. Several other girls are trying to hold her down, and Mallory’s gaze flies to her fingers.

They’re covered in blood.

Mallory runs to her, frantically calculating how much damage she’s caused with her nails. But there’s so much blood—on her chest, her dress, the bedsheets—it’s hard to tell.

“We have to move quickly,” Penelope says from the doorway. She turns to the dark-haired woman in white, instructing her to start a fire. To Mallory she adds, “Bring Ezra around back.”

Mallory nods. Turning to Saskia’s writhing body, she presses her forehead to hers. Her skin is ice-cold.

Say it,she urges herself.Say it now. Her mind spins and spins with the cacophony of unsaid words, of lost time. Of how much it will hurt if she never says it at all.

“I love you, Saskia,” she confesses, her voice barely a whisper. “I love you, I love you—”

A ridiculous part of her expects Saskia to soften. To say it back, as though Mallory’s words can break the curse, like some kind of fairy tale. But instead, Saskia only howls.

Mallory has become invisible to her.

“Come now,” the blonde woman says.

Mallory wrenches herself away from Saskia and back into the hall, where Penelope stops her with a hand on her arm.

“You need to know two things,” she says. “First, this might not work. Saskia’s body is very, very weak. There’s a strong chance Ezra and Saskia both die here tonight.”

Mallory shoves the dread away, buries it down.

“The second is more important,” Penelope says as they walk down the corridor. “When Saskia underwent this ritual with you, her life was altered. By going through it asecondtime, her path will be reset. Meaning whatever was originally fated to befall her may ultimately find her again.”

Mallory skews her mouth to the side.

“Saskia was sick. Are you saying…she’ll get sick again?”

“I can’t say for sure,” Penelope replies. “But, Mallory, no one can outrun what’s meant for them. Destiny finds you. One way or another. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

A heavy stone of exhaustion weighs down Mallory’s chest. She’s vaguely aware of the implication behind Penelope’s words, but all she can taste is desperation.

For one more chance.

To not let this be a collection oflasts.

Whatever it costs. Even if it ends.

“I understand,” she says. “Let’s begin.”

Mallory watches the flames from far away, as if she’s stumbled into another dream.

She stands alongside Ezra on the rock-crusted shore while the women tend the fire, smoke billowing behind the green cottage.

“Did you ever think it would end like this?” he asks.

She looks at him, suddenly reminded of their secret meetings in the theater after dark. Nights when she would fight with the muscles in her fingers, desperate to reach out and touch him.