Page 36 of She Haunts Me Still

He arches a dark brow. “Did you come to check on me?”

“No,” she replies quickly, face flushing. “Maybe. I just—I need to talk to you.”

Ezra drags a hand through his hair. “Now’s not really a good time.”

“Please,” she says, and something shifts in his stare. Like he’s contemplating a million other ways he could make her say that word. She blushes again, rushing to add, “I don’t have to stay for long.”

He leans in the doorway, seemingly considering as he rolls up his sleeves. Mallory tries not to notice the flex of his forearms, the corded muscle running up the exposed skin.

“You can stay as long as you want,” Ezra finally replies. “But the lights have to remain off.”

Mallory nods. “Migraine. Got it.”

“It’s mostly over.” Ezra swipes at his nose. “But I don’t want it coming back.”

She trails him into the darkened dorm, the door closing softly behind her. A slip of moonlight spills through the arched window, casting the barest glow onto his bed, sheets wrinkled and comforter askew. His wooden desk is covered with open books, chair pushed back as though he’d been studying when the pain struck. Narrow orange bottles litter the nightstand, pills tumbling out like beads. Ezra notices them at the same time she does, and he swiftly sweeps them into a drawer. Despite the dim light, Mallory isn’t oblivious to the way his usual confidence has been replaced with something vulnerable. Soft. He hasn’t just let her into his dorm—he’s let her in on another secret, too.

“Well?” Ezra asks, sitting on a bed that’s at least twice the size of the one in Mallory’s dorm. “What is it that couldn’t wait?”

Mallory settles into the reading chair next to his desk, suddenly nervous. She’s been desperate to talk to him for hours, but now that she’s here, she has no idea where to begin.

“Jules,” he coaxes.

“I found Lily’s grave,” she blurts. “It’shere. On campus. Hidden in the gardens, under the hedge maze.”

Ezra leans forward, arms draped on his knees. “What do you mean, ‘hidden’?”

“Do you know what the New England Vampire Panic was?”

There’s a beat of quiet. “No.”

Mallory’s explanation rushes out. “In the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, there were some who believed that people who died of tuberculosis were coming back to life, leaving their graves, drinking the blood of their living family members, and infecting them. Like vampires.” She pushes a hand through her hair. “In order to prevent it from happening, they exhumed their graves and cut out their hearts. If there was blood inside, they thought it meant there was something evil present—so they burned those hearts. And then put their bodies back in their graves, dismembered.”

Ezra is silent. She can’t read his expression at all.

She barrels on.

“It wasn’t true, of course,” she continues. “The hysteria was a disease in and of itself—tuberculosis was killing so many people because of how contagious it was. They were probably afraid of being next. And this was something tangible to cling to, something they coulddoto supposedly prevent infection. But the fear spread. Like the Salem witch trials. Ironic, actually, since people moved to Rhode Island to getawayfrom witchcraft persecution in the sixteen hundreds. To think, a century later, people started losing their minds believing their dead relatives werevampires!”

“Jules.” Ezra’s voice is like a splash of cold water. “Slow down.”

She sucks in a breath. “Listen—the point is: Lily Hubbard died here, when Shore was a sanitarium. She had tuberculosis. I think someone took her from her grave and cut out her heart. And burned it.” She glances down. “The part I can’texplain is what it has to do with me or my mother. But I think—I think that’s what my mom was trying to do to herself. Cut out her own heart. Everything must be connected somehow.”

Ezra falls quiet again, but she can feel the heat of his stare in the darkness.

“There’s one more thing,” Mallory says. “My understudy is back from her ‘leave of absence.’ Saskia.” She shakes her head. “But she’s been on campus this whole time. She’s beenfollowingme. There’s something off about her.”

“Yeah.” The bed creaks as Ezra leans against the wall. “She’s…unwell.”

Mallory tries to find his face in the shadows. “Hold on—do youknowher? Is that why she didn’t have to audition?”

“Sort of.” He sounds uncomfortable. “We did theater together in Boston one summer. I…spent some time with her.”

“ ‘Spent some time with her’?’’ Mallory narrows her eyes. “Is that code for something?”

Ezra’s laugh travels across the room. “If you’re asking if we hooked up, the answer is absolutely not.”

“Why do you say it like that?”