Page 58 of She Haunts Me Still

“She wants you to see.”

Mallory’s chest clenches, but she follows Rebecca’s pointed finger toward the darkened corridor—and lets out a startled cry.

There, standing just a few feet away, is Lily.

She looks the same as always. White dress soaked with blood. Long hair matted to her shoulders. Decaying, withering flesh.

But this time, she isn’t alone.

Five women stand alongside her, all dressed in white. All with blossoming bloodstains on their chests. All staring in silent, furious rage.

“Do you understand?” Rebecca whispers. “Do you see what’s been done to them all?”

“Oh my god,” Mallory says as her gaze swings to the woman at the end of the procession. A woman she’d recognize anywhere—in faded photographs, in her dreams. Her voice drops to a whisper. “Mom?”

In an instant, she realizes. Her ancestors. All with their hearts cut out. Waiting for Mallory to join them.

Mallory glances again at this ghostly version of her mother, pallid eyes gazing into the distance. For a moment, she seesthe mother she remembers—laughing in pockets of sunlight across a cracked diner booth, covered in scarves from Mallory’s dress-up trunk—but the memory flickers in and out like a flame. She swallows, scrambling to hold on to her.

“Mom,” Mallory says again. “Mom, can you hear me? Why did this happen? How do I stop it? How do I—?”

An ominous hissing snags her attention, and she whips her focus back to Lily.

Lily, who is staring directly at her now. Eyes milky white and glowing in the dark.

“Burn it,” she orders, raising a crooked, decaying finger. Pointing directly at Mallory’s chest.

“No,” Mallory says. “Iwon’tdie like her. You can’t force me to—”

Lily lets out a deep, rattling laugh. Mallory gasps as something slithers out from between Lily’s lips, dark and fuzzy. It takes her a few moments to realize it’s a swarm of flies. Pouring and pouring from her unhinged jaw like a black, buzzing cloud.

Mallory whirls for Ezra’s door, fleetingly aware that she’s dreaming and it’s futile, but the scream pours out of her anyway—

“Help!” Fear floods her as the air turns impossibly colder. “Help, help, help—”

BANG—

BANG—

BANG—

Mallory’s eyes fly open with a terrified gasp at the thunderous knocks on the wall.

Heart pounding, she blinks at the realization that she’sback in Ezra’s bed. Fog-soaked daylight presses against the window. Traffic hums in the distance. And the clock on the nightstand is somehow frozen again at 3:33, despite the ashen morning light.

She stares at the ceiling, trying to chase the threads of her dream. The name Jacob echoes in her memory like a still-smoldering ember.

He’s the one, she realizes. The one who dug up Lily’s grave and took out her heart.

Just then, Ezra stirs beside her. “Morning,” he says.

“Hi,” she replies, turning toward him.

His gaze drifts over her face, lower to her bare shoulders. As if absorbing the exact picture of her, naked in his bed. A small smile plays on his lips, and he fingers the ends of her tangled hair before glancing at the watch he’s still wearing.

“I have to meet Hendrix in an hour,” Ezra says, his hand curving around the side of her neck. “What do I have to do to convince you to stay right here until I’m back?”

Mallory tries to match his playful smile, but her lips won’t stretch far enough. In the stark daylight, she’s forced to confront the lingering taste of his dishonesty. She thinks of all the times Ezra asked if she trusted him, the countless ways he promised to keep her safe, when all along, he was hoarding answers in his pockets, right next to the secrets he stole. A note of shame expands inside her, both for how easily she was tricked and how much she still wants him anyway. She’s not sure what kind of a woman gives second chances to a man who wields deception like an art. She’s not sure it’s the kind of woman she wants to be.