Page 72 of She Haunts Me Still

“Sometimes,” he says, “those two things are the same.”

Mallory is the last one in the dressing room after rehearsal, meticulously removing every ounce of makeup, taking her time in hopes she won’t cross paths with Ezra on the wayout. She downs two painkillers for her headache, hangs her costume on the rack, and tugs on her clothes. As she straightens, she freezes at what she sees in the mirror.

Her reflection is gone.

And Lily is staring back.

There’s no mistaking those milky opal eyes. Her reddened, chapped mouth. The stringy hair cascading toward the blood on her chest.

But this time, as Mallory gapes at Lily in terror, a sudden, sharp pain explodes between her ribs. As though her body is rehearsing for the day she looks exactly like her.

Mallory cries out, doubling over to grasp her chest. The lights start to flicker, but she hardly notices above the searing pain, imagining a fire-soaked blade pressed into her skin.

About to carve out her heart.

She clutches her sweater, pulse vibrating so fast it creates a humming sound in her ears. Like a growl. Like that voice again.

And if she listens hard enough, it almost sounds like words.

Offer yourself,that voice purrs from the darkened walls, and she inadvertently thinks of her mother. Did she once hear the same demand?

Mallory shakes her head vigorously, desperately trying to rid her mind of the sound.

“No,” she chokes out to the empty room.

Then,the air seems to hiss,you will learn to beg for death instead.

Breath heaving, Mallory catches sight of Lily in the mirror again, fully registering her expression now. Strangely, it’snot tinged with fury, but something bordering on concern. She blinks, trying to make it out, but Lily’s image slips away, leaving only herself.

Herself, with no brown in her eyes at all. Only black.

Like Ezra’s that day.

“Mal?”

Startled, Mallory blinks again. The chocolate brown returns to her irises and the pain in her chest dissolves as Saskia rushes toward her, still in costume.

“Are you okay?” Saskia demands.

“She was here,” Mallory says. “In the mirror.”

“Lily?” Saskia glances toward their dimly lit reflections. “What does shewant?”

“I don’t know anymore.” Mallory shakes her head, pulse returning to its normal speed. “Sometimes it feels like Lily wants me to die. But just now—it was like she was watching to make sure I don’t.”

Saskia’s expression turns thoughtful as she reaches for the strings of her corset. “Maybe it’s like we said. She’s not in control at all.” She struggles with the laces and blows a frustrated exhale. “Can you undo this for me?”

Mallory nods, stepping behind her to unthread the corset. They both fall quiet as Mallory focuses on the strings, but she can feel Saskia studying her in the mirror.

“It must be hard to be around Ezra at rehearsals,” Saskia observes quietly, and Mallory’s face warms at her usual bluntness. But she nods anyway, Saskia’s careful stare drawing the truth from her like a syringe.

“It’s like there are two versions of him.” Mallory continues to tug at the corset. “Or maybe I just missed all the signs. Those iron injections in his drawer, the way he…” Shetrails off at the memory of him licking her fingers clean, his fangs tearing open her throat. “It felt like heneededmy blood.”

Saskia narrows her eyes. “Something doesn’t add up, though. The things you mentioned about his room—the cold patches, the claw marks in the walls. Him…disassociating, becoming violent. What if Ezra isn’t the one who needs blood, but somethingelsedoes? Something that’s using his body as a vessel to get it?” She pauses. “The way his eyes changed, his voice—it has to be connected to everything, somehow.”

Mallory finishes loosening Saskia’s corset, attention snagging on the endless stretch of creamy skin down her back. Her dress is fully open now, pooling just below her tailbone, offering the tiniest peek of her underwear. Dark fabric. Cotton. And before she can stamp out the idea, Mallory considers how impossibly soft Saskia would feel if she trailed her fingers up the ridges of her spine. If she pushed a wisp of white hair off her shoulder and thumbed the cords of her narrow throat.

If she leaned close enough to bite the tender flesh beneath her ear.