I took several steps back, my gaze sweeping the space. Instead of the expected epithets and curse words, the walls were covered in prayers, scratched in the hand of someone who’d actually been taught penmanship. But how could that be?
“Delia?”
I turned at Claire’s nervous voice and realized it was coming from the hallway. I ducked back out of Grandma Kate’s bedroom. The two of them hadn’t gotten far. They stood at the top of the stairs, and Aunt Emily had taken Claire’s hand and was stroking it, over and over again.
“You really do have pretty hands, such pretty hands.” Her actions grew harder as I approached, until I could tell her nails were scraping against Claire’s fingers, digging into the back of her hand.
“Ouch!” Claire tried to pull away, but Emily was faster. She jerked Claire’s hand toward the staircase, and the stairs seemed to surge up at the same time, although of course that was my own imagination.
“Emily.” I rushed forward, forcibly knocking the woman away from Claire. Emily looked at me, startled and something wild and rough flashed in her gaze. For a moment I thought she was going to fight back, and I squared up against her, ready to channel some of my spinning, chaotic energy into what I was meant to do. But just that quickly she stepped away, deeper into the hallway past the stairs, her eyes sprouting big, wet tears.
“Oh my God!” she cried. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry! I don’t know—I don’t know what happened. It’s just this place—this miserable floor in this miserable place!”
Claire had yanked her hand back and was staring at Emily now, even as she started to rock a little on her feet, her fingers rhythmically rubbing the skin that Emily had stroked, as if Max’s aunt had somehow managed to rub some of her crazy onto her.
“I don’t know what’shappeningto me,” Emily cried, lifting her hands to either side of her head. That rooted me to my place as well. My mind flashed to Mrs. Klein’s sister, Iris, ripping the hair from either side of her head in clumps, leaving behind an ugly welt that oozed blood. I didn’t want Claire to see that, but when I reached for her, Claire spun away from me, too, her eyes wide, too wide, and glazed.
“What is this place, Delia?” she asked, her gaze darting from Emily to the open staircase she’d nearly been thrown down. “What happened here?”
I knew what she was asking. It was what everyone wanted to know. Why them, why here, why now.Why, why, why. No answers spun up from the empty blank space inside me, the space where answers had come before. Had those answers always been the truth, though? Right now, I didn’t care. They would have been better than the answers I came up with, the only option I could offer anyone, anymore.
“Nothing happened here, Claire, except some very unhappy people did some very unhappy things to each other. That wears on a place, on a house.” On a soul, I thought grimly, thinking of Joe. “You know how you walk into your grandmother’s room back home? Well, this isn’t so different from that. It’s just a room with a lot of memories built up.”
“Memories!” Emily practically spat the word, drawing our attention back. “Don’t talk to me about memories. Do you know the kinds of parties I was invited to, back when I was loved? None of you people could have gone toanyof them.”
Claire and I exchanged a startled look. “Aunt Emily?” I tried, though she sure as hell wasn’t my aunt.
It seemed to work, though. She straightened tall in the corridor, her hands clasped to her heart. “I was the star. I wasbeautiful. I had my entire future in front of me and now—look at me.” She flung her arms wide. “I’m stuck here, tied like a fly on a string. And it will never let mego.”
Her crying started up in earnest then, and it was a fearsome sound, wet and long and loud, the sound of a child hoping for someone to come along and pick her up and comfort her. Only it was just Claire and me, and we couldn’t pick up anyone. Especially not a crazy anyone.
Claire finally seemed to gain some understanding of this, and her feet began to move. She shuffled a little closer to me, almost touching, as we watched Emily cry. Then we took a long, slow step toward the stairs.
Emily’s crying turned to shrieks. “No! You can’t leave me! You won’t!”
That was enough for us. As Emily burst after us, we turned and scrambled down the stairs, half-running, half-stumbling. Emily pounded down right on our heels, and I imagined her reaching for us, straining for us, and then we were onto the second floor and running hard.
“Max.” I fairly screamed the word and then he was there, rushing past us, strong and confident. I stopped, and Claire came to a shaking halt beside me, gasping as we both turned—and saw Max with a crumpled Emily in his arms, Emily clinging to him like he was her savior, and Max awkwardly patting her, trying to disengage her but even more trying to give comfort as he half-turned to edge her back toward her own bedroom.
Over his shoulder, Emily lifted her head, her bleary eyes finding us almost drunkenly.
Then she smiled, triumphant.
Chapter
Thirty-Four
Breakfast the next morning was a quiet affair. Sam and his parents were still at the hospital. Emily hadn’t stirred from her room. The Bells had brought another rescue horse to the back paddock—as sure a sign of spitting into the wind as I’d ever seen, but it seemed to be working.
Claire and Steve were down by the fence. She wore a hoodie over her T-shirt and shorts despite the warmth of the morning, while he remained in the same clothes he’d worn yesterday. They stood inside the paddock with the Bells, feeding the old mare.
“I think they’re going to convince Dad to bring horses back this way, little by little. Rescue horses can be touchy. So we could split the paddock,” Max said. We sat staring out at the homey scene, our untouched bowls of cereal on our laps. “Then, gradually, when those horses do okay, I think they’ll push him to bring back quarter horses.”
I nodded. Max had stayed in his aunt Emily’s room for too long last night. Eventually, the rest of us had fallen asleep, waking up in three huddles to find a fourth huddle in the other chair. Max, sitting closer to Claire than to me. Steve, for his part, was closer to me, but it hadn’t been weird. He’d just been…Steve.
I didn’t know how I felt about him—or Max and Claire, for that matter. I didn’t know how I felt about anyone who wasn’t actively possessed right now.
“How long will Grandma Kate be in the hospital?” I asked Max.
