The graveyard is in Kingston; it’s too far away to walk.
I steal Kajal’s bike and ride it into town and rent a car at the same place as last time with the false ID my mother gave me as a misguided sixteenth birthday present; the last thing I want right now is to sit in the back of a stranger’s cab for an hour, fielding questions about what I’m studying at school, why I’m out so late, why I look like I’ve seen a ghost.
Blanketed under snow, the cemetery looks nothing at all like it did when Ellis and I last visited. The tombstones rise out of the gloom like onlooking specters, black and silent. It’s four in the morning by the time I arrive, the night as dark as it will ever get and the cold reaching down into my bones as I step out of the car and let myself in through the iron gate.
The snow has fallen ankle-deep; it’s a slow trudge past the mausoleum and toward the silent oak tree that stands watch over Alex’s grave. The hellebore has been buried under that weight, and as I approach, the grave looks unmarked. Undisturbed.
It’s only once I kneel down by Alex’s headstone that I realize the snow there has been shifted. It’s not the pure faultless blanket that covers the other graves; the snow here has been freshly shoveled back into place, someone’s meager attempt to hide what they’ve done.
I twist around, expecting to find a shadowy figure standing behind me, but the cemetery is empty of all but the dead.
Alex never died in that lake. We didn’t find a body because there was no body tofind.
While I ran down from the cliff to find her body, Alex pulled herself out of that black water and staggered into the woods, vanishing without a trace.
Of course she did. She could have. Her career was over, her reputation ruined. Everyone thought she was violent now, too emotional, too unprofessional. She’d told me there was no escape, that she could run and run as far as she wanted, but she’d never stop being Alex Haywood.
She dug up her own grave and read the letter I wrote. That’s why the snow is disturbed. That’s why the inscription appeared in the book. Because Alexdidwrite it.
Then what’s in her grave that she wants me to find so badly?
All at once, I no longer feel the cold. It’s a strange heat that blooms under my skin, smoldering in my chest like fury. I push to my feet and make my way along the winding path that leads to the caretaker’s shed. The padlock hangs unlocked around the door, not even frosted over. I kick the door open and stumble into the dull warmth of the interior.
The dust knocked down off the rafters makes me cough. I pull my phone out of my back pocket and flick on the flashlight app, the beam illuminating the dark corners of the space.There.A shovel rests against the far wall, tip down. I drag it out of the shed. I should have brought gloves; my fingers are already white-tipped and numb where they curl around the handle.
When the blade cuts into the snow, it makes a crunching sound, like ice snapping. I dig up that first shovelful and pitch it to the side, my heart already pounding as I thrust down for another load.
I feel oddly dizzy—light-headed—with a sense of double vision, as if I can see a second pair of hands alongside my own, a second shovel, black soil breaking beneath the blade. My palms ache with phantom blisters; I taste old salt on my tongue.
It’s at least ten minutes before the tip of my blade hits dirt. I’ve cleared a rectangular space the approximate length and width of a coffin. My chest aches, sweat sticky under my coat. But this isn’t over. Not yet.
I dig the shovel down once more, cutting through frost and soil and heaving, again, again,again.The sun starts to rise over the distant horizon, a dull gray glimmer that only casts the shadows into sharper relief. I stare at the name on Alex’s headstone, the letters blurry through the sweat that beads on my lashes.
I’ll find you,I tell her.I’ll fix this.
I don’t know what I’m fixing.
I start to lose track of time. The world condenses down to this: the snow soaking into my socks, the dirt under my nails. My breath clouding at my lips, and the calluses that swell on my palms—swell, then burst, then bleed.
I never thought how long it would take to dig up a grave. I never considered how the shovel handle would get slippery under my grip, that I’d end up stomping on the shovel blade to force it deeper into the ground, that I’d be on my knees in the dirt as the hole got deeper and deeper, until I’m standing in the pit and digging beneath my own feet.
The spade thumps against something solid, and I stop. The sky overhead is slate gray as I tip my face toward it, gasping for air and shutting my eyes. I’ve forgotten how to be afraid. Even the mist that rolls in off the mountains and wells up around the tombstones doesn’t frighten me anymore. I am closer to shade than girl. I am no more substantial than bone dust.
I scrape the dirt off the lid of the coffin, exposing wood gone dark with too much soil ground into its veins.
All I have to do is open the casket.
Yet I find myself kneeling down in the chasm of Alex’s grave, both hands pressed against the lid of her coffin and my eyes squeezed shut, taking in a shuddering breath and trying to chase away the sense, even now, that I am being watched.
I wish her body were in here. I wish I could press my cheek against the cold wood and feel some shadow of her on the other side. I could practice the same necromancy as Alex and I did that night we spoke to Margery Lemont—inscribe letters on the coffin lid, let Alex’s spirit move a planchette from word to word.
But a ghost didn’t dig up this grave. That work was done by living hands.
The seal on the casket is broken; it’s easy to hook my fingers under the lid and yank it up, the hinges creaking as the coffin opens.
And even in this dim light, dawn still pewter over the hills and the cover of snow draping everything in silence, I recognize her.
Alex.
