“Alex,” I said again, once I had the breath to speak. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did,” she said. She had her back to me, both hands clenched in fists at her sides. “You meant every word of it, just like I did.”
I gritted my teeth and shook my head. “Please. Let’s just talk about it. Okay? Let’s go back to Godwin House. We can…I’ll make tea, and we can talk.”
Alex turned at last to face me, her hair tangling in the wind in front of her face. She looked wild and feral, like a creature out of legend.
“You were right,” she said. “I haven’t taken responsibility for what I did. But I was right, too, you know. This whole witch business has gotten to you. Like, sometimes I don’t think you even hear yourself properly. Fucking…séances, Felicity? Dead girls and curses and demonic possession?”
I recoiled. It wasn’tdemonic—I’d never said anything about demonic possession. But I had confessed to Alex one night, both of us curled up in her bed together, that I thought Margery Lemont’s spirit was trapped in our world after that Halloween night. That because we didn’t do the closing ritual properly, Margery had no way to leave our world. I had said that I knew Margery’s intentions were evil. That she might use us to do evil things.
At the time, Alex had been so careful with me. But tonight her eyes were slate and cold, her mouth thin as wire.
“You need help. And you need to get a fucking grip.”
“Go to hell,” I managed to get out, but my voice was shaking. It was weakness, and to Alex, weakness was like blood in the water.
She moved closer, but I refused to be weak. I refused to let her pin me against the trees like a coward. I could feel Margery there, watching. Her eyes burned into the nape of my neck.
I stepped toward Alex and shook my head. “No. I’m not letting you do this. You’re…You’re beingmean,Alex. Stop it.”
“Mean,” she echoed, and let out a breathy laugh. “Fuck you, Felicity. I’m so sick of this. I’m so…I’m sosickof you acting like the martyr all the time. Like you’re so goddamn patient, andunderstanding,and if I’m not, well, that’s just Alex being Alex, isn’t it? Just evil, mean Alex, who talks back and curses and defends herself. But I guess standing up for yourself isn’t very Dalloway, is it? I guess I’m just showing howuncouthI am, since I didn’t go to goddamn finishing school and learn how to act like a perfect little princess all the time—”
“You—”
“But they’ll figure you out soon enough, Miss Morrow. You can’t hide it anymore, can you? You’re fucking broken. You’re batshit, just like your mother.”
And I pushed her.
I didn’t mean for her to fall. She wasn’t even that close to the edge. But she was drunk, and when she lost her balance, she stumbled. For a split second I thought she was going to recover and lunge for me—
Instead she pitched, and dropped, and vanished, screaming the whole way down.
Alex died. Alex was dead. I killed her myself.
The shock of seeing that body in the grave sends me reeling back toward the crumbling wall of the pit I dug. Only there’s nowhere to go, the space too cramped to allow for anything but this:
Me, half tumbling into the open casket, staring down at Alex’s beautiful red hair tangled against the satin pillow, her pale cheeks and limp hands, the scarlet bloom of blood staining her white shirt.
No. No,no—
That isn’t Alex’s mouth, nor Alex’s nose. Her cheeks have too many freckles, her body isn’t decayed.
Not Alex’s body.
Clara’s.
I scramble back along the narrow space I’ve dug, flattening myself against the grave wall and staring down at the dead body of my friend.
And maybe I’m a terrible person, as dark-hearted as I’ve always feared, because my first reaction isn’t to grieve. It’s the cold and clinical assessment:
She hasn’t been dead long.
I twist around and press my brow against the dirt, eyes clenched shut. I can’t fake innocence. I knew it.I knew it.
The body in Alex’s grave has a bullet in her stomach. Her throat is slit. Wormwood leaves wreathe her hair, and hellebore flowers bloom where her eyes should be.
She’s the perfect picture of Flora Grayfriar’s corpse.
