A woman’s voice.
My heart began to pound, thudding painfully within my chest.
You are exhausted, I told myself firmly. You are imagining things. There is no one in there.
My feet carried me back toward the door anyway, pulled by an invisible thread even as my mind objected. The brass rose gleamed in the lamplight, revealing slight ridges on each petal where the metal had been worked—the infinitesimal imperfections that proved it had been made by hand rather than cast in a mold.
My palm rested on it before I had fully consented to the motion. It was cool against my skin, fitting the curve of my hand with an exactness that made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
I pressed my ear against the wood.
Silence greeted me.
I held my breath and stood there in the dark, listening to my own pulse mark the seconds, waiting for the sound to come again or to reveal itself as nothing.
Open it,the voice encouraged, its attention sharpening.Perhaps you'll discover what's left of Mrs. Ambrose—preserved and suspended, kept like one of the specimens in the study.
I straightened, exhaling a shaky breath.
My hand dropped from the handle, and I stood for a moment with the cold of the corridor settling around me, breathing deeply.
"Stop it," I said, to myself or to it—I was becoming uncertain the distinction mattered. "There is nothing behind that door. There is no such thing as ghosts.”
Roses for the dead,it replied, as I turned and walked—faster than I cared to admit.Red roses for love, white roses for death. Brass roses for the one who will never wilt.
I reached my room, turning the lock behind me with a firmness that was perhaps excessive given that what I was locking out was already inside my own skull.
I stood with my back against the door, breathing in the dark, waiting for the spectral form of Dr. Ambrose’s dead wife to burst through.
Which, obviously, did not happen.
Chapter 6
Ihardly slept.
The room, for all its simple comfort, felt both familiar and foreign throughout the long night. Each time I closed my eyes, fragments of half-remembered things slipped through my dreams. Faces appeared and vanished before I saw them clearly. Voices whispered things I was certain I needed to know, only to dissolve before I could listen. The ghost of my past hovered just beyond reach, teasing and torturing until slipping from my grasp.
I had given up on sleep sometime around the fourth hour and lay watching the ceiling instead, turning over the same questions and frustrations that had plagued me for months.
What had I lost?
How much of myself had vanished the day I died?
Thoughts of Dr. Ambrose disturbed my sleep further. Amber eyes haunted me each time I drifted toward unconsciousness, along with questions about a dead wife, and a servant no one seemed willing to explain.
By dawn I was dressed, my face washed in the basin Agnes had left, and my gray work dress already on. I examined my hands in the early light, the discoloration present but faded. The purple had retreated back beneath my nails for now, but I had learned not to trust these small improvements.
The house was quiet as I made my way downstairs. The scent of bread baking and something savory made my stomach clench with sudden hunger. I was halfway down the staircase when I heard Agnes’s voice coming from somewhere below, soft and soothing enough that I paused mid-step.
“There we are, that’s good. Just a bit more now.”
I reached the landing and glanced down into the entrance hall. Agnes stood near one of the tall windows, morning sunlight streaming over her shoulder in long, golden rays. She held a small watering can in one hand, tilted toward—
Toward Hawthorne.
I stared, confused and uncertain of my own rationality, as she poured water over his outstretched hands. The liquid appeared to absorb into his skin rather than run off, and I could have sworn the greenish undertone of his flesh brightened, becoming richer and more alive.
Was she… watering him?
