A thin, green tendril pushed past her bloodied lips, unfurling like a new shoot seeking sunlight. The vine was delicate at first, almost beautiful in its obscenity. It continued to grow, sliding from her throat with wet, organic sounds that made my stomach lurch even as I leaned forward, captivated by morbid fascination.
It slithered down her chin, following the path the blood had carved, wrapping around her neck with the lazy confidence of something that had claimed her body long ago and had no intention of leaving her. The tendril was almost luminescent in the dim light, threaded with darker veins that pulsed and writhed beneath the surface.
More vines followed. They spilled from her mouth in a grotesque bouquet, some thin as thread, others thick as my finger, all of them moving in a slow cadence as they wound down her body, coiling around her arms and her waist, spreading across her nightgown until they covered every inch of the fabric.
The vines claimed her until she was transformed into something that was neither woman nor plant but some ineffable fusion of both. They pulsed gently in time with my own heart, the hypnotic beat drawing me forward.
Then she reached for me. Her fingers stretched out impossibly long, the nails chipped and blackened. The vines had grown under her skin as well—dark green lines visible through the translucent flesh of her palms.
“Help me,” she whispered, her voice distorted by the plant that filled her throat. “Please… help me…”
I took a step back, wanting to flee. Every nerve in my body demanded me to do so, but I could not stop staring at her face—at the blood, the vines, and decay all woven together so exquisitely that it held me transfixed.
What had happened to her? How had the vines taken root within her?
She’s perfect,the voice said, pressing so hard behind my eyes that I squinted in pain.
I backed away, terror overriding every other impulse as I turned toward the door—and crashed directly into something solid and unyielding.
Chapter 8
Igasped, my hands coming up instinctively to brace against whatever I had collided with. My palms pressed against warm fabric—and beneath it, the steady rise and fall of breathing. His pulse beat beneath my fingers, smooth and insistent. Proof of life. Proof of all the terrible things a body could be made to surrender.
Dr. Ambrose’s hands gripped my arms, steadying me as I struggled to break free, still half-convinced the thing in the room was reaching for me.
"Miss Reed!" His voice cut through my panic, stripped of everything except the need to anchor me.
I looked up into his face, my breath coming in short pants, and saw shock and concern pulling at his features. I had no words for the rawness in his eyes. He looked like a man encountering a creature he had long since stopped believing he might see again, barely resisting the urge to capture that endangered species and never let it go.
"There is—" I said, trying to gesture behind me, to warn him about the woman, the blood, the reaching hands. "She is... there is someone—"
But when I turned to look over my shoulder, the space where the woman had stood was empty. The fire blazed cheerfully, illuminating the room in soft golden light, revealing a perfectly ordinary, albeit beautiful, bedchamber.
There was no woman. No blood. No glowing vines. No reaching hands or that terrible whispered plea for help.
There was nothing.
I stood there, staring at the empty space, my logical mind struggling to reconcile what I had seen with what now remained.
Had I imagined it?
When I looked back at him, his brows furrowed as he searched my face. "What is it?" He paused, tilting his head to one side. "What are you doing in here?"
His hands were still on my arms—warm and real in a way nothing else in that room felt. We stood frozen like that for a long moment, and I became far too aware of how our bodies remained pressed close to one another. I noticed now that his dark hair was soaked through, the dampness of it catching the firelight, suggesting he had only just arrived home.
And in the terrible silence between us, I realized I had absolutely no explanation that would justify my reason for being in that room.
I opened my mouth, standing there gaping like some witless fool, desperate for words that refused to come. The brilliance I had always assumed my mind possessed abandoned me in that moment, leaving me with nothing but my thundering heartbeat and rising mortification.
"I thought I saw—" I started, but the words would not form properly. How could I tell him what I had seen when it made no sense even to me, when the evidence of my own eyes suggested I had imagined the entire thing?
I shook my head, trying to recall why I had been searching through the rooms of the manor to start with.
"I was looking for Hawthorne,” I said quickly.
"Hawthorne?" he repeated, his frown deepening with obvious confusion.
His hands fell from my arms, the warmth of his grip taking a moment to fade. He took a step back, putting distance between us, and I felt the absence of him with startling awareness. My limbs trembled without that anchor, my balance suddenly uncertain.
