But I was no longer listening. My attention had caught on a point just behind his left shoulder, where the air had begun to shimmer and distort.
She materialized from mist this time, her form bleeding into existence rather than appearing all at once. Dr. Ambrose’s wife stood close enough to him that her bloodstained nightgown nearly brushed his sleeve, her posture bent toward him with terrible intimacy.
He was oblivious to her presence. He had turned his attention to examining the heating pipes that ran along the greenhouse’s foundation, his forehead creased with concern but not alarm, unaware of the specter that leaned close enough to whisper in his ear.
I watched, captivated, as her translucent hand reached toward his face with the knowledge of someone who had performed this gesture countless times before and knew exactly how it should feel. Her fingers tangled in his dark hair, the motion possessive and loving in equal measure.
Then her jaw began to open.
It unhinged with that same horrible grinding I had witnessed before, the bones separating beyond any natural range of motion. Her mouth gaped impossibly wide, and her tongue emerged—long, serpentine, and glistening withmoisture that caught the dim light and made my stomach clench.
Her tongue traced along his jaw with obscene slowness, moving down the column of his throat, lingering over his pulse point. I observed the wet trail it left behind on his skin, imagining the cold, dead weight of it against living flesh.
Dr. Ambrose continued his examination of the heating pipes, still completely unsuspecting.
Then the vines began to emerge.
They pushed past her extended tongue, escaping from her throat—one by one they appeared, growing longer as they descended, winding their way down her chin, then wrapping around his throat, coiling with confidence.
I stood motionless, my breath caught somewhere in my chest, unable to look away from the sight of those pale tendrils encircling his windpipe, tightening incrementally, seeking the pressure points where breath was most easily restricted.
My hands ached at my sides, itching to replace the vines. I wanted to step forward, reach out, wrap my fingers around his throat and feel the cartilage flex beneath the pressure, counting how many seconds it would take before survival instinct overrode his scholarly absorption. I would watch his face change as oxygen deprivation set in—the widening of eyes, the flush of color followed by its absence, the specific moment consciousness began to flicker and fade.
You should cut him open and see if his insides match yours,the voice suggested.
I wanted to.
The voice wanted me to.
But I did not move. I simply stood there, watching the ghost’s vines encircle Dr. Ambrose’s throat with increasing tightness.
His wife finally pulled back, the tendrils retracting just as they had emerged. They wound back up his throat, across his jaw, disappearing between her crimson lips, swallowed and reclaimed, drawn back into whatever darkness resided in her spectral form. Her tongue followed, that impossible length sliding back into her mouth. Her jaw closed with a nauseating click I felt more than heard.
She turned her head toward me, her neck rotating beyond normal range with the ease of something no longer constrained by living anatomy. Her eyes were brilliant green, the exact shade that looked back at me from every mirror and reflective surface. She smiled with satisfaction, the gesture of someone who had revealed a secret and was pleased with the revelation’s effect.
I stared at her face, stunned by the resemblance—the same jaw. The same cheekbones. The same slight asymmetry I had traced in my own reflection countless times. The same hair, the same shoulders, the same features arranged in the same pattern. She was me. Or I was her. Or we were both fragments of something that had been broken apart and scattered across the boundary between life and death.
Then she vanished.
The temperature normalized, humid air rushing back so suddenly it made my head spin. The frost that had begunto form on the glass panels melted, moisture running down in clear rivulets.
Dr. Ambrose straightened from his examination of the pipes, his brows furrowing before his gaze found mine across the greenhouse. Whatever he saw in my face made his expression shift from puzzlement to concern. “Miss Reed. Are you quite alright?”
I realized I was gripping the edge of the worktable hard enough that my knuckles had gone white, my breath coming in short gasps, my entire body rigid with the effort of remaining upright.
“Yes,” I managed, though my voice sounded strange to my own ears. “Perfectly fine. The cold simply caught me off guard.”
He studied me for a long moment, skepticism clear in his amber eyes. He knew I was lying, knew something more than a temperature fluctuation had left me standing frozen among the ferns, but he did not press.
We worked in silence for the remainder of the afternoon, but I sensed his attention returning to me at intervals—brief glances when he thought I was focused elsewhere.
By the time I had finally composed myself, the afternoon had melted away into evening, flashes of silvery-blue lightning crackling overhead. I finished lining a row of oleander seedlings that had managed to escape Hawthorne’s rampage unscathed before moving toward the door.
“Good night, Dr. Ambrose,” I said, avoiding his gaze when he looked up.
“Good night, Camellia,” he replied, my name softened upon his lips. I met his eyes briefly, then forced myself to turn away and leave the greenhouse—but sleep was the furthest thingfrom my mind.
Chapter 18
