Dr. Ambrose moved to set the journal on the worktable, brows drawn together as he watched me closely. “What exactly do you think I did?”
“I have told you before,” I said through my teeth, fighting to keep my companion’s hunger from pulling the words sideways into demands I had not chosen to make. “You killed her and put the vine inside her.”
He said nothing.
I reached past him and opened the journal to the diagram, pointing to the vine threaded through the woman’s open throat. “Look at it and tell me I am wrong.”
He stared down at the page for a long moment. When he finally lifted his face, the grief I saw there was one that had been suppressed for so long it had worn grooves into the person carrying it.
My companion stopped waiting, its patience melting through my skull.
The hunger detonated through me with the force of something held compressed far past its tolerance, flooding my chest and arms and hands until my own will became a small and distant thing at the back of my skull, watching from behind glass as my body ceased to be mine.
“Where is that flower?” The voice that came from my throat was mine in pitch and nothing else.
He did not answer quickly enough, thrown by the abrupt change of subject.
My grip tightened around the journal, snatching it from the table. I thrust it toward him, my companion driving my hand as I pressed my finger into the page hard enough that it dimpled.
The frown he still wore on his face deepened, shifting from confusion into recognition that swam up through his features. “This is what you wanted?”
He looked up from the page to my face, and some larger understanding assembled itself behind his eyes. He reached out and gripped my shoulders, his hands firm and warm through the fabric of my dress, and gave me a single gentle shake as though trying to find whatever part of me was still reachable.
“In the cemetery,” he said, his voice low and urgent, “you let me make love to you so you could take the flower from my pocket?”
No, I screamed inside myself.
YES,the voice screamed back.
The word burned through my chest before it reached my mouth, my companion’s rage swallowing everything else—every thought, every restraint, every carefully maintained boundary between its will and mine.
“Yes.” The word slipped between my teeth in a hiss. “WHERE IS IT?”
My body lunged forward before I could stop it.
I watched from behind my eyes, helpless, as my hands reached for his throat, the journal careening to the floor. The distant, horrified part of me registered what I was doing and I begged my arms to stop while my companionpushed back with a fury so hot I tasted it—metallic and green and alive, flooding my mouth like putrefied sap. Some shameful and desperate impulse flashed through my mind, to reach for the scalpel on the table behind him, bring it to his throat, and feel his flesh split open beneath it.
He caught my wrists, his grip firm enough to slow me without hurting, and held on while I fought against him, while I demanded the flower in a voice that did not sound like mine.
“Tell me why you want the flower, Camellia,” he said, still struggling to contain my flailing arms.
“You know why,” I heard myself say, the words foreign against my tongue. “It is mine and you did not listen! You did this to me!”
He swung me around, pressing my back against his chest, his arms wrapping around mine to pin them at my sides. His chest heaved against my back, his breath ragged against my hair. A tremor spread through his hands.
“The flower is the vine’s companion plant,” the words came out breathless as realization dawned over his features, so quiet I was not certain if he was speaking to me or simply acknowledging some information I was not privy to.
The voice moved through my mind, a slow, restless pacing—refusing to release me from the prison it had locked me away in, forcing me to watch from behind my own eyes while it wore my face and used my voice.
Dr. Ambrose turned me around to face him, his eyes searching mine. “The night Hawthorne destroyed thegreenhouse, you said you had seen my wife. How is that possible?”
“I showed her,” my companion replied, the words seething from my lips as they curved into a sinister smile. “I allowed her to see just enough of her memories to realize this is all your fault.”
His hands fell away.
He stepped back, one hand pressing over his mouth before dropping. He shook his head, brows furrowed as he searched my face—studying the set of my jaw, the cadence of my breathing, how I held myself in my own body—assessing all of it and finding something in the data that made his pupils widen and his color drain.
His gaze dropped to the ribbon around my throat.
