“I can’t let you do that.” All at once, Tommy is standing over me, clutching the sides of the coffin now, his bare knuckles white against the aging wood. He didn’t make a sound. He’s looking down on me with sad eyes but there’s something detached about them too. Like this is nothing personal. “I told you,” he sighs. “You shouldn’t have come. You were finally safe.”
“Safe?” My fury bubbles to the surface. I trusted him. Ikissedhim! “You killed Sara, attacked Tasha, Jess. That girl in the Underground?”
“I never harmed you, did I?”
“You’ve made my life a walking nightmare!” I seethe, reliving each and every moment of panic from the last six weeks in one fell swoop. “How dare you.” Tears are falling from my eyes now, splashing on to Meghan, smearing the dust on her face into thin grey rivulets. “How dare you do all this, and then tell me I’m safe.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice is dull again, void of life, of expression. “But I had to do it. You don’t understand.” He begins to arrange the tattered brown flowers that make up an ancient funeral wreath at the head of the coffin, plumping them up. I squint to get a better look and bile rises in the back of my throat when I realize what it is.
It’s hair. Human hair.
I lay Meghan down gently and stand on wobbly legs as the memorials scattered around the crypt sharpen into focus. Wreaths, long fern-like wings and small pieces of hair braided into jewellery decorate the floor around the central coffin. The coffin itself is lined with moth-eaten velvet, clearly once red but now faded to the colour of a soft, rosebud lip. Small, stoppered bottles litter the interior of the casket, their thick, green glass nestled in the folds of threadbare material. “What is all this?”
“Magic.” He almost smiles, as if this is funny. “Sorcery. Witchcraft, Mesmerism, Demonology. Call it what you like. But I told you, you won’t understand.”
“Then explain it to her.” Will’s voice comes from the doorway. I look at him, urging him to stay back, but he shakes his head at me, almost imperceptibly. “She might understand, if you explain.” He begins to inch inside and I see that he’s getting closer to Meghan.
Maybe this could work, after all.
“Well?” I try to look interested as my skin crawls and the moisture drains from my lips. Who knew this would be when my acting skills came in useful? I turn back to Tommy. “Explain,” I say. “Why have you been doing this? Why have you been stalking me?” My voice drops. “I could have loved you, you know.”
“I KNOW!” He roars, letting go of the wreath and smashing it to the floor in an explosion of anger, splinters of wood from the stand hurtling across the crypt. Will jumps in front of Meghan to protect her from the crash and pulls her limp body out of the way. Tommy throws another wreath and another and another, finally reaching for one of the small bottles. He snatches his hand back, as though the glass is hot and drops to the ground, his pale hands twisted in his hair. “I know,” he repeats, rocking back and forth. “But I had to do it, it’s the only way.” He crawls over to the bundle of bones discarded on the floor and lifts them up, ever so gently. They crunch and rasp together as he embraces them and I feel sick all over again.
“The only way to what?”
“To bring her back,” Will says. He takes a step towards the coffin, stepping around the strands of long-dead hair that now decorate it, like some kind of macabre party streamers. “You’ve been trying to bring her back all this time, haven’t you? You stole the grimoire and the tarot cards from the museum.”
“They were mine,” Tommy mutters weakly.
Will continues, ignoring him. “You were her secret love, weren’t you? The one she snuck down to meet the night she died.”
“Yes,” Tommy chokes out.
“Are you serious?” I look at Jane’s empty coffin and back down at the boy clutching her skeleton as though his own life depends on it. “But, how? I mean, you should be. . .”
“Dead?” He gives a flat laugh. “You’re right. Many, many times over. But love can do strange things to you. Throw in a bit of magic and a mother with the lineage of a witch and it’s amazing what you can achieve.”
I hear Meghan stirring behind me.
“Niamh?” Her weak voice manages. I try to mask her, filling the mausoleum with my voice.
“So you were lovers?” I inch around the coffin and move slowly to where he’s sitting. It’s a gruesome scene, seeing the object of my affection crying over a dead body, but if it keeps him busy, Will can get Meghan out of here.
“We were going to get married,” he tells me, stroking a finger across one hollow cheekbone, like he once did to me. Twice, I realize, remembering the caress when I was trapped in the library. A shudder travels down my spine as I crouch in front of him and try to keep him talking. “That’s why she was meeting me that night. We were going to run away together. Elope.” The ghost of a smile tickles his lips. “We were so happy. And then. . .”
“Then she had the accident.”
He nods, a sob escaping from his lips as his clutch on the body tightens. “She’d hidden some coins, some jewellery, things we could sell, behind one of the machines. She went to get them and somehow she turned on the mechanism and . . . and . . .” He picks up a clump of hair from the floor and tries to place it on her skull, but it just slides back down into the dust. “She got dragged in.” He stares down at the body, as though he’s shocked it’s there. “And she died.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” I try to sound sympathetic, but it’s hard when your fight or flight is screaming at you to get out. I take the chance to glance back at Will and see that he has a very wobbly Meghan up on her feet. My heart soars as he guides her through the doorway, and I quickly turn back and keep talking. “There was nothing you could do.”
“I tried, don’t you see?” He gestures around to the odd collections stuffed in little nooks around the mausoleum, bottles and wreaths and jars shoved haphazardly into crevices. “The book told me I could bring her back.”
“Who gave you the book?”
Tommy gently readjusts his bundle of bones and, still cradling it, moves towards the central wreath. My eyes are adjusting now and I see the hair is looped and swirled around a small, brown book. Little shapes that look like stars are carved into the cover.
“My mother.”
