But they were all looking for Theta Knight, Follies star. What if she didn’t look anything like that? After all, what good was being an actress if you couldn’t play a character? Quickly, Theta went to Henry’s closet, riffling through his clothes till she found what she was after. She slipped into a pair of his trousers and one of his pullover sweaters. Last, she snugged a hat down low on her head so she’d look less like prey. Less like a girl.
“Thanks for the loaner, Hen,” she said to the empty room.
Out on the rain-slicked streets, Theta shoved her hands in her pockets, hunched her shoulders forward, and adjusted her gait. She slipped right past the hungry gossip jackals yawning in their parked cars with their cameras resting beside thermoses of coffee. They barely even glanced her way, and for a minute, she let herself enjoy the ease of that. It was like having a pocket full of money to spend any way she liked. Right now she could do things she never could as Theta, like walk confidently down a nighttime street, alone and unbothered. What freedom in that. Theta crossed the bumpy street and headed into the sheltering park to think.
There was a sharpness to this time of day, just before the city woke up and lurched into its frantic pace. Like the world was holding its breath. It helped her make a plan: She’d go meet her blackmailer and, hopefully, talk her way out of this mess. She’d pretend she didn’t know what they were talking about. Betty Sue Who? You must have me mistaken for someone else; I’m Theta Knight. I only came because I was curious! Honestly, I figured it was a prank played by one of my pals. Yes. She’d talk—and act—her way out of it. She could do that. Theta Knight could do that.
Theta breathed in the early-morning air. The earthen footpath welcomed her. A couple of thin squirrels skittered across the grass, no doubt in search of whatever acorns they’d buried months before. She imagined that they welcomed her, too. She came to the old wooden bridge that spanned the lake. The bridge welcomed her. This was her park, her town. The lake, littered with new petals, welcomed her. The air welcomed her. The sky welcomed her.
The ghost welcomed her.
There it was, at the base of the bridge, a see-through figure in an old-fashioned suit; he was like the tail of a departing dream. Theta’s breath caught in her throat. Carefully, she stepped backward. The bridge’s old boards creaked. The ghost turned to her, and then, quick as a finger snap, it was right in front of her!
Theta cried out. She turned and ran across the bridge, back through the park. But at the curve of the path, the ghost was there, waiting for her. Theta skidded to a stop. Panicked, she whirled around to run back toward the bridge.
“Wait …” the ghost commanded. And then, very softly: “Please.”
Slowly, Theta turned. She recognized the spirit. Dark, wavy hair. Graying beard and mustache. It was Reginald Bennington.
“Wh-what do you w-want?” Theta asked, trembling.
“Go … back. She needs”—the ghost of Mr. Bennington took a shuddering breath—“you.”
“Who needs me?”
“The guardian of the Bennington. The old witch.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“In … the basement.” Already, Mr. Bennington was wearing thin at the edges, an erasure.
“Please. Please leave me alone.”
“She is in … grave danger. Help her. Help …” Mr. Bennington said, his voice lingering for a few seconds on the wind, though he had gone.
In the dark of the Bennington basement, Adelaide Proctor worked quickly. There was no time to waste. Her hands, bent by arthritis, were not as nimble as they once were. It was harder to wield the knife, but she managed a cut, hissing as the blood pooled in her palm. She let the cut drip into the bowl. Next she mixed in her herbs. She wrinkled her nose. There was a smell, sickly sweet. Not the herbs. More like a rotted bouquet left in stagnant water. Her weak heart thundered in her chest. She started her incantation, a spell for protection from evil. The smell grew stronger. Addie could not finish her spell for gagging. The lights cut out suddenly, plunging the basement into darkness. In the dark was a voice she had not heard in many years.
“Adelaide …”
A cry clawed at Addie’s throat, but she didn’t dare utter it. Still. Remain perfectly still. Whatever you do, don’t look. Shafts of street light shone through the high basement windows. Behind her lay the elevator doors. Could she make it in time? And if she did, how long before salvation rattled down to her?
Addie gripped the knife in her shaking hand. “What a friend we have in Je … sus …” she sang in a voice fading to a whisper, her mouth too dry to furnish more sound as she moved carefully in the dark, sprinkling salt behind her as she did. He was somewhere in the room with her. “All our sins and griefs to bear …”
The elevator. She was close. Blood trickled down her arm and stained the fine lace cuffs of her nightgown. The salt stung in the wound. She’d made it to the elevator. With a shaking hand, she pressed the button and watched the golden arrow slowly ticking off the floors. Four. Three.
“Oh, please, please!” she whispered. Blood whooshed in Addie’s ears. She was faint with fear. She would not turn around. “Wh-what a f-f-friend …”
The elevator had stopped at one.
“Adelaide …”
Miss Addie gasped. She tried to keep singing. “Our s-sins and g-griefs to bear …”
“You’ve freed me at last.”
She pushed the button over and over.
“And now I’ve come for you, as I promised I would.”
Through the frayed gray curtain of her hair, Addie stole a glance over her shoulder.
Elijah.
Once, he had been the handsomest boy she’d ever known, with hair that turned buttery gold in summer. The thing shuffling toward her had the mummified skin of the grave. It peeled back from his mouth; his yellowed teeth appeared monstrous. Two maggots wriggled from his ears and fell to the basement floor with sickening plops. That once-lustrous hair was nothing more than brittle straw sticking out in clumps. She could smell rot on his breath as he crept closer.
“You made me.”
Adelaide Proctor backed against the wall. “No,” she whispered. Elijah’s feet scraped across the floor.
“Did you forget your promise, my love?”
His voice was cruel, taunting. Not at all as she had remembered.
“Every debt shall be paid now, for the King of Crows brings us through at last. Soon this world will belong to him. And you and I, Adelaide, will be together, forever and always….”
“No!” Addie screamed, frantic as a child.
The elevator doors opened. With a great cry, Adelaide Proctor fell against Theta. “Go, quickly! Oh, please! Don’t let him get me!”
“Who?” Theta asked, her eyes searching the empty basement. “Miss Addie, there’s nothing there.”
Miss Addie lifted her head from Theta’s side. The lights had come back up. Her dead lover was nowhere to be seen.
But I saw him. He came back.
As the doors slowly closed, Adelaide spied a frayed break in the salt circle mere inches from where she’d stood moments earlier. Something had fallen there: the blackened petals of dead daisies.
A gift to her from Elijah.