“Yes, sir. Your ward. She arrived just this morning, with the letter you wrote her?”
“Ah, that ward.” Pulling free from the wall, Elijah closed the rest of the space between himself and Signa, who stood as tall as she could, chest so tight she thought she might burst.
“Hello, sir.” Her voice was meeker than she meant it to be, weaker than even etiquette demanded. So she tried a little louder. “I appreciate your hospitality.”
Elijah grimaced and squinted his eyes shut, pressing a palm to his temple. “Quiet, girl. Are you trying to wake the dead?”
She stuttered, hardly having a response for such a ridiculous question. “O-on the contrary, sir, I quite prefer them asleep.”
Elijah drew yet another step closer so that he could peer down at Signa. The moment he did, he fell back with a hiss of breath. “My God. Your eyes.”
Signa flinched and pressed a hand to her cheek, just below the golden eye. It was a typical enough reaction—she was used to the surprise. But Elijah didn’t seem surprised; he seemed almost afraid.
“I can cover them if they bother you, sir,” she said, readying to turn and search for a cloth of some sort. Anything to wrap around her eyes. But before she could retreat into her room to find one, Elijah seized hold of her wrist.
“Are you here to show me my sins, child? Are you my past, here to haunt me? A ghost, to remind me of what I’ve done?” His words were breathless. At once, Signa remembered the portrait in the hall and understood that the woman featured on it was Lillian. But what about the spirit that had been calling her to that room? The one who had followed her. Had that been Lillian, too?
Behind Elijah, Marjorie’s shoulders sank. “Let the girl go, Elijah. She’s no ghost. She merely shares your wife’s blood.”
His face turned colder then, each line sharp as glass. Slowly, he released his grip on her. He took another moment to assess Signa, taking in her hair—so much darker than Lillian’s golden curls—and her skin, so much sallower. “Forgive me,” he said, though his tone far from begged forgiveness. “It’s possible I’ve had too much to drink. For a moment, I thought perhaps you were someone I once knew. But if it’s true you’re my ward, then I suppose it’s my duty to chastise you for being up at such an unreasonable hour.”
The lump in her throat was impossible to swallow. Somehow, Signa spoke around it. “I had some difficulty sleeping. I wanted to make sure Blythe was…” Healthy? Alive? “Safe, for the night.”
Elijah’s mouth tightened. “You’ve met my daughter?” This seemed to surprise Marjorie as well. The woman’s eyes creased at the corners.
“Only briefly, sir. I heard coughing, and I went in to check on her.”
“So it was you that got her help, then.”
Though it was perhaps not the most honest thing to do, Signa nodded, leaving out the part that Blythe’s coughing attack was because of her.
“Then be sure to do it again, should you hear anything.” Elijah would no longer look at her. “Now get to bed, child. We’re approaching an hour made only for ghosts.”
Signa shivered. “Yes, sir.”
He again braced himself along the wall as he departed, and the firm look Marjorie shot her told Signa that she should do the same. She turned the knob to her suite and disappeared into it. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the memory of Elijah grabbing hold of her or his reaction to her eyes that Signa’s thoughts lingered on as she crossed the plush rug of the sitting room and moved into the bedroom. It was the words he’d last spoken: “an hour made only for ghosts.”
She took a seat on the edge of her four-poster bed. Her travel chest sat beside it, still sealed tight. After having her belongings shut away for so long, she wanted nothing more than to unpack the chest. But try as she might, Signa couldn’t convince herself to so much as crack it open. After tonight, she had no doubts that her time at Thorn Grove would be cut short. If there was one constant that Signa could count on, it was that no matter where she was, Death would find her. She didn’t know how or why, or whether this was all an elaborate game meant to drag out her torture while he watched and laughed and enjoyed the show.
She would find out, though. And, even if it was the last thing she ever did, she would stop him.
It was late into the witching hour when Signa roused to the sound of crying and the rustle of maple leaves blowing in through a window. She didn’t remember leaving it open, yet open it hung, carrying in the scent of rain and damp soil.
Signa pried herself from the warmth of the bed to peer out into the night. When minutes passed and the crying had not returned, she drew the window shut and made her way back to bed. Yet she noticed from the corners of her eyes as she passed her vanity that the reflection in the mirror remained still. Neck prickling, she paused to examine the mirror, hoping the image was a trick of the light. But when her reflection stared back at her, its edges fuzzy and a smile that Signa wasn’t wearing curling at her lips, she knew this was no trick.
Signa smothered a scream as she threw herself from the vanity, where a burst of white light escaped and fled through the bottom of the door. She knew at once it was the spirit from earlier, and this time there was no denying that she’d seen it.
Signa didn’t bother with a coat or her boots, wasting no time as she threw open her door and chased the light down the hall. Now that the spirit had confirmed it could be seen, Signa had no choice but to confront it. If she didn’t, who knew if the beastly thing would ever leave her alone.
Thorn Grove didn’t so much as creak from the weight of her steps as she hurried down the staircase, and the hinges were silent as she swung the front door open into the cold night. At once she threw her arms around herself, for her flimsy white nightgown did nothing to stop the pervading chill from creeping into her skin.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” Step-by-step, she forced her numb feet toward the cries that ate their way up her skin, gnawing at her bones. The louder the crying became, the more the world beneath Signa withered. The moss along a maple tree dried to a dark brown while fallen leaves wilted and scattered in a sudden wind. It was as though the very earth were warning her of what lay ahead, and that she should turn back. Yet Signa didn’t stop moving until she saw the source of the sound.
A woman with translucent skin and soft white hair that trailed behind her like the embodiment of wind itself sat beneath the bend of a tree, wearing a dress silver as the low-hanging moon. The spirit’s cries ceased as Signa approached, head snapping up to look at her. Signa’s footsteps faltered along the dead bramble as the spirit’s eyes crawled over her body, assessing. She tried not to show that fear was clawing at her, urging her to run.
The spirit glided forward without warning—without a sound—and when Signa tried to fall back, dead roots ruptured from the ground and snaked around her ankles to hold her tight. She fell flat on her back, shivering and cursing her luck as the spirit hovered over her.
The spirit was beautiful, with smooth skin and pale hair that fell in loose waves. But the longer Signa looked at her, the grayer the spirit became, with bluish-black lips and fingernails to match. Yet it was her eyes that Signa couldn’t turn away from—one blue, and one hazel. Two different colors, like hers. Like the woman from the portrait Signa had seen earlier that day.