Elegy made her first mortal friends at the exceedingly gerontological age of twelve.
It was not that she had never seen children before. After a great deal of begging, Mrs. Griswold had been granted permission from Thaddeus to bring her grandchildren around to Thorne Hall some six years before, but only the one time on account of one of them getting stuck in the dumbwaiter. That in and of itself wasn’t so very terrible—Elegy herself had hidden there several times during games of hide-and-seek with Reed and Adelaide. Rather, she suspected the unfortunate boy had caught a glimpse of something he was not meant to, lurking in the basement. He’d been white as a sheet and trembling when they’d pulled him out, so it must’ve been Cook or possibly even Bernard. Had it been Amos, he would have been catatonic.
Or possibly missing his face.
That fateful afternoon in her thirteenth year was already the happiest day of her life. Her father had decided to remarry—and the woman in question who was to become her new mother was as fascinating a person as Elegy had ever met.
A car accident had left Fletcher an orphan at the terribly tender age of five, and instead of taking her in as any loving aunt might, her mother’s sister had used the meager fortune meant to fund her care on a dismal boarding school upstate that she claimed “built character” but that also contributed to a ranging addiction to all manner of vices.
Once she was free of the wretched place, Fletcher attended Sarah Lawrence on scholarship, majoring in women’s studies and French, as one does, and spent several years traveling the world until a chance invitation to spend a summer in the Berkshires with a friend from school led to her attendance at one of the parties Thaddeus had been forced to throw in order to find a suitable replacement for Tabitha.
She was the loudest woman Thorne Hall had ever seen, a terrible mistress for such a house, but she’d fallen in love with it, with the promise of so many salons and the fascinating people who would flock to it and to her, and the intoxication of her excitement spilled over until it surrounded Thaddeus as well. He was handsome if somewhat severe in his appearance, and well read, which she thought was important even if she didn’t actually care. That he was the same age as her father, and therefore scandalous, only enticed her further, and two months after they’d been introduced, the ten-carat Thorne emerald adorned Fletcher’s finger just as it had Tabitha’s.
Even if Fletcher weren’t so very striking with her square face, thick brows, and heavy-lidded brown eyes, or so very fashionable, even if she weren’t enviably well read and in possession of such forceful opinions, it would not have mattered, for were Elegy’s new mother to conceive a child, and particularly if that child happened to be a boy, Thaddeus would surely name him his heir.
Even though Elegy would never be permitted to leave Lenox, perhaps she could leave Thorne Hall; she could leave the Spirit Collection.
It was a ghastly of her to wish such a cruel fate on another, particularly her own flesh and blood, and years later when she was no longer a terrified, foolish child, she would sicken herself with the memory that she ever had. But in those hopeful days, it had been her dearest wish, the one she’d whispered to herself at night as she lay burrowed beneath the covers while skeletal fingers scratched at her door, begging to be let inside.
After the ceremony that bound her father and his new bride together as husband and wife, Elegy tucked herself into a corner of Thorne Hall’s foyer as Thaddeus’s guests streamed inside, tossing their furs in Fowler’s general direction and seizing coupes of champagne in hands garishly adorned for the occasion.
The lace collar of Elegy’s drop-waist mauve satin dress itched terribly, and her stomach growled in protest of the porridge she’d hardly touched that morning out of excitement, but when the bulk of a particularly odious man shifted suddenly and Elegy caught sight of golden curls and sullen eyes heavily lined in burgundy, all discomfort was promptly forgotten. Here, in Elegy’s own foyer, amid the splendor of the Berkshires’ oldest families in their finest attire, was a girl in a short black skirt and fishnet stockings that disappeared into combat boots laced to her knees. Elegy could do nothing but stare, because she’d never seen anything quite so wonderful as a living child her own age.
The golden-haired vision caught sight of her then and clomped her way across the foyer until she reached Elegy’s hiding place. “Are you Elegy Thorne?”
Dumbstruck, Elegy could only nod.
“I knew you existed. Ranjit owes me twenty bucks.”
“My existence was in doubt?”
The girl regarded her as though she were very stupid indeed. “Well, yeah. No one has ever seen you.”
“Plenty of people have seen me.”
“You didn’t go to school with us,” the girl pointed out. “Or attend any of the other parties before this one.”
“My father would not permit me.”
“We all thought maybe he kept you in the basement,” she went on. “Or an attic. Or that he murdered you. Theories abound.”
“Well, that’s quite extreme.”
The girl shrugged. “He seems like an extreme kind of guy. Anyway, my name’s Floss.”
“That’s an odd name,” Elegy answered, then grimaced at her stupidity. She really was as terrible at this as she had feared she would be. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”
Floss shrugged, unbothered. “Barbara swears I was conceived in Florence.”
They exchanged a smile, and Elegy thought Floss was the most wonderful person she’d ever met despite her vulgar mouth. Or maybe because of it. Elegy couldn’t decide, and she also didn’t care.
At the far side of the great hall, Fletcher threw back her head and laughed, a garish, barking sound full of rust and white teeth, and Floss sighed. “Your stepmother is so cool.”
Pride flared to life in Elegy’s chest at the idea that Floss should envy her of anything.
“She is.”
“Did you know she came with Thaddeus for dinner at Holcroft last month?”
Of course Elegy did. She’d watched from between the slats of the second-floor railing as her father helped Fletcher into a sumptuous silk evening coat trimmed with mink and guided her into the crisp winter night and allowed herself a rare moment of bitterness. She’d shed no tears, of course, but the little half-moon gouges in her palms did not fade for weeks, because that was the first night her father had left her alone with the Collection.
“She’s so clever,” Floss continued, tossing her mane of golden curls. “She had everyone in stitches over her stories from Europe. And she actually noticed I exist, which is more than I can say for fucking Barbara.”
“Who is Barbara?”
“My mom. Anyway, I want to be just like Fletcher when I get older. Do I look like her a little bit?”
Floss swept her hair up in her hand, piling it atop her head, and tilted her head this way and that as they both watched Fletcher across the room, where two men who were most definitely not Elegy’s father were falling all over themselves to fill her champagne coupe. The Thorne emerald caught the light as she gestured wildly with her hands, and the men around her laughed at whatever terribly witty thing it was she’d said.
Elegy did not have to look to her father to know his face was pinched in disapproval.
“This place is way bigger than Holcroft,” Floss continued, her heavily lined eyes rising with the staircase to the second, then the third floor, lingering on the ornate ceiling above. “How many rooms does it have?”
Elegy shrugged, because she wasn’t sure if Floss meant main bedrooms or servants’ quarters, bathrooms or parlors, for Thorne Hall had quite a few of each, though most were never used and, without a full staff, the rest were left to gather decades of dust and cobwebs. She finally settled with, “A lot.”
“Which one is yours?”
“It’s on the second floor,” Elegy answered.
“Show me.”
Elegy hesitated. She’d never had another living soul her age to show about her room before, and she was desperate to find favor with this peculiar, spectacular girl; however, there was the minor inconvenience of Adelaide, whom she’d left sulking in the corridor when the first crunch of gravel beneath the porte cochere heralded the arrival of Thaddeus’s guests.
It was still relatively early in the evening, not yet dark. She should be able to keep Adelaide under some semblance of control were she still lurking about, but perhaps they shouldn’t stay in her bedroom for so very long.
Elegy nodded. “Okay, come on.”
When Floss’s fingers threaded through her own, Elegy experienced an unfamiliar yet wonderful sense of warmth that spread throughout her entire being; a broad grin split her face, and together they danced up the staircase, Floss giggling and Elegy shushing her until they at last reached her bedroom and she pushed the door open.
The window seat was occupied by a dark-skinned boy with a face full of freckles and a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips. He was a lanky thing with a head of tight copper curls and a large-boned face he would, with luck, grow into. His suit was the deepest purple and, in Elegy’s humble opinion, clashed horribly with the mustard shirt with its pattern of white flowers he’d paired it with, and yet, somehow, he made it seem the height of fashion. It was the way he sprawled his legs, Elegy reasoned, so wide and sure, nothing like her, who spent half of her time crouched in preparation to flee at the mere suggestion of a spirit gone willful.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” Elegy informed him, once she’d overcome her shock at seeing a boy in her bedroom, however unthreatening. She dared not raise her voice lest Adelaide, wherever she might be—or worse, the playfully mischievous Reed—come investigate the commotion.
“You’re in here,” the boy pointed out.
She bristled because, honestly, how dare he. “This is my father’s house.”
“But not your house.”
“Fuck you, Hugo.” Floss pushed past Elegy and snatched the cigarette out of the boy’s laughing mouth. She took a long drag and handed it back to him. “It’ll be her house someday.”
He scowled at the lipstick she’d left behind but stuck the cigarette back in his mouth anyway, sucking deep before exhaling a cloud of noxious smoke. Then, to Elegy’s absolute horror, he smashed the stub against the window casing and left it there to smolder. “My name’s Hugo,” he told her. “Hugo Prescott.”
She tore her gaze away from the smudge of black and took his proffered hand. “Elegy Thorne.”
“Elegy,” he repeated. “Appropriate, given, well …”
“Well, what?”
“Shove over,” Floss ordered Hugo, and he drew his knees up so that she could squeeze onto the window seat. From the depths of her bag, she drew a silver flask and unscrewed the cap.
“He means the ghosts.”
Elegy froze. Whispers that Thorne Hall had once been haunted were unavoidable. But, considering that there was not a single square foot of land in the Berkshires that was not said to be haunted, it was hardly cause for alarm.
Schooling her features, Elegy inquired, “Who told you there were ghosts here?”
“I overheard my parents talking about it.” Floss drank deeply from the flask, dragged the back of one hand across her mouth, and passed it to Hugo. “So, is it true?”
Elegy’s eyes fell to her lap, where her small white hands twisted in the same way her stomach did.
“Come on,” Hugo wheedled. “You can tell us. We won’t say a word to anyone else—we swear, don’t we, Floss?”
The girl in question nodded earnestly, and Elegy felt her stomach roil further still. She wanted them to know; she wanted someone else to know so very badly, but what on earth would Thaddeus say were he ever to find out? She’d only just met them. Who was to say they could be trusted with a secret as enormous, or as dreadful, as this one?
In the end, her desire for living friends won out. “I’m afraid it’s true: Thorne Hall is quite haunted.”
“Fuck me,” Hugo said, shaking his head as though he were in a trance. “Seriously?”
“She’s just said yes, hasn’t she?” Floss rolled her eyes.
“What are they, then?” Hugo continued. “Would your hand go right through them if you tried to touch them? Have you tried to touch them?”
Elegy worried her bottom lip. “I can’t really talk about them.”
“We’re not going to tell your dad,” Floss offered. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Here,” Hugo said, and passed her the flask. “Go on—it’ll help.”
Elegy’s eyes watered at the acrid smell of the liquor, and she fought the urge to pinch her nose closed as she tipped the flask back and swallowed deep. Heat bloomed in her throat and bravery poured into her belly.
“There are fifteen of them,” she said. “The first one was collected in 1902, and the rest over the decade that followed, bound to our name and bloodline.”
“How old are they?” Hugo pressed. “When did they all die? What do they look like?”
Elegy’s head spun with the whiskey and the barrage of questions she’d never been asked and never thought she’d answer. “They died at many different times,” she replied. “The oldest death was Gideon’s—we cannot be certain of the exact date, but he was hanged sometime in the 1780s. The most recent was Reed—he died just before the turn of the twentieth century. He’s the youngest—just five years old. Vivian is the oldest, and the rest are in between.”
“And they’ve lived here all this time?”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it living.”
Floss took the flask from Hugo and, after shuddering through an enormous swallow, asked, “Why don’t you just lock the doors and burn the place to the ground? No offense—it’s a nice place and all—but why would anyone want to live with ghosts?”
“We all live with ghosts,” answered Elegy. “And anyway, they cannot be banished. Not ever.”
“Why not?”
“The man who built this house, Jasper Thorne, he expressly forbade it.”
Hugo snorted. “And you care? Did he live hundreds of years ago?”
“He died in 1934,” she replied. “And we Thornes take such things very seriously.”
“You could leave,” suggested Floss. “Surely they can’t follow.”
“Some of us do leave,” Elegy hedged. “But not the master and his heir—never too far, never for long, and never at once. Someone must always stay behind to manage them.”
“Why? What would happen if you didn’t?”
Elegy shuddered. “We cannot possibly imagine.”
“Do they just wander around the house as they please?” Hugo asked. “Will one wander in here?”
“Of course not,” Elegy chided. “Do you see the runes around my door? They keep the Collection from entering places they shouldn’t; otherwise they would, and often.”
Thaddeus himself had drawn the symbols above her nursery door until she was old enough to move into the Ivy Room, which had been her mother’s favorite, and on that day, he brought a medium to the house to teach her because he simply could not be bothered.
Elegy remembered little of the medium save that he was kind and patient with so young a student and was possessed of a calming voice. She thought of him sometimes while her fingers, dipped in white, traveled the now-familiar symbols he’d taught her. How had he come to know them? And did this mean that there were other houses like hers containing ghosts from which one must guard oneself? She recollected him as a young man at the time, in his midthirties, perhaps, but no older. He’d taught the runes to Tabitha when she became Mrs. Thorne, and Elegy six years later, but he could not possibly have taught Thaddeus, for he was far too young; so who had?
There was a knock at her door, and the three of them started in shock—and in guilt, for Hugo was smoking another cigarette and Floss had just polished off the rest of the whiskey.
“Shit!” Hugo panicked and, furiously opening the window, tossed the cigarette into the night while Floss hid the empty flask behind a pillow.
It was Mrs. Griswold come to tell them that their supper was ready in the great room.
They were not permitted at their age to dine with the adults, but they were entirely unbothered by the fact. A platter of sandwiches and fruit was presented, and they lounged in the velvet armchairs before the fire, cursing and giggling and stuffing their ravenous faces, alcohol thrumming through their veins and the discovery of one another an even more tantalizing high.
The grandfather clock tucked away in a corner beneath the staircase chimed the lateness of the hour, and Hugo lifted his gleaming eyes. “This is when they’re about, yeah? The ghosts?”
“They’re always about,” Elegy answered. “By day, if you don’t know about them, you won’t see them. They’ll be like a bit of shadow out of the corner of your eye, or the fluttering of a curtain. But at night, they become something else entirely.”
“Explain,” Hugo demanded, but how could she?
How could she put into words the way the house changed the moment night fell, how it exhaled fetid air that stirred cobwebs that had not been there only moments before, how wallpaper peeled and rot bloomed and floorboards creaked and groaned, traversed by the feet of the dead and worn into familiar patterns of anguish?
“By day, they exist alongside us, hidden and harmless. Some of them are even friendly. But at night, the house is theirs, and it is we who are the trespassers.”
“Come on, then,” Hugo said. “Let’s trespass.”
Well, wasn’t she the fool? She should have realized this was what they’d wanted all along, and she could not pretend it did not sting somewhat, yet she could hardly blame them. Floss and Hugo might be in the agonizing throes of puberty and taking full advantage of their parents’ wealth and indifference, but they were, in this desperate curiosity, still children. The idea of the impossible, the deliciously forbidden, lit their eyes with insatiable desperation, and Elegy was compelled to satisfy it despite the danger. And danger there was if she was not careful.
Elegy’s eyes darted to the corridor. The dining room beyond had gone silent; Thaddeus and his guests had long since finished their lavish supper and were likely in the ballroom, where there would be dancing and gambling and drinking until the early hours of the morning. The blazing lights of the chandeliers and her father’s impeccable control would keep the more dangerous sort of spirits away from his guests, and the rest he would manage from afar.
If she were to choose one of the more docile spirits, Thaddeus would likely never know, even if her new friends were to run from the manor screaming into the night.
But who to choose?
Children were possessed of loose lips, and these two in particular seemed to pride themselves on being indiscreet. Elegy could not risk that their idle chatter might reach Thaddeus’s ears, and so she ruled out The Mourning, despite her being conveniently nearby, tucked as she usually was at the corner of the staircase just before the gallery. One should never make the mistake of falling asleep before the hearth in the great room after dark lest they wake to the spirit’s spindly fingers wrapped about their neck, if they woke at all.
They might make it unseen to the basement by way of the servants’ staircase, but Elegy could not very well expose Floss and Hugo to Amos. Her new friends were more likely to stay friends with their faces intact, after all.
Hester was the best choice but would disapprove of Elegy telling anyone about the Collection without her father’s permission. Cook was sweet and decidedly less judgmental, but Lucy and Mrs. Griswold were in the second kitchen that night and she was likely to be more agitated than usual.
In the end, Elegy selected Calliope. She never spoke, only sang, and while it was true that half her face was caved in, she was no more ghastly by night than many of the others, whose teeth were sharper, their skin decayed and their sunken eyes ringed in rot. Some of their noses had even begun withering away, revealing the odd upside-down heart of the bones beneath.
Elegy led Floss and Hugo up the staircase in silence, bypassing the second floor and climbing to the ruins of the third, where Calliope could usually be found in the Honeysuckle Room. She liked the window seat there, overlooking the grove, and spent her days and nights singing softly for hours upon end until Elegy would put a record on, for she was helplessly drawn to music of any sort.
“Watch your step,” Elegy whispered over her shoulder. The third floor had suffered most acutely the ravages of time, and if they were not careful, one of them was likely to lodge their foot somewhere rather unfortunate.
Outside the Honeysuckle Room, Elegy bid her friends to wait and pressed her ear to the door. Sure enough, she heard the spirit’s sweet rasp of a voice singing one of the Child ballads of which she was so fond.
Be still, Elegy bid her. Be sweet and be still.
The singing stopped as her command settled over the spirit. Elegy took a deep breath and opened the door.
Floss and Hugo followed, blessedly silent, their wide eyes taking in the tattered room with its peeling floral wallpaper and sagging canopy bed, opulence left to putrefaction, for no visitors had come to Thorne Hall and stayed the night since Jasper’s day.
The ghost sitting upon the window seat wore white, and always would; it was her wedding dress.
“Oh fuck,” Hugo breathed at Elegy’s back. “Is that one of them?”
“Yes,” Elegy answered, her voice low and soothing, for even though Calliope was ordinarily docile, she’d never brought anyone around her before. “She died at the end of the eighteenth century.”
Floss began a whispered mantra of “Oh god, oh god, oh god,” and gripped Elegy’s upper arms tightly, peering over her shoulders even though she was much taller. And why wouldn’t she? She’d just been told that the woman a few feet away from them was dead and had been so for a very long time.
Calliope’s song trailed off and her head tilted in their direction, her once-golden hair hiding her countenance.
“Good evening, Calliope,” Elegy said. “You’ve no need to be frightened. I’ve brought to friends for you to meet.”
Calliope rose from the window seat, and as she slowly turned, the moonlight streaming through the window illuminated the ruination her husband had wrought on their wedding night when she’d grown afraid and refused to submit. Barefoot and still clad in her wedding gown, she’d fled from his drunken molestation down the staircase, or at least she’d tried; his fingers had wrapped round her wrist, and the resulting struggle had left her in a heap at the foot of the staircase. To her new husband’s chagrin, the fall had not killed her. If it had, there would be no one to speak of his actions that night, of the way he’d manhandled her, of the way he’d caused her to fall in the first place. And so he’d wrapped her beautiful hair around his wrist and bashed her face into the bottom stair until she stilled and slumped into the widening puddle of her blood.
Elegy realized at that moment that Calliope’s appearance was, in fact, extremely disturbing; she’d grown so used to it that she’d thought only of her demeanor when choosing her.
Hugo and Floss, however, spared no time to acquaint themselves with the spirit’s gentle disposition.
Screaming like a pair of proper banshees, they bolted from the Honeysuckle Room and exploded into the corridor in a tangle of limbs, propelled by terror absolute. Elegy dashed after them, begging them to stop, to wait—please, wait! Stop!
She followed them down the stairs to the second floor, and all the while they ignored her desperate pleas.
It had all gone horribly wrong, and she’d no idea how to make it right, particularly with them barreling toward the front door as they were. There was no way to stop them. She could not very well set Bernard upon them or The Mourning; that would only make matters worse. And so Elegy followed them out into the sharp, bright cold of the early-spring night, begging all the while for them to stop, to wait, to please not tell their parents or hers.
At last, some forty feet past the drive and into the grove, they stopped. Keeled over with their hands braced upon their knees, they sucked in great lungfuls of air while Elegy stood a respectable distance away and waited for them to regain their composure.
Hugo recovered first, lifting his head to regard her with round, horrified eyes. “Holy shit, that was a fucking ghost. That was a fucking dead woman, holy shit!”
“To be fair, you did ask to see one,” Elegy pointed out delicately.
“Yeah,” he exhaled, the heel of his hand pressed against his forehead. “I didn’t actually expect them to be, you know—real.”
Elegy’s brows pulled forward in a frown. “So you thought I was lying?”
“No! No, I believed you—”
“But you didn’t really.”
“Not until I saw it, no,” he answered honestly. “I mean, I kind of did? But this is also a creepy house and you’re a creepy girl, so it could’ve gone either way, really.”
“Shut the fuck up, Hugo,” Floss groaned. “What he’s trying to say is that it’s one thing to say it and another to see it.”
Hugo threw up his hands. “She’s missing half her face!”
“Well, Amos is missing all his face, so it could have been worse,” Elegy pointed out.
“We could have been killed!”
“Honestly,” Elegy sighed. “You’re terribly dramatic. I told you, the Collection are bound to the Thorne bloodline, and to the manor—they obey the master and his heir in all things.”
“And the heir—that’s you,” said Floss.
Elegy nodded. “Calliope is perfectly harmless, but if she had wanted to harm you, I would have prevented her.”
They did not appear convinced, their wary eyes darting between Elegy’s pale face and the house. She swallowed over the fear in her throat, the loss she stood to suffer should she remain unable to convince them to stay, to trust her. She’d only just found them, and now the Collection would steal them from her, just as they’d stolen everything else.
“Please,” she said, and her voice wavered and broke, but she felt no shame, for the thought of losing them was a far worse thing. “Please don’t leave. I swear my father and I will protect you from them—it will be as though they’re not there at all. It’s just that I’ve never had friends before. Not any my own age or …”
“Alive?” supplied Hugo helpfully.
Elegy grimaced. “I suppose so, yes.”
They’d a silent conversation between them whilst Elegy stood and shivered and wished she could read minds until, a decision having been made, they turned back to her as one. She sucked in her breath.
“So, do you think your cook could whip up a few more sandwiches?” Floss asked. “Being scared out of one’s mind does tend to work up an appetite.”
Elegy exhaled upon a grin, and as the three of them trudged back toward the warmth of the manor and the promise of sweets pilfered from the kitchen, Hugo took Elegy’s arm, threaded it through his own, and asked, “So, do they fuck?”
“What?”
“The ghosts,” he sighed, as though it were exceedingly obvious. “Do they fuck?”
Floss groaned. “Hugo, you absolute twat.”
“Oh, come off it—you’re as curious as I am.”
Curious or not, Elegy would have to disappoint them both, for the truth was she did not know.
It had always seemed impolite to ask.