Emméline’s steps beat out against the dirt like the steady ticks of a clock. My new body fought against cold and hunger, but hers had recently been in a warm bed, and she probably had breakfast in her belly, meat. All that sat in my belly was dry oat bread and fear.
I pushed my numb legs, stamping out an unruly pattern as I swerved from one side of the road to the other. Pain ricocheted through my insides, burning, tearing. My bones bent underneath me and I fell, skidding to the side of the road. In the space of a breath, I was me again. Human and naked. Fragile and exposed. Emméline ran toward me, closing the gap my animal advantage had given me. The big house stood indifferent at the top of the hill. If I got there first, I could try and lock myself inside. I rolled to my feet and ran.
As I breached the drive, I pulled in a burning breath and took a precious second to look behind me. Emméline tore up the hill, dress flapping around her legs.
“It’s you!” she screamed. “You!”
The gate to the garden jutted out from the side of the house at a haphazard angle. I pushed on the cold iron and forced it over the flagstones. Then I pulled the gate closed behind me and melted into the shadows.
The winter roses had closed in on themselves, sheltering their petals in the night. The garden blushed with their frost-tipped scent. The deep green leaves pillowed the red flowers and the bulk of the bushes cast shadows on the gravel path. I couldn’t walk there—it would be too loud. I balanced my steps on the little strip of wood outlining the path instead and followed it to the lonely bench set under the weeping tree. A crackle of gravel under heavy boots almost made me fall.
I strained my ears, listening to every breath of the wind and rustle of a mouse. She was in here with me.
I jumped the expanse of the path and landed in the dirt of a flowerbed. Suddenly aware of my height, I dropped into a crouch and crawled deeper into the bed on my hands and knees, branches grabbing at my back. Two rosebushes branched out from their roots and mingled their leaves and flowers, leaving a little space between their lower branches. Another crack of gravel. She didn’t even care if I heard her.
I pushed desperately through the rough branches of the rosebushes, but my body wouldn’t fit. I gripped two branches from the other side and pulled until my hips scraped against the wood and I tumbled into the tiny space. Thorns caught in my hair and tore my skin when I tried to slip free. I hoped they’d protect me as they protected the roses.
“You’re in here, aren’t you, Marie?” she called.
My whole body tensed and I held my breath—as if even that would betray me. I was like a rabbit, trapped, with nothing to do but wait for the wolf’s yellow eyes to shine in my direction.
“You don’t want more people to die, do you, Marie?”
I hated the way my name sounded in her mouth, too sweet. Sweat ran down my forehead and froze in the bite of winter air. I pressed my hands into the dirt again and peered through the leaves. Emméline’s legs moved ever closer. If she found me here, I wouldn’t be able to get free. I had to move now.
The space between the bushes looked even smaller from the inside, so I rolled out from under the other side in a tangle of leaves and branches pulling at my hair. But when I turned onto my stomach, a twig snapped under me.
“Got you.”
I stood now, while sweat dripped down my spine and turned cold on my legs. Fear pressed in on me, making it hard to breathe, but Emméline already knew where I was and I’d be faster on my feet. I pumped my legs again and took off down a dark path hugging the side of the house. There was a door here I’d never seen before. I could only hope it wasn’t locked.
Emméline approached behind me. She took her time now, assured in her victory. Like an animal closing in on easy prey.
But that was her mistake. I wasn’t prey.
With a turn of a cold brass knob, I swung open the small wooden door and tumbled into a dark room. On the other side, I slid the bolt in place and fell to my knees. Musty air ripped my raw throat, but I couldn’t stop gulping it in. I wiped the cold sweat from my upper lip and forehead on the back of my hand. I was safe for a moment and I’d take it. My heart slowly steadied as I closed my eyes and leaned against the solid door separating Emméline and me.
After a few steadying breaths, I looked around. I’d never seen this room before. It looked like some sort of antechamber. Empty wood-paneled walls surrounded me and I stood on quivering legs. A door set into one wall was slightly ajar. Candlelight flickered in whatever room it led to. I hoped there would be clothing inside.
I pushed open the door. Tall, slim white candles stood like sentinels from the many sconces lining the room. A long, rectangular wooden altar took up most of the space. The body of a woman was laid out on it, her hands folded neatly over her heart. Heaps of dried roses, cut from their stems, surrounded her, so no wood of the altar showed through. Her blue dress clung to the curves of her body. Her features were so familiar, mirroring those of a face I had gazed at so many times but without the deep blush that so often bloomed in his cheeks. Her skin looked as though it would be hard to the touch.
On a chair in the corner of the room, Sebastian stared at me, the spell book in his hands, my own shock reflected in his eyes.
I covered myself as best I could, not sure which emotion to give in to—embarrassment or fear. Sebastian stood and swept his cloak from the chair beside him in one smooth movement. He draped it over my shoulders while keeping his eyes on the ceiling. I pulled it tight around me.
“Marie,” he whispered, and I flinched. Any sound in this strange room was too loud. This eerie place should be utterly silent.
I shook my head and tried again to make sense of what I saw. Now that I had something covering me, my mind was clearer. This was Sebastian’s dead mother, I was sure of it, but she’d been gone for a year. How was it her skin hadn’t fallen away from her bones? Why did Sebastian keep her here like a morbid ornament?
“What is this?”
He cupped his hands, the long fingers coming together. “You’ll understand when I explain.”
“No, I don’t think I will.”
“Marie . . .” he tried again, but I turned away from him, back to the living corpse of his mother.
“You said the beast killed your parents.”
I’d thought they’d been Ama’s first kill. I’d felt guilty about it—knowing my sister had caused Sebastian such sadness. Even though his mother was the one to curse Ama in the first place, I’d actually felt sorry for the woman’s son.
“The beast did kill them.”
I gestured to the woman on the altar. “Not very thoroughly.”
Sebastian sighed. “Papa was torn to bits and Maman was left barely breathing. I brought her back here.”
“But that was a year ago! What is she now?”
Every one of my instincts wanted to get away from this woman. Nothing about this was right.
Sebastian closed his eyes and ran his fingers along his brow.
“It’s not so simple, Marie.”
“Your mother was here the whole time and you let me run around the forest searching for someone with an answer . . . a cure!”
“There’s more than one witch in this valley, Marie.”
“But it wasn’t Aurélie. She wasn’t the one who cursed Ama.”
Sebastian shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“It was your mother!”
He stood very still and wouldn’t meet my eyes. My knees gave way and I slid down the wall behind me to sit on my haunches. Too much had happened since last night and I couldn’t let it all in. If I did, it would tear me apart. Ama, the curse, me. The memory of how that body felt, how I moved inside it, wasn’t far away.
Finally, Sebastian said, “If she did, she was trying to protect us.”
“Did you know about the spell book the whole time?”
“No, I swear. I didn’t know what it was or what it could do,” he said.
Did I believe him? I wasn’t sure. He could be lying.
My heart shattered into pieces. Sebastian’s betrayal, the endlessness of the lies, rolled over me like waves on a lake. I couldn’t get my bearings, couldn’t breathe. It was easiest to slip into anger. Anger was mine to control. I could spit it at him like venom. Sebastian couldn’t hurt me if I hated him.
“What happened last night? Did the plan work? Did the killer try to attack you?”
“Yes.”
His single-word answer pricked my nerves. We were past games now.
“So, who was it? Emméline? Did she try to attack you?”
“It was the beast . . . Ama. I’m so sorry, Marie. It looked just like her and there was no one else around. Emméline wasn’t there.”
My mouth worked but nothing came out because I couldn’t give the shattering of my heart the proper language. Pieces lodged themselves in my insides until pain wracked my whole body. My knees gave out, unwilling to hold my weight anymore, and I slid further down the wall, out of Sebastian’s circle of light, back into the darkness.
Ama. I’d been so worried, but I hadn’t ever really wanted to believe it. I’d worked so hard to make sure she wouldn’t fall to the nature of the beast. I’d sacrificed my soul to save hers—marking people like I was some kind of angel of death. And she’d thrown it all away. She’d let the beast win.
“Marie.”
Sebastian’s voice drifted to me as if through the waters of a rushing river. Ama and I used to bathe in the little stream in the woods behind our cottage. We’d play we were sea monsters and mermaids, dipping our heads under the shallow water and opening our eyes to a strange blurred world we didn’t belong to. This felt like that. I couldn’t belong to a world where Ama was a monster.