MacDonald nods, and for a moment I think she’s going to let me leave. Only then she shifts forward, reaching across her desk to clutch my hand, squeezing hard enough that I flinch.
“I’m so sorry,” MacDonald tells me. “I know she’s your friend. What a year for you…No one should have to lose two…two…” She breaks off, tears welling in her eyes.
“I’m sure Clara’s fine, Housemistress.”
But we can both tell neither of us believes that’s true.
MacDonald sniffs and, producing a handkerchief from her jacket pocket, dabs at her nose. “Well,” she says. “You’ll let me know if you need any support. Won’t you? Perhaps…perhaps you should call your mother and have her come…”
“I’m quite all right,” I say as firmly as possible. “Thank you. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
I go upstairs to my room, and I find the letter I wrote in Ellis’s handwriting. I bring it downstairs and slide it under Clara’s pillow.
Wednesday the police show up with a subpoena to search Clara’s room.
Godwin House is a mess: crime scene technicians and officers, yellow tape bracketing off Clara’s door, strangers tramping through our sacred halls.
I don’t have to wonder what they make of us. I hear Liu and Ashby talking outside the front door as I lurk in the common room, doing my best to overhear.
“A thousand bucks says that girl’s dead by now,” Liu is telling Ashby. “We’ll find her body floating in the Hudson in a few days, bloated up and half-rotten.”
I think about where Clara’s body really is: buried six feet underground, pale and bloodless. Still preserved, perhaps, by the cold and snow.
“Think one of the housemates killed her?” Ashby says, and my breath freezes in my chest.
I can practically see Liu shaking her head. “What a weird lot. The outfits. The vocabulary. Did you see the way that one girl reacted when I asked what Clara did for fun? I might as well’ve asked if Clara liked torturing small puppies in her spare time.”
“Well, it is Dalloway,” Ashby says dryly. “You heard about this place? Apparently they’ve got some real secret-society-flavored shit going on. I’m talking like séance parties, Satan worship…”
No one worships Satan at Dalloway. No one even believes in any of the magic—no one except me.
I can’t listen to more of this. I slip away from the door, back up the stairs toward my room.
I only make it to the second floor.
Ellis stands on the landing, a slice of shadow in all black. She lifts an envelope in one hand and arches a brow. “We need to talk.”
* * *
—
Ellis leads me back into her bedroom, shutting the door behind us with a jab of her elbow. The air in the room feels alight with electricity, sparking and shivering between us like a lightning bolt that started a forest fire.
“What is this?”
She holds the letter aloft. My eyes glance off my own handwriting, which looks even less like Ellis’s from this angle.
She has positioned herself between me and the door—there’s no escape, short of hurling myself out the window, that doesn’t involve passing close enough for her to grasp my arm.
Ellis had promised she wouldn’t hurt me, not unless I forced her hand.
Only I just tried to frame her for Clara’s murder. Does this count as forcing her hand?
You can’t believe Ellis’s promises anymore, I tell myself.
“It’s a letter,” I answer, keeping my voice low in an effort to sound firm and controlled. “You started this game, Ellis. Don’t act like two can’t play.”
Even from here I can see the way Ellis’s shoulders rise and fall with swift, shallow motions. Her usual calm has been whittled away, revealing something brighter—something dangerous.
“I never put that letter in Clara’s room,” Ellis says, although I can’t think of any other reason why she would have found this one. “I told you I wouldn’t. I promised I wouldn’t try to frame you unless you made me. Why would you do this, Felicity? Why?” Her voice arcs upward in pitch, louder.
I glance toward the window, but the police cruisers are already pulling away from the house, descending the narrow lane toward campus proper. Everyone else is in class. There’s no one to overhear.
“You’re the reason I came to this school,” Ellis says all of a sudden, and my attention snaps back to her. I take a quick step away, toward the bed. “Did you know that? I read about you in an article on Alex’s death. I didn’t care about the Dalloway Five. I wanted to write about you.”