“Stop,” I interrupted. “I don’t want to know.”
He tilted his head, as if unable to fathom my aversion. “I only thought—”
I turned away from the plant, itching to free myself from this garden of death. The greenery—which had seemed so benign, so lovely, only moments before—now leaned toward us with malicious intent, as if plotting our demise with eager glee.
I fled past plants with pale, starry-shaped leaves and spiky blossoms as red as blisters, trees dangling trails of flowers so yellow they looked like vomit, a thick hedge that smelled strangely of almonds, tickling my nose with terrible persistence. My vision swam before me, spinning too light, too bright, and I felt my knees give way. My head struck the lavender-chipped tiles and the world went black.
Everything came screaming back in a riot of colors that burned too bright, leaving trails of glowing comets dancing across my corneas.
“Verity? Verity!” Gerard said, leaning over to shake me. Points of light shot out from his face; his eyes burned like sizzling embers. He looked radiant. He looked like a god.
My head throbbed, every beat of my heart pulsing too strong, sending erratic reverberations echoing through my limbs.
A sudden swing of movement seemed to suggest I’d sat up, but when I stared ahead, all I saw were panes of the greenhouse windows. They twirled like a prismatic kaleidoscope, iridescently hued and bursting with wonder.
“Verity,” a voice called out, teasing and flippant.
I turned to see my sisters, my six dead sisters, there in the greenhouse.
Ava’s skin still erupted in plague pustules. Octavia’s limbs splayed out in angles so wrong I felt as though I might grow sick. Elizabeth’s wrists dripped bathwater and blood onto the ground below, wetting the dry earth like a warm summer rain.
“You’re not here,” I muttered, and my tongue felt too thick and sluggish, a sausage casing stuffed too full and on the verge of splitting. “You’re not here because you’re dead.”
“Verity,” the voice said again.
Gerard.
I think.
I blinked, struggling to keep my eyes on my sisters. They wanted to turn, wanted to roll back, back into my head, back into the welcoming embrace of oblivion, back into the bleak, black nothing.
“Verity…”
My eyes snapped open. Snapped toward the voice.
Only it wasn’t Gerard who’d been speaking.
Her skin was pale and ashen. Long streaks of black hair showered down her shoulders, wafting in a breeze that I absolutely knew wasn’t in the greenhouse. She smiled, revealing sharpened gray teeth, and her eyes…
I whimpered, pushing myself backward, trying to get away from them but they pinned me in place, a butterfly staked through its middle to a mounting board. Deep pools of black stared down at me, mesmerizing and hypnotic. There was no white, no iris. Just oily, writhing black.
“Verity…，” she said, drawing my name out like we were playing a game, caught in the middle of a dance. She blinked and the black—the awful, horrible black—came rolling down her cheeks, staining her face with streaks of malevolence.
“What an odd expression on your face,” she mused, tilting her head with playfulness that read as strained and strange and utterly wrong. “It’s as though you’re surprised to see me.”
“I…I…” My head felt heavy, listing to one side as I struggled to speak.
“You look like a fish out of water, dear heart. Though”—she paused, looking around the greenhouse—“I suppose you rather are.”
“Who…who are you?”
The black eyes flashed, their luster as cold as snakeskin. “Don’t you remember? We’re old friends, you and I.”
“We’re not.” I fought to push myself up, even as white, threadlike roots inexplicably grew out of my arms, splitting open my skin, burrowing deep into the soil, and securing me in place. Vines from nearby trees crept in to wrap themselves around my ankles, spiraling up my legs, digging into my flesh as I squirmed from their groping grasp. Creeping green things burst from my chest, blooming into nightmarish flowers that snapped and bit at me. “I don’t know you.”
“Of course you do. I know you…I know them…，” she said, glancing back to my sisters.
Eulalie, her head hanging low against her chest, collarbones shattered, vertebrae crushed, raised her hand and offered us both a little wave. “Verity,” she said, sounding sadder than I could ever remember hearing her.
My mind struggled against the thought, bucking like a horse gone mad.
I couldn’t remember hearing her.
Not Eulalie.
Could I?
“Verity,” the black-eyed woman crooned. “I need you to listen to me, girl. I need you to hear me well.”
I blinked and she was gone, off me and across the greenhouse, in the trees, hanging down from branches miles away.
“Can you hear me?” she mouthed, and I did hear her, her voice directly in my ear, in my mind, thrumming through my bloodstream, squirming and sick.
Weakly, I nodded.
“Good,” she said, and in an instant, she was back, her weight pressing me farther into the earth. “You need to leave this place.” She leaned forward, digging her pointed elbows into my neck and cutting off my breath. “Do you understand me? Leave Chauntilalie.”
Dark stars spun over my eyes and I felt as though I were gasping for air even though my mouth was heavy and full.
“Do you hear me, Verity?” the wraith asked, but I couldn’t respond.
Peat and loam coated my mouth. I was suffocating on soil.
“Verity?” Her face was so close to mine, too close. Her eyes swam large, growing bigger and bigger until all I saw was the endless stretch of their inky depths.
“Verity!”
A swift hand came out of the terrifying void and slapped me hard across the cheek.
I sat up, gasping, wincing at a world gone too bright.
Gerard sat beside me on a wicker lounging chair. We were outdoors, in the garden. I could feel the fresh air against my face. The woman—the monster—was nowhere to be seen. My sisters were gone, leaving only an echo of Eulalie’s forlorn voice in my mind.
“Oh thank Arina,” Gerard praised, out of breath as though he’d just sprinted a marathon.
Someone out of sight pressed a glass into my hands and Gerard helped me tip it back, letting the cold water flow down my throat, bringing back a rush of clarity.
“What…what happened?”
“The laurel hedge,” he stated, as if it explained it all. “I’d pruned it this morning. I didn’t even think—” He stopped, berating himself with a string of curses beneath his breath. “It was so foolish of me.”
“I don’t…I don’t understand.”
“The sap of a laurel tree contains a powerful poison… When you prune the branches, you must take great care not to breathe in the fumes… I’d had the doors open to air everything out. I certainly didn’t think it would linger so long, or that you’d be so affected. I’ve been working in the greenhouse all morning without seeing a thing.”
“Seeing.” I licked my lips. “What is it I’m meant to have seen?”