Page 8 of Hex House
Haina grins at her, revealing a row of gleaming, slightly crooked teeth. That smile takes Elly by surprise, momentarily dazzling her. “You’re going to fit in so well here with us,” Haina says. “I can tell.”
It’s incredible, how those words make Elly feel as though she’s glowing from the inside out.You could belong here, she tells herself, slipping the new reality over her skin.This could be your home.
When she blinks, Ethan’s face is there: the spray of russet freckles across his nose, his full mouth and knowing eyes. She can almost feel his hand on her face, the softness of his skin and the cool grip of his fingers. When the back of her head connected with the stone wall it had felt, just for a second, like he’d erased her completely.
I thought I told you to stay.
She blinks him away again, but her mum replaces him, along with a stab of guilt. She wonders how she reacted when Ethan told her Elly was missing. Are they out combing the woods for her right now? Does her mum have nightmares of finding her bloated body in the river? What kind of a daughter does that to her mother? The cooling porridge in her bowl tastes like lead.
Haina never stays for the whole of breakfast, and so far, Elly has never seen her eat anything. She only sips a small cup of espresso and watches the other guests. Sometimes, she pulls them in close to her, like a mother comforting a child. She whispers in their ears; she raises pastries to their mouths and catches the crumbs. The room grows quieter as she stands and leaves, then resumes its low-level hum. Margot leans her head on Elly’s shoulder, sighing. She smells vaguely sweet, like cupcake icing.
“You’ll be one of us so soon, Little Mouse,” she says. “Isn’t that nice?”
One of us, Elly thinks absently. Is that what she wants? To be one of them? She looks around the table again. Some of the guests have already left the refectory for morning chores, but the room is still fairly full. On the other side of Margot, Iona is rebraiding Isla’s hair, singing a quiet song in an unfamiliar language. Her fingers are quick andpale as they work. Across the table, Janine’s gaze is fixed on the butterknife laid askew on the plate in front of her. Her eyes look far away as she runs a hand over her bald head, this way then that, agitating the bristles over and over. Lakshmi watches her carefully, and after a moment, squeezes her arm. Janine seems to break out of her trance and puts her hand on top of Lakshmi’s. “I went away again, didn’t I?” she says.
Margot has raised her head from Elly’s shoulder and is gnawing at the remaining scraps of meat on a pork rib. When she’s picked it clean, she dips it into a jar of honey, sucking the sticky liquid from the bone.
“How long have you been here, Margot?” Elly hears herself ask. She feels too light, unrooted, as if she no longer belongs to a body. Even her voice doesn’t sound like her own.
Margot’s eyebrows dip into a frown. She turns the sticky rib over in her hands. “I don’t know,” she says after a long moment. “A long time.”
“Don’t you want to go home?” No answer. “How long will you stay?”
At that, Margot smiles. Her one eye seems to twinkle. “As long as it takes.”
Before Elly can ask what that means, raised voices across the table draw her attention. Janine has started to cry, the sound like an engine trying and failing to start. Lakshmi is whispering to her, holding both of Janine’s arms down, keeping her hands in her lap.
“I need to, just for a minute,” Janine says in a rough, hiccupping voice, struggling against Lakshmi’s grip. Her cheeks have turned a ruddy purple.
Lakshmi shakes her head. “You know what Haina says,” she tells Janine. “No hexing at the table.”
Hexing?
Elly watches as Janine begins to calm, her eyes squeezing shut as her breathing slows.
“Well done, angel,” coos Lakshmi. “Don’t think about it. Just be here now, with me.”
Beside Elly, Margot has stopped sucking on her rib, leaving it pale and abandoned on her plate. She’s wrapped her thin arms around her torso. “Poor Janine,” she murmurs.
“What happened to her?” Elly asks. “What brought her here?”
Margot gives her a look so sharp it steals the breath from her throat. “We don’t ask about before, Little Mouse,” she says, voice low. A warning.
Elly doesn’t know what else to do but nod, but when Margot stands up to leave the breakfast table, Elly reaches out a hand to hold her wrist. Margot flinches, looks down at her in surprise.
“What is this place?” Elly whispers. Yesterday at breakfast, she’d barely been able to speak, let alone ask questions. Now, she can’t go another second without at least attempting to slot all the pieces together, to make sense of this fever dream. “I don’t understand it. I’m trying to… I just want to understand. Why are we here? WhatisHex House?”
At that, Margot’s expression melts, her frown becoming a smile. “Hex House is a refuge for the lost,” she says, louder than she needs to. Something about the words feel familiar, practised. She isn’t looking at Elly anymore, but around the room at the other guests, as though commanding an audience.
“A home for the wayward,” Iona calls back, making Elly jump.
“A sanctuary for the melancholy,” someone else says, and before Elly can figure out who, another woman has shouted, “An asylum for the mad!”
They all laugh, as if this is hilarious, as if this is a completely normal thing to say, and then on it goes, round and round, every guest taking their turn to contribute. There’s a singsong quality to their voices, each woman seeming to know her place in the chorus.
When it comes to Janine’s turn, her voice is quieter than the others, shakier, but there’s no mistaking her words. “Hex House is a home,” she whispers, and all the women fall silent.
***
