Page 100 of She Haunts Me Still

Raf tips his head. “When?”

“I don’t know, early. We had an entire conversation. She was upset, but we talked. I brought her a bunny, I—”

“Wait—” Raf’s eyebrows shoot up. His face twists in abhorrence. “The fuck, Mal? That wasyou?”

Mallory snaps her gaze to his. Next to her, Saskia goes still.

“Why…why would you say it like that?”

“Mal.” Raf’s nostrils flare. “Arden found adeadrabbitin her bed.”

Mallory’s breath thins. Impossible.Impossible.

“No—I didn’t do that.”

“Well, someone did!” Raf gestures with the rounded baseof his Discman. “Arden woke up screaming, nearly reopened all the stitches in her scalp. Doctors had to give her a sedative. Happened right as I was bringing her breakfast.” His eyes cloud over. “I’ve never seen anyone scared like that.”

Mallory shakes her head. Raf is saying words, but they don’t make sense, because there’s no way, no way she—

“No,” Mallory says again. “Raf. It was a stuffed bunny from the gift shop. It had a little bow around its neck, and if you squeezed its ear, it—”

An image of a warm rabbit in her lap flutters to life in her mind. Soft gray fur. Twitching black nose. Tiny, buzzing heartbeat. Bones like twigs. Her knees, cold and wet in the field behind the hospital lot. Two damp half-moons in her thigh highs, a rip that wasn’t there last night.

The way her fever subsided that morning at the hospital, as though she’d gotten a dose of medicine she didn’t remember receiving.

Mallory swallows a crescendo of bile. Raf stares at her.

“Oh god,” she works out. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Next to her, Saskia’s hand flattens on her back. “Mal? Did you…?”

“I don’t know,” Mallory whispers. She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to imagine her mouth coated with rabbit’s blood, but the image is fuzzy, blurring with Lily’s red-soaked cough. Was she so desperate for blood that she’d hunted for it and then blocked out the memory? Did that demonic beast laugh and laugh, watching her from afar?

Raf shakes his head. There’s pity in the gesture, resolution. “You need help, Mal.”

“Raf,” she pleads. “Youknowme. You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Arden. Not on purpose.”

His expression only looks sad when he says, “If she’s hurt, does it matter whether it was intentional?”

Raf doesn’t wait for her response. He stands, slipping his headphones back on, and continues up the stairwell. Mallory turns her terrified gaze to Saskia, finding her already staring.

“I didn’t do that,” Mallory whispers. “Did I?” She thinks of that deep growling voice, how it chuckled in her ear and promised to make her beg for death. The way she felt in the prop loft, drowning in Saskia’s scent and weighing the risk of sinking her teeth into her throat. How she was so outside herself she nearly did. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Saskia studies her. The breath she heaves is resolute. “Fine. Let’s talk to Ezra. Whatever’s happening to you…we need to fix it.”

But Mallory isn’t oblivious to the fact that Saskia is saying it like she’s trying to convince herself. Like she can sense every ounce of danger that might lie ahead. And as Mallory follows her out of the theater and into the evening autumn air, there’s nothing she can do about the fear rolling through her. Heavy as stone, rotten as a plague.

A plague,she can’t help but think,on both our houses.

27

The sun rises on the first day of Hell Week with quiet warning.

Hendrix’s threats echo in Mallory’s skull, every rehearsal looming like a tightrope act. One wrong slip, and an endless fall awaits. She’s not sure who she is if she doesn’t have theater, what it would be like to exist in her skin without it. She suspects it might feel like torture. Like death.

Mallory attempts to study before the cue-to-cue, and her focus siphons away faster and faster with every tick of the clock. She picks her cuticles raw while reviewing her notes for psychology, leaving behind red streaks on her graph paper. She sits with Jessica at lunch and pushes her salad around on her plate, unwittingly fantasizing about blood instead of dressing. Later, in the library, she stares out the window and wonders if she’ll ever feel human again.

She checks her messages constantly, texting Aunt Penelope as often as she can.CALL ME PLEASE.