Page 103 of She Haunts Me Still

She hands the knife to Saskia, who shakes her head and closes Mallory’s fingers around the handle.

“This one’s yours,” she says.

Mallory holds her stare for a moment, before pressing a soft kiss to her mouth. Saskia doesn’t want to be here, but she’s trusting her anyway. Letting Mallory take her hand and lead her somewhere in the dark.

Gathering her courage, Mallory kneels in front of the arched door and tugs a bobby pin from her hair. She thinks back to Penelope’s house, how the bathroom lock would sometimes stick, and her aunt showed her how to force it open with a hairpin and screwdriver. Mallory bends the bobby pin, inserting it into the keyhole before sliding the blade below, creating tension between the objects. Trying to find the old door’s weak spot. The bitter autumn midnight bites at her cheeks; in the distance, an owl screeches in the sable sky.

Her focus snags on something just overhead, perched right above Ezra’s door.

A stone raven. One she didn’t notice until now.

Of course, a raven statue would be tucked away here, at Thorne Hall. The building that was once a bridge between life and death.

Mallory wiggles the blade harder. And this time, the door clicks.

For a moment, they stand motionless in the blackened dorm, the only sound their nervous breathing. Beneath the glooming shadows, Mallory can almost pretend it’s the first night she visited Ezra’s room. Can nearly conjure the shape of him in the doorway, the way he fixed his green eyes on hers and invited her inside.

In the end, it’s Saskia who flips on the lamp, Saskia who screams first.

Because Mallory can only stare and stare and stare.

28

For a moment, Mallory can’t process what she’s looking at. Can’t absorb the images that sway in front of her eyes, inconceivable and cruel. Three out of four walls are covered—floor to ceiling—in heavy black ink. Swirls and jagged lines, harsh angles and hooks. Arranged in patterns, almost like sentences.

The symbols in the ritual book in her vision, the one used during Lily’s exhumation.

Drawn, in fury, on Ezra’s walls.

And on the fourth wall, one word in English.

Her name, over and over. Just like on the planchette—

JULES JULES JULES JULES JULES JULES JULES

“Mal.” Saskia snatches her hand. “What the fuck?”

“No,” Mallory wrenches out. Denial grips her, fierce and swift. “Hedidn’t do this; he wouldn’t have—”

But then, her gaze slides to the floor, and her breath catches again.

Black candles line the wooden floorboards, some tippedover, others upright. Ash is scattered everywhere, soot clawing at Mallory’s boots. And all around the candles, a fat white circle sketched in chalk. Just like the one Ezra drew for her night after night.

Only this one is fuller, more opaque. As though Ezra pressed so hard the chalk snapped in two. Mallory kneels, peering beneath the bed. The circle continues all the way to the other side of the wall, looming and menacing.

“What is that?” Saskia whispers beside her.

“It’s a chalk circle, he—”

“No.” Saskia gestures farther beneath Ezra’s bed. “That.”

A rush of air barrels from Mallory’s lungs as she sees what, exactly, Saskia is pointing at.

Something round and metal, approximately a foot long, peppered with black divots and holes.

A drain. From when Ezra’s room was a morgue? But—

“Why would a morgue need a drain?” Mallory asks, and Saskia grimaces.