Page 52 of She Haunts Me Still

“There you are,” he says, closing the door. “I was worried when you didn’t show up.”

Mallory settles against the counter. A fresh wave of anger washes over her. “Were you now.”

Ezra frowns at her detached tone. “What’s wrong?”

“Good question.” Mallory leans back on her hands. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

He peels off his coat, drops it onto a chair. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Fine.” Mallory swings her legs down, standing. “I’ll spell it out for you. Were you ever going to tell me that your father built this school?”

Something shifts in Ezra’s expression. “How…did you find that out?”

Mallory huffs an incredulous laugh. “You’re not even going to apologize for lying?”

“I didn’t exactlylie,” Ezra says, but she doesn’t miss the way he starts rolling up the sleeves of his black sweater. As if the accusations are making him uncomfortably warm. “I just didn’t…tell you everything.”

“A lie by omission is still a lie,” Mallory says. “I went to the library with Saskia. We looked up old Shore records. It wasright there.”

“Saskia?” Ezra arches a brow. “Are you two friends now?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Saskia isn’t someone you can trust.”

“Oh, andyouare?” she snaps. “Tell me something: Did you know about the cemetery under the hedge maze? The exhumations during the vampire panic in the eighteen hundreds? Everything that happened to Lily’s grave?”

His gaze softens. “I did.”

At that, Mallory explodes.

“What thefuck,Ezra?” She curls her fingers into her palms. “You’ve been using me as a supernatural science experiment for weeks, and all this time—youknew? I’ve been trying to piece together what happened to Lily and what ithas to do with my mom, with thisplace,and you’ve been keeping it a secret that your father’s companybuilt a freaking garden over Lily’s grave? You kept talking about figuring out what Lily wants, when you had all these details,knewwho she was and what happened to her from the start. How could you say you didn’t know? How could you nottellme?”

“I didn’t—” Ezra’s jaw tightens. “I didn’t want you to find out this way.”

Her anger deflates, peppered with sudden apprehension. “Find out what?”

“You,” he says. “You’re my ticket out of here.”

She blinks. “What are you talking about?”

“My father, he—” Ezra drags a hand through his hair. “He’s not just the CEO of a real estate company, okay? He’s a philosopher, of sorts. An occult historian. And, for lack of a better term, a wannabe necromancer. He’s been studying Shore’s connection to vampire hysteria for as long as I can remember. He believes the spirits of the people whose graves were exhumed have lingered here, which is why, year after year, people are convinced the campus is haunted. So, he’s been trying to track down the living descendants of those who died, to archive this corner of the past before it’s fully lost, and”—Ezra pauses, looking at her almost apologetically—“make contact with the spirits that remain. If he can find evidence that there’s supernatural activity at Shore, he wants to go public with it. He thinks it will immortalize him: The Man Who Proved Ghosts Are Real. Not to mention the money I’m sure he would make.” Ezra rolls his eyes. “He’s part of a historical preservation society that’s focused on all of this. They meet once a month in the chapel to conduct séances. Something about a holy place allows foreasier contact. And…” He pauses again. “And I’m part of it, too.”

Mallory scrambles to make sense of what he’s saying. A historical society? Séances in the chapel?

“My father told me—” Ezra clenches his teeth. “He asked me to bring you to the historical society’s annual gala—it’s the same day as opening night. He said if I didn’t obey, he’d cut me off financially.” He drags a palm over his jaw. “Fuck.”

Mallory stares at him. “Ezra,” she says, “whyme?”

His expression only looks pained.

“Come on, Jules,” he whispers. “You know why.”

She sorts through everything, turning his words over and over—and her heart sinks as it clicks.

Living descendants of those who died.

Mallory’s gaze falters, but there’s no hiding from the truth. She thinks of Saskia’s terror in the hedge maze, the way she called her Lily with such conviction.You know you look just like her, right?The documents they found today, granting Lily’s daughter admission to Shore College.