Page 66 of She Haunts Me Still

A bouquet of black feathers is spilling spilling spilling from the bloody tear.

Feathers. Just like the one she coughed up on Juliet’s balcony.

Like ones belonging to a raven.

Her thoughts careen into silence. Thunder pounds at the walls, thrashing against the windows as two impossibly enormous wings bloom to life at Ezra’s spine, spanning the entire width of the dorm.

The blood drains from Mallory’s face. She sinks into the desk, curling in on herself, a new species of terror evolving in her belly.

Because Ezra suddenly has the menacing wingspan of something altogether inhuman, mythological. Like an oil painting she might find in a museum or etched in stained glass.

Like an angel of death.

The room darkens to midnight. His wings curl forward, sending an ice-bitten breeze against her face.

“Ezra,” she whispers, tears frozen on her cheeks. Sheraises both palms in a peaceful, pleading gesture. “Please…please don’t hurt me. It’sme.”

For a moment, neither of them says anything; the only sound is her stilted breathing and the barrage of rain at the window.

For a moment, everything is still.

But in the stretch of quiet, a sinking, bottomless dread takes hold. Ezra is going to kill her. This—thisis how she dies. Not with a blade through her ribs, her heart cut away from her body, but like this: her blood drained by a man she was kissing just moments ago.

Mallory closes her eyes, sending the room into tear-soaked black.

So she doesn’t have to look at Ezra’s empty stare when he lunges for her throat.

16

Mallory goes somewhere else when it happens.

Distantly, she’s aware of the white-hot pain at her neck, the warmth of Ezra’s mouth, the brush of his tongue as he draws her blood out and out and out.

But in her head, she’s lying in a pile of glittering snow beside Kiki, silhouettes turning into angels beneath a sable sky. A fire crackles nearby, punctuated by a wild horse’s whinny. Just ahead, a wooden dock with engraved flowers leads to the ice-dusted bay. The vacation she took with Kiki and her mother, the last one before Kiki vanished from her life like a dream.

Don’t forget me,Kiki whispers.

I could never,Mallory replies in her mind.

Kiki smiles, fat flakes decorating her gold curls.Maybe we’ll see each other again in heaven. Do you believe in heaven?

No,Mallory thinks now.Only a stretch between living and dying. A ghost realm.

She can feel herself slipping from consciousness, head lolling against the desk as Ezra drinks and drinks. His hungry swallows echo in her ear, but she tries to hold on to thememory of Kiki, the solace it brings. The last time she truly felt like she was home. Because home wasn’t ever the blue house. Home was her mother. Home was her first friend.

Home, she thinks, could have been Ezra, too.

A sob breaks loose from her chest. And at the sound, Ezra unlatches from her throat. A rush of cold air replaces his bite.

“Jules…?”

His voice. Hisnormalvoice.

“Hey—hey, look at me.”

But she can’t. Mallory buries her face against her knees and lets herself come undone.

“Jules, what’s wrong?” Ezra asks, his palms curling over her shoulders, her neck.