Page 79 of She Haunts Me Still

Mallory wasn’t sure how to answer that question then and still isn’t now.

Because she’s never belonged anywhere at all.

“Where thehellwere you?” Saskia hisses when Mallory joins her in the lobby. “I was seconds away from going back and wringing that Ken doll’s neck.” She searches Mallory’s wild gaze, frowning. “Are you okay?”

“Let’s just go,” Mallory says, grabbing her hand. “I got something.”

“I did, too.” Saskia hurries out to the sidewalk alongside her. “Wait, what didyouget?”

“I’ll explain in the car. What did you find?”

“Letters to the municipal government,” she says, tappingher bag. “All from Lily’s sister, demanding her grave remain intact.”

Mallory slams to a halt. “Rebecca?”

She nods. “They were unopened. Like someone intercepted them.”

Mallory’s skin prickles with cold. “Jacob.”

“The guy who led the exhumations?” Saskia frowns. “What was his deal?”

“That’s my question, too.” She tugs Saskia toward the parking garage. “Come on. I’ll tell you everything in a minute, I just want to get out of here.”

“Wait, wait.” Saskia pulls her arm to slow her down again. She studies Mallory’s face in the pale daylight. “Mal, are you sure you’re alright? You look…”

“What?” Mallory challenges as she remembers her cold sweat, the fever spreading throughout her body. “Bad?”

Saskia’s gaze flutters, attention snagging briefly on Mallory’s lips. Her voice softens. “You could never look bad.” She squints. “I was going to say ‘different.’ Like your eyes are darker or something. I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining it.”

Mallory swallows as she reaches for her favorite lie.

“I’m fine.”

As they keep walking, the wind bites at her ears. If she listens carefully enough, it almost sounds like that voice.

Lily Flower,it seems to purr.I’m so hungry. Aren’t you?

A few days ago, this voice would have sent a torrent of fear through her veins. But right now, that gnarled whisper reaches something determined inside her, curls it like frayed ribbon on a blade. And she finds herself thinking back—

I’m not your offering.I’m not your sacrifice.

I belong to no one but myself.

21

That night, after rehearsal, Mallory removes her makeup and tries not to think about how her smeared lipstick looks like blood.

She flings the used wipe in the trash, glancing at her watch. Saskia was summoned to the costume dungeon but said she could meet afterward so they could study the stolen documents. Mallory eyes her bag on the counter, filled with Rebecca’s letters, and silently pleads with the rest of the cast to leave.

“Do you want to get food with us?” Arden asks beside her, yanking bobby pins from her blonde curls. Farther down the makeup counter, Jessica mutters something about pizza, peering into the mirror as she tugs away false lashes.

Mallory desperately wishes she could say yes. She imagines herself surrounded by friends beneath dim restaurant lighting, inside jokes volleying between them. She’s not sure how to tell Arden or Jessica that there won’t be any late-night pizza runs for her, not while she’s careening faster and faster toward a death she has no idea how to prevent.

She also doesn’t know how to explain that the idea of pizza is turning her stomach, despite feeling ravenous. Likeher body would erupt in hives if she tried to take a single bite. Mallory forces a smile. “I think I’m just gonna go to bed.”

Once everyone leaves, Mallory snatches her bag, letting Rebecca’s letters fall into her lap. She went through them once on the drive back to Shore, reviewing Rebecca’s desperate pleas to the mayor, begging him to cancel the scheduled exhumation of Lily’s grave. But it had already been authorized by Lily’s husband, who’d permitted a councilman to perform the ceremony.

A councilman named Jacob.