Page 170 of Nightshade

Had she seen the room with all the portraits, she’d have probably had a stroke. “He thinks I’m someone that I’m not.”

“The woman. From his dreams.”

“I guess. Don’t get me wrong, she sounds amazing, but I’m a college student from Chicago. The most impressive thing I’ve done is raise a cat and three plants without killing them.”

“Obsessions are dangerous, and men are not to be trusted, Miss Ravenshaw. Their affection is fleeting, at best.”

“You were married before?”

Her brow flickered, gaze diverting from mine. “Well, I was … I’m sure of it. But I … it’s strange. I vaguely remember.” Her expression sharpened once more as she rolled her shoulders back. “Which is my point. They don’t stay long.”

“You can’t remember him, at all?”

“No, I can’t--” Frowning, she stared off for a moment, as if deep in thought.

“Do you … remember Aurelia?”

“Aurelia? Oh, are you still angry about that? I told you, miss, there was no Aurelia.”

“As I understand, Aurelia was your daughter.”

“I never had a daughter.” Again, as before, she seemed thoughtful, concentrating.

The book.

The picture of Aurelia.

I dashed for the book still tucked beneath my pillow and opened it to the picture of Aurelia at the beginning, pointing to her for Anya.

She tipped her nose up and squinted as she stared down at the image. Her face seemed to ashen, her eyes brimming with a look of shock. “Oh, my,” she said in a worried tone.

“Do you remember now?”

Her eyes shined with tears that she blinked away. She stepped past me and sat down on the edge of the bed, her hands gathered in her lap. Fidgeting. Anya never fidgeted. “She had gotten pregnant and refused to marry the man. We would’ve been ruined. I demanded she take savin and pennyroyal. We tightened the girdle on her dresses. It effectively terminated the pregnancy.”

My thoughts drifted back to the dream I’d had where Anya and the others ravaged Aurelia. Perhaps some morbid echo of past events.

Lips pressed to a hard line, she lowered her gaze. “Had I known I’d lose her, I would’ve kept the baby.” Wearing a look of distress, she stared past me, brows flickering as more memories must’ve come to light. “We sent her away to the convent afterward, and as I understand, she had gotten tangled up with yet another man. A priest, of all things. Once again, she was pregnant. Not long after, I received word that she and another had hung themselves in the bell tower there.”

“She didn’t hang herself. She was murdered.” The words haphazardly spilled from my mouth, and I sat slack-jawed for a moment. Where had I learned that? How would I have possibly known such a thing?

Thoroughly disturbed, I flipped the pages for the dogeared one, where I’d left off. Skimming through the text, I frowned, then thumbed back through chapters I’d read.

“Are you looking for something?” she asked beside me.

“I know … I read it somewhere. I could’ve sworn.”

“Read it?”

Ignoring her, I reached the beginning of the book, then skipped forward, retracing the pages I’d already thumbed through, then past the dog-eared page, to the next chapter. The next. Beyond what I had read.

It was in chapter thirty-nine that I found what I was looking for. When Lustina had found Aurelia and Marie hanging from the bell yoke. The bell tower scene.

I’d never gotten to that part of the book. Yet, I remembered it vividly in my head. The deathly shade of their skin. The clang of the bell as Maria’s cross struck its surface. As if I’d seen it with my own eyes.

A disturbing sensation crept over me. The dream. The nuns who’d been buried in the wall.

Echoes.