Haunting Violet
Page 37

“He’s not my brother,” I snapped.
She didn’t say anything else as we rushed across the cropped grass. By the time we reached the pond, we were out of breath. And now that we were here, with the instruction book in my hand, I felt a little silly. “Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea.”
“It’s our only idea, Vi.”
“True.” I skimmed the pages one more time before tucking the book away again. I pushed my hair off my face. I shifted from foot to foot.
I felt like an idiot.
Elizabeth grinned. “Have you got fleas?”
I wrinkled my nose at her and stopped fidgeting. “Fine. Here we go.”
I rolled my neck back and forth to loosen the muscles.
“Vi.”
“All right,” I muttered. I tried to calm the blood rushing in my ears, tried not to remember the feel of ghostly eyes turned my way at the ball. Part of me hoped this wouldn’t work at all. I’d spent so long fighting to be nothing like my mother that the irony of having actual medium talents hardly sat well.
“Sp—” I had to stop and clear my throat. “Spirits, I invite you.” Elizabeth motioned for me to keep going when I hesitated again. “Rowena Wentworth, we call you to speak to us. Rowena!”
A breeze ruffled across the surface. The grasses billowed, tangling. The mud at the bottom loosened, thickening the water. The sun shone brightly over us, indifferent.
“Rowena!”
The pond went dark, as if it were full of storm clouds. The water was the color of hyacinth and lilac blossoms, the reflection of my face blurring and changing. The eyes I looked into were no longer my own, my violet-blue went brown as chestnuts, my dark hair unraveled from its knot, like daffodils around the pale throat.
Rowena floated peacefully in the pond.
“Rowena, why do you keep coming to me?”
She pointed to her throat. Her lips moved but no sound emerged. I’d heard all of those other ghostly voices, but I’d yet to hear hers, though I assumed it was the same as Tabitha’s, if less caustic.
“Can’t you speak?” I asked.
She shook her head. There were lilies in her hair again.
“Because you drowned? Or were strangled?”
A nod.
“And you won’t rest until your murderer is found?”
She nodded again. This was work for a constable or a private detective, not the two of us.
“Do you know who did this to you?”
Her face changed, turning angry and fierce. Clouds gathered, rushing toward us, like spilled ink. It was growing colder and colder. Elizabeth and I took a step closer to each other. My palms were damp.
Rowena rose so that she was drifting on her toes, leaving trails in the water. She turned once, her arms out as if she was dancing a waltz. She mimed a laugh, drinking from a teacup, fluttering her eyelashes, flirting. Then she pointed behind us to Rosefield Manor. I gaped at her, not liking where this was going. “Your murderer is at the party?”
She nodded. I was beginning to hate that nod.
We’d been waltzing and eating tea cakes with a murderer.
I shivered as the clouds released a spatter of cold rain and a burst of icy wind. “Was it Peter?” I asked. “Or Mr. Travis perhaps?”
She looked angrier still.
“Was it Mr. Travis?” I repeated. Ice pellets stung us through the unnatural wind. My heart stuttered. The rain fell harder, like little arrows. The water churned. We stumbled back, away from the edge.
“We should go back!” Elizabeth yelled over the sound of the storm. Rowena looked terrified. Her mouth opened on a silent shriek, her eyes like stars burning. There was a sound such as I’d never heard before. She appeared to be struggling, fighting, cursing.
And then she was gone.
We stood for a long moment, startled and quiet. Fear opened inside me like a dark, sticky mouth full of teeth as a new face formed under the pond. It was someone I didn’t recognize.
He reared up out of the water, coming straight at me. His expression was wild, hungry, savage. He wore the torn remnants of a frock coat, smeared with blood. His hair was pale and disheveled, his cheeks gaunt and sharp as knives. There was a gash on the side of his head and more blood in his hair.
The storm raged on around us, unappeased. The rain added weight to my gown as if lead had been sewn into the hem. The steel ribs of my corset iced. I could see right through him, could make out the grass and the pond and lightning on the hill behind him, and, even more distressing, I could feel him too. He was cold, colder than anything I’d ever felt, clutching and clawing at me.
I heard Elizabeth screaming, and still his voice was worse—icy and dark. “Revenge,” he murmured, almost as if he was singing a lullaby to himself. It lifted every hair on the back of my neck and along my arms; it was every bit as terrifying as his attempt to take me over. “Revenge, at long last.”
I batted him away but made no contact. I was starting to feel as if my veins were frozen rivers. My breath was a white cloud, drifting away. I was weak, dizzy, as if he was pulling me straight out of my body, as if he were either going to toss me out altogether or, worse, trap me inside while he took control. Already, my hand lifted of its own accord. And if he succeeded, I would be worse than dead. I knew this for a fact, even if I didn’t know how to stop of it.
“No!” I thought I screamed it, but it came out more like a gurgle. My eyes rolled back in my head. I swung my fists as if he had a corporeal body with eyes I could blacken, but I slipped on the wet grass and crashed into Elizabeth. We toppled to the ground. It was enough to dislodge the angry ghost.