Belladonna

FORTUNATELY, SIGNA FARROW KILLED NO ONE THAT NIGHT.

After hours of people floating in and out of Blythe’s room, things were beginning to settle. Signa watched through the crack in her bedroom door, surprised to find that her room was just down the hall from Blythe’s—either the spirits or her own paranoia must have been toying with her earlier to make her lose her way.

Now when Signa peered into the hall, only a handful of silhouettes lingered in the candlelight outside Blythe’s door. She squinted to see if Death was among them, relieved to find him absent. There was, however, someone else there that Signa was increasingly curious to meet—Elijah Hawthorne. His back was turned to Signa, but she could see more of him than she’d been able to earlier. He was exceedingly tall and alarmingly thin, with blond hair brighter than anyone’s. Brighter than even starlight, perhaps.

Signa drew a long step past her doorway to get a better look, and the moment her foot pressed down upon the floorboards, they creaked so loudly that Elijah and the servants fell silent and turned to find the source of the sound. Signa couldn’t move. Could hardly even breathe as their eyes snapped to her. All it took was four long steps from Elijah, and she could finally see his face clearly.

It was a stern face. A tired one that was without so much as a hint of the exuberance she’d witnessed earlier. It was hard to believe this was even the same man.

“Who is this?” His voice was hard as he spoke to the servants, just a hint of a slur lingering at its edges. Then he turned to Signa. “Who are you?”

It was Marjorie who responded, emerging from behind Mr. Hawthorne and taking a firm hold of his shoulder. “This is Signa Farrow, your new ward.” There was something familiar in the way Marjorie touched him. Something comfortable. Something, Signa noticed, that was entirely out of place between a governess and her employer.

“My ward?” Elijah braced his swaying body against a wall while Marjorie heaved a sigh. The look she cast Signa was purely apologetic.

“Yes, sir. Your ward. She arrived just this morning, with the letter you wrote her?”

“Ah, that ward.” Pulling free from the wall, Elijah closed the rest of the space between himself and Signa, who stood as tall as she could, chest so tight she thought she might burst.

“Hello, sir.” Her voice was meeker than she meant it to be, weaker than even etiquette demanded. So she tried a little louder. “I appreciate your hospitality.”

Elijah grimaced and squinted his eyes shut, pressing a palm to his temple. “Quiet, girl. Are you trying to wake the dead?”

She stuttered, hardly having a response for such a ridiculous question. “O-on the contrary, sir, I quite prefer them asleep.”

Elijah drew yet another step closer so that he could peer down at Signa. The moment he did, he fell back with a hiss of breath. “My God. Your eyes.”

Signa flinched and pressed a hand to her cheek, just below the golden eye. It was a typical enough reaction—she was used to the surprise. But Elijah didn’t seem surprised; he seemed almost afraid.

“I can cover them if they bother you, sir,” she said, readying to turn and search for a cloth of some sort. Anything to wrap around her eyes. But before she could retreat into her room to find one, Elijah seized hold of her wrist.

“Are you here to show me my sins, child? Are you my past, here to haunt me? A ghost, to remind me of what I’ve done?” His words were breathless. At once, Signa remembered the portrait in the hall and understood that the woman featured on it was Lillian. But what about the spirit that had been calling her to that room? The one who had followed her. Had that been Lillian, too?

Behind Elijah, Marjorie’s shoulders sank. “Let the girl go, Elijah. She’s no ghost. She merely shares your wife’s blood.”

His face turned colder then, each line sharp as glass. Slowly, he released his grip on her. He took another moment to assess Signa, taking in her hair—so much darker than Lillian’s golden curls—and her skin, so much sallower. “Forgive me,” he said, though his tone far from begged forgiveness. “It’s possible I’ve had too much to drink. For a moment, I thought perhaps you were someone I once knew. But if it’s true you’re my ward, then I suppose it’s my duty to chastise you for being up at such an unreasonable hour.”

The lump in her throat was impossible to swallow. Somehow, Signa spoke around it. “I had some difficulty sleeping. I wanted to make sure Blythe was…” Healthy? Alive? “Safe, for the night.”

Elijah’s mouth tightened. “You’ve met my daughter?” This seemed to surprise Marjorie as well. The woman’s eyes creased at the corners.

“Only briefly, sir. I heard coughing, and I went in to check on her.”

“So it was you that got her help, then.”

Though it was perhaps not the most honest thing to do, Signa nodded, leaving out the part that Blythe’s coughing attack was because of her.

“Then be sure to do it again, should you hear anything.” Elijah would no longer look at her. “Now get to bed, child. We’re approaching an hour made only for ghosts.”

Signa shivered. “Yes, sir.”

He again braced himself along the wall as he departed, and the firm look Marjorie shot her told Signa that she should do the same. She turned the knob to her suite and disappeared into it. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the memory of Elijah grabbing hold of her or his reaction to her eyes that Signa’s thoughts lingered on as she crossed the plush rug of the sitting room and moved into the bedroom. It was the words he’d last spoken: “an hour made only for ghosts.”

She took a seat on the edge of her four-poster bed. Her travel chest sat beside it, still sealed tight. After having her belongings shut away for so long, she wanted nothing more than to unpack the chest. But try as she might, Signa couldn’t convince herself to so much as crack it open. After tonight, she had no doubts that her time at Thorn Grove would be cut short. If there was one constant that Signa could count on, it was that no matter where she was, Death would find her. She didn’t know how or why, or whether this was all an elaborate game meant to drag out her torture while he watched and laughed and enjoyed the show.

She would find out, though. And, even if it was the last thing she ever did, she would stop him.

It was late into the witching hour when Signa roused to the sound of crying and the rustle of maple leaves blowing in through a window. She didn’t remember leaving it open, yet open it hung, carrying in the scent of rain and damp soil.

Signa pried herself from the warmth of the bed to peer out into the night. When minutes passed and the crying had not returned, she drew the window shut and made her way back to bed. Yet she noticed from the corners of her eyes as she passed her vanity that the reflection in the mirror remained still. Neck prickling, she paused to examine the mirror, hoping the image was a trick of the light. But when her reflection stared back at her, its edges fuzzy and a smile that Signa wasn’t wearing curling at her lips, she knew this was no trick.

Signa smothered a scream as she threw herself from the vanity, where a burst of white light escaped and fled through the bottom of the door. She knew at once it was the spirit from earlier, and this time there was no denying that she’d seen it.

Signa didn’t bother with a coat or her boots, wasting no time as she threw open her door and chased the light down the hall. Now that the spirit had confirmed it could be seen, Signa had no choice but to confront it. If she didn’t, who knew if the beastly thing would ever leave her alone.

Thorn Grove didn’t so much as creak from the weight of her steps as she hurried down the staircase, and the hinges were silent as she swung the front door open into the cold night. At once she threw her arms around herself, for her flimsy white nightgown did nothing to stop the pervading chill from creeping into her skin.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” Step-by-step, she forced her numb feet toward the cries that ate their way up her skin, gnawing at her bones. The louder the crying became, the more the world beneath Signa withered. The moss along a maple tree dried to a dark brown while fallen leaves wilted and scattered in a sudden wind. It was as though the very earth were warning her of what lay ahead, and that she should turn back. Yet Signa didn’t stop moving until she saw the source of the sound.

A woman with translucent skin and soft white hair that trailed behind her like the embodiment of wind itself sat beneath the bend of a tree, wearing a dress silver as the low-hanging moon. The spirit’s cries ceased as Signa approached, head snapping up to look at her. Signa’s footsteps faltered along the dead bramble as the spirit’s eyes crawled over her body, assessing. She tried not to show that fear was clawing at her, urging her to run.

The spirit glided forward without warning—without a sound—and when Signa tried to fall back, dead roots ruptured from the ground and snaked around her ankles to hold her tight. She fell flat on her back, shivering and cursing her luck as the spirit hovered over her.

The spirit was beautiful, with smooth skin and pale hair that fell in loose waves. But the longer Signa looked at her, the grayer the spirit became, with bluish-black lips and fingernails to match. Yet it was her eyes that Signa couldn’t turn away from—one blue, and one hazel. Two different colors, like hers. Like the woman from the portrait Signa had seen earlier that day.

Lillian Hawthorne.

From so close, Signa could see that the spirit’s mouth was something from a nightmare, filled with pus and bleeding sores that festered over her gums. Her tongue was a useless purple mush, as though it had burned away. Lillian tried to speak, but all she could do was moan, and the louder Signa screamed at the monster to get away from her, the louder the monster moaned back.

Lillian reached out as if to snatch at Signa, but Signa dug her fingernails into the roots and tore at them, ripping them from her ankles. Enraged, Lillian screamed as Signa scrambled to her feet.

“Stay away from me!” Signa snarled at her. The spirit flinched at the steel in Signa’s voice. But the pause was only temporary, and with a deep frown Lillian started forward again.

Signa bent to scoop up a handful of soil and tossed it at the spirit’s face. “I don’t care who you are, just leave me alone!” So as not to awaken all of Thorn Grove, she had to hiss words she wanted to yell, and she hated the spirit for that, too. “Leave me alone, or I’ll find your body and burn it until you’re nothing more than a pile of ash!”

As Lillian brushed the dirt away, her blackened lips twisted into what Signa thought must be a sneer. But the threat kept her at bay.

“What do you want?” Signa grumbled. “Why did you draw me here?” Lillian wasn’t anyone Signa wanted to get involved with, and yet Lillian had died in a way that, admittedly, made Signa more than a little curious. And curiosity was a hungry, persistent thing.

Lillian’s spirit hesitated, then pointed to her black lips.

“You can’t talk?” Signa asked, and the spirit shook her pale waves with a grunt. It wasn’t the first time Signa had seen a spirit unable to speak. Some streets were filled with soldiers or warriors from ancient wars she didn’t care to know more about, and too often the spirits were riddled with holes in their chests or faces.

“I know who you are.” Signa drew several steps back for her own assurance. “I know it was you waiting for me inside the house earlier. What do you want from me?”

Spirits didn’t need to breathe, but it looked as though this woman was drawing in a long breath and attempting to gather her patience. She didn’t move toward Signa but snapped a frail branch off a tree. For a moment Signa debated running, but instead of skewering Signa’s flesh, Lillian lowered herself to the ground, kicked a clear path in the dirt, and used the branch to write words upon the earth. When she was finished, Lillian tossed the branch away and pointed at her work.

Though Signa knew her nosiness could very well be her undoing someday, she obliged and read the words. Her stomach twisted the moment she did, and she looked to Lillian for an explanation. The spirit’s body was flickering away at the ends like little tendrils of smoke. If Signa’s years seeing spirits had taught her anything, it was that they weren’t free to wander. The farther they ventured from where they had died, the more they struggled to remain on Earth.

Clearly, Lillian’s spirit was far from where she had passed, and her time here was running out. She retreated toward the woods at the outskirts of the property, until the only remaining trace of her was the words she’d carved into the earth:

Come to my garden and save her.

Signa knew at once that Lillian was referring to Blythe.

Blythe, who Death had proven he was after.

Blythe, who Signa had felt tethered to for reasons she couldn’t explain.

Blythe, whose death would make rumors surge. Whose death would likely put Signa out of yet another home she could not afford to lose.

The realization struck: If she could stop Blythe from dying, then she would stop Death. She would beat him. And if she could manage that, perhaps he’d finally leave her alone and allow her the life she yearned for. A life out of the shadows, where she’d never have to deal with him or these God-awful spirits again. A life with people and parties and companionship, and where she could just be.

Foolish as it was to get herself into a bargain with a spirit, if it meant beating Death, Signa would do whatever it took.