Page 7

Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make my grandfather look natural, like he was sleeping, and it should have worked. Yet I knew every detail of what they’d done.

His eyes weren’t just closed—they were glued to keep them from staring glassily. His jaw was wired shut so it wouldn’t gape, so his purpled dead tongue wouldn’t shove between his dried-out teeth set in withering gums. Gloved fingers had pinched and smoothed and arranged his lips into that stern line and caked his face with makeup.

They’d slit his skin at the arteries, slipping needles in. Tubes had carried his dark thickening blood out of him to the whirring accompaniment of a pump, and all that lifeless liquid had been replaced with a slurry of chemicals, leaving the meat of him unfit for even worms and beetles.

“What a waste,” a hoarse voice whispered at my back. I sucked in a short, sharp breath.

Eli’s eyes flicked to me, and his words hitched, an almostimperceptible pause. I dug my fingernails into my palms. Kept my expression blank.Don’t let them see, I told myself. My tongue worked slowly behind clenched teeth, as if I was the one whose jaw had been wired shut.

“You are already wasting time,” the voice grated. Fingers I knew weren’t real dragged across my neck.“Don’t fight it. Don’t dismiss the truth simply because it cannot be true.”

That voice—it was the voice I’d heard before.I’m dreaming, I thought.This is all one of my nightmares, that’s all.

“You are entirely confused. What you think is a dream is not. It’s everything else that is suspect. And if you don’t find a way to wake up, they’ll devour you. Pay attention.Look.”

I stared at the body and through the body. The bones sang. Not as clearly as the fox’s bones, muted as they were by the unnatural preservation, but still I heard it, a low thrum I couldn’t interpret.

As I stared, flowers bloomed, cradled within the cage of my grandfather’s ribs. Long stems of pale bell-shaped blossoms, their interiors speckled with dark purple.Foxglove, I thought, and something twisted deep within me, like a memory almost surfacing.

“There,” the voice said.“Now you begin to see.”

I tore free of my paralysis with a half-swallowed cry. I jolted to my feet, and Eli finally paused in the midst of his litany, blinking slowly at me. Everyone was staring.

“I’m sorry, I need to—”Run, I thought, and had the sense not to say it.

Caleb stood, too. “It’s all right,” he said. “Go get some air. It happens.” His voice was gentle.

I nodded convulsively and stumbled past the casket. I didn’tlook. I was too afraid if I did, I would find those eyes open, filmed over but staring at me.

I made a beeline for the French doors, fumbled with one, and got it open. I strode out blindly, gulping down air that seemed too thin to fill my lungs. I almost smacked into the stone railing that lined the veranda outside. Panicky energy roiled through me.

It had never been this bad before. The things I saw—the things I knew—they were impossible, but most of the time, I could ignore them. Most of the time, people had no idea what I glimpsed just under their skin.

I didn’t know how I saw the things I did. Only that whenever it happened, I had this same taste in my mouth—damp earth. Just like in the dreams that chased me from house to house, town to town. Now I stood on Harrow’s grounds, and if I turned around, I would be looking up at the spires that loomed over me in my dreams. I’d thought that coming here would give me—what? Clarity? Insight?

Answers?

But there was only a dead man and a family of strangers.

3

I FORCED MYSELFto go back in after a few minutes. I sat stiffly through the rest of the service, but there were no more spectral voices or ghostly fingers on my neck.

The burial took place in a small graveyard on the grounds, tucked back among the trees. I stood tensely beside Iris, but if anything, it was the most normal part of the whole affair. A motorized pulley system lowered the casket; everyone cast a ceremonial shovelful of dirt into the hole. As we left, a pair of laborers set to work filling in the grave.

Leopold was buried and gone. With that, our time at Harrow was over, and it was just as much of a mystery as it had been before.

I caught up with my mom as we walked back toward the house. She pulled me close and kissed the top of my hair. “You okay?” she asked.

I didn’t answer at first. “I’m not sure,” I admitted.

“I know we can be a lot,” she said. It took me a moment to realize she was talking about her family. I’d never really thought of her as part of thatwe. It had always been us and them.

“They don’t act like everyone else,” I said slowly.

She frowned a little. “How so?”

“With me, I mean,” I clarified. “When we met Caleb outside, and then Iris, and Desmond and Celia—we were justtalking, and they didn’t...” I trailed off.