Page 86

He sounded like the Caleb who’d greeted me at the steps of Harrow now. Kind, without a trace of hatred. He believed the lie that he was a good man.

I walked stiffly toward him. He stepped aside, making me go ahead of him. I could try to run—but where would I go?

Help me. Please someone help me, I thought, as if my thoughts could will a rescuer into being. We walked up the imperceptiblysloped hall, up the stairs, toward the other side of the house and the Willows. All the while I waited for the bite of the bullet between my shoulder blades.

“Helen! Caleb, what are you doing?”

I spun. Mom was running down the hall, Simon with her. Caleb kept the gun trained on me. “Rachel, I will explain, but I need you to stay calm and trust me,” he said in a level voice.

“Put that gun down,” Simon demanded. Simon was a gentle man. There was nothing intimidating about him, but he drew himself up and glared, and I wanted to weep. That love in his eyes wasn’t earned. I’d tricked him into it.

“Caleb, stop!” Mom said, frantic. She was shaking. “Please, just stop pointing that at my daughter. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but—”

“Enough,” Caleb said. He turned, sweeping the gun around. I screamed. Simon lunged.

Caleb fired.

For a moment, I thought he’d missed. The barrel of the gun pointed straight at Simon, but he wasn’t bleeding. Caleb fired again. And again. Simon stood there, looking sorrowful, as the bullets slammed into the wall behind him.

“Sorry, Scout,” Simon said.

“No,” I whispered.

“What is going on?” Mom asked, trembling, eyes wide.

“He’s not real, Rachel. He’s an illusion. A trick. False memories and false images. All your memories of his touch, his presence—they’re lies. And so is she. That’s not your daughter, Rachel. You don’t have a daughter. She’s the Other. She used you.”

“I didn’t know,” I said. I sobbed, choking on my tears. Simon was gone now, empty space where he had been standing moments ago—he’d never been there. Grief closed around my heart, sorrow for a man who’d never been. “Mom, I didn’t know, I swear, I didn’t—I love you, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, please—” I reached for her.

She flinched away. Pressed her hands to her mouth in horror.

Iris emerged from the hall. “You’re making a commotion,” she snapped at Caleb.

“Celia came to find me,” Caleb said.

Oh, Celia.

“It found the spiral. It knows what it is. I had to contain the situation.”

“And you couldn’t have found a quiet way to do it?” Iris asked. Mom stared at me, her lips moving with unformed words. Her head shook in tiny movements, side to side.

She looked broken. I’d done that. “I’m sorry,” I said again, but it was hardly a whisper.

“The whole house is awake. Deal with that thing so we can make a plan,” Iris said.

“Right.” Caleb looked back at me. “I’m afraid thiswillhurt,” he said apologetically, and shot me in the heart.

32

I DREAMED OFHarrow. Again and again, I was buried beneath the house and the standing stone; again and again, I clawed my way free to walk the halls or the woods. In the halls of the house, I watched the living and the dead, the past and the present, shift and merge and peel apart again. Celia wept in her room. Annalise walked the halls with her candle, muttering about being watched. Desmond nodded along as Caleb and Iris talked to him, and then collapsed onto his bed when they were gone, holding his head in his hands. Dr.Raymond and Nicholas Vaughan bent together over a thick text, gesturing and frowning.

My mother sat alone, staring at nothing.

In the woods, the shadows seethed in panic and pain. Bryony watched the house. She watched, and she whispered my name, and she wove charms like prayers to try to find me, but I was too deep in dream to whisper back.

I had no sense of time. When I woke, I couldn’t say if it had been a day or a year, but my body was whole. I lay in bed in the Willows, my thoughts muddled. The morning bell was ringing.

Memory of that night—one night ago, or many?—flooded back. I pressed a fist against my mouth to stifle my cry of pain and of horror. I had to get out of here.