Page 6

The nights without a moon were the hardest.

It was always difficult for Vivienne to hold on to herself once the sun set, but at least the moon provided some small amount of light—its silver pinnacle a compass for her to follow through the dark and into dawn.

During the new moon, she became unmoored.

The day had passed by uneventfully enough. She’d put in her requisite hours at the studio, piecing together the choreography for her summer showcase. She’d moved across the floor in a graceful relevé—chin raised, arms extended—and done her best not to think about Philip’s dinner party or the feel of Bryce Donahue’s hand on the small of her back, his mouth at her ear, breath stung with scotch: “I like that dress on you.”

On the drive home, Thomas listened to a podcast and she sipped at her tea, slurping loud enough to drown out the audio so that he was forced to rewind every other sentence in order to hear. Neither of them said a word to the other.

She spent the rest of the day avoiding him altogether.

It was better that way.

As night fell, she lay in her bed with the wide french doors thrown open onto her balcony. Darkness poured into her room like ink. She did her best to ignore it, comfortably sandwiched between Molly and Judd. Judd dozed on his back, belly up and legs curled in the air. Molly, as always, lay facing the door. Ears perked. Eyes alert. Poised to spring.

Amelia and Philip had gone out hours ago, headed in a stretch limousine to a gala in the city, her mother swathed in sequins and Philip in one of his custom-tailored suits. Nonprofit work, they called it, but the truth was that all they did was drown themselves in champagne until they weren’t embarrassed to fight in public anymore.

The night was warm and windless, and even with the window open the air in her room felt stale. Deep inside her belly, there was the familiar clench of something hungry.

Something dead inside something living.

Just thinking about it made her itch.

Restless, she climbed out of bed, swinging her legs over Judd’s belly and sliding onto the floor. Beneath her skin, she felt like she was peeling apart. Splitting open like a pomegranate. She crept on tiptoes past the vanity, where the covered mirror was slung with several pairs of battered pointe shoes. The barest glimmer of glass shone through the scarf she’d repurposed as a shroud. In the light, she could just make out the outline of her reflection. A faceless figure, shifting beneath the veil. It stretched itself out like a cat waking from a nap. Spine arched. Head tilted to the side.

“Don’t go to sleep,” it said, its voice raw with lack of use. “It’s too dark tonight. The shadows make pools deep enough for Him to search in.”

On the bed, Molly lifted her head. A snarl rippled in the back of her throat. The room veered oddly, stars bursting along Vivienne’s periphery. Not even midnight and she was already unraveling. Usually, she held on to herself just a little bit better. Usually, she was stronger. Tonight, she reached for the shroud and peeled it back. She was met with her own face, sharp and unsettling.

“Hello,” said the thing in the glass, and she in unison. Her stomach did a free fall. The scarf trembled in her fist. The longer she looked at her reflection, the more the girl on the other side seemed to distort, her features warping.

“Who do you mean?” Her voice came out in a croak. “Who’s searching for me?”

The creature bared its teeth. “You know who.”

She shook her head. Fear crawled up her throat, suffocating and sour.

“The House,” said her awful likeness. “Or else what sleeps beneath it. He is looking for you everywhere, and that rotten Reed knows it. That fool will lead you right to Him.”

Vivienne clutched at her throat. Her mouth was sand. Her tongue thick. In the mirror, the creature wrung its own neck, fingers gray and grasping.

“I am the only one you can trust,” it said. “Not yourself. Not the boy downstairs. Not that doctor you’ve got wrapped around your little finger.”

That horrible smile spread from one ear to the next, splitting the creature’s face in two. Its teeth seemed to elongate, forcing back its head, until it looked as though some secondary creature was oozing out from the soft shell of her body.

As if she’d only ever existed as a chrysalis for something else.

“You think I don’t know what you’re planning?” It pressed a curled fist against the glass. You think I don’t know your mind?” Its goblin fist rapped once upon the mirror. “ I am the reason you’re alive.” Rap. “I am your savior . ” Rap. “Your lifeline. Your god. You cannot carve me out.”

Rap. Rap. Rap.

Glass shattered, exploding over her hand in stinging fragments. Judd woke with a woof and rolled over onto his belly, nearly flopping out of bed. At his side, Molly began to howl.

Out in the hall, there came the sound of running. The door to her room slammed open. The dogs went wild, their teeth bared, slaver hanging from their jowls. In her daze, it took Vivienne several seconds to realize they were barking at Thomas. He stood framed in the open door, dressed for a workout in gym shorts and athletic socks, a thin line of sweat darkening his T-shirt.

He pushed past the dogs, silently taking in the mess of her vanity. The mirror sat crunched in its frame, slippers knocked askew and the remaining glass as jagged as fangs. Several atomizers had been knocked over in the impact. They lay strewn across the floor in a thousand glittering pieces, perfume seeping into her rug.

Slowly, Thomas’s gaze traveled to where she stood. She peered back at him, clutching her bleeding fist to her chest and doing her best to think of something clever to say. Something cruel. Nothing came to her.

He took her in slowly, worry chasing out the confusion on his face. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her this way. If there was something monstrous peering out from behind her eyes, or if she’d managed to pack it all away in time. She hoped so. He was looking at her far too closely, taking silent note of every detail—chronicling the nicks and scrapes, the broken glass like stardust at her feet.

“What happened?”

I tripped.

It was a lie, and both of them knew it.

“You’re bleeding.”

She cradled her wrist to her chest, but there was no hiding it. Several splinters sat lodged in her skin, glimmering oddly in the light. Blood ran down her forearm in sticky red tributaries.

A dozen unasked questions dropped to the floor between them. She wished he’d ask. She wished he’d push. On a night like tonight, she just might crack. She might tell him how awful it felt, watching someone die at her feet—how the mere sound of her voice could snap a man’s mind clean in half, pop the capillaries in his skin, until he bled out without a scrape.

She might tell him she used to have quite a lot to talk about, back before something in a deep, dark hole decided to shut her up for good.

But he didn’t ask, and so she didn’t say.

You can go , she signed instead. I’m fine.

He hesitated. He seemed to be carefully considering his next words. “I don’t feel comfortable leaving you on your own right now.”

I don’t need your help. It’s nothing.

“It doesn’t feel like nothing.” He was being too cautious with her, and it was making her want to scream. In the door, he looked just as aggravated as she felt. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Let me at least look at—”

No. She pinched her fingers in his face. I’ll do it myself.

She left him standing there on the threshold, his expression thunderous as she stalked off to the bathroom alone. The light in there was dim, the counters cluttered with cosmetic products. Cast in the pale glow of the sink’s illuminated mirror, her face looked white as a sheet.

But at least it was her own.

She turned on the faucet and let the water run cool and clear over her wrist. It pooled red atop the drain, dark as a ruby. The cuts were shallow, the splinters small. It hurt worse than she expected, the way a paper cut burned at the touch.

A movement in the glass brought her head up, quick as a rabbit.

It was Thomas, delineated against the soft pink glow of her bedroom.

“Please don’t ask me to leave,” he said, before she could say otherwise. “Because I’ll go if you tell me to, but I won’t feel good about it.”

The look on his face unlatched something inside her. Something too unnerving to name, too raw to poke at. She nodded her silent approval, unease sparking in her veins. It wasn’t that she wanted him to stay; it was only that she didn’t want to be alone.

She was always alone, and she was tired of it.

Crossing to the sink, Thomas reached for the faucet and shut it off. The running water trickled to a stop. In the ensuing hush, they stood shoulder to shoulder and took in the cluttered surface of her vanity.

“It’s funny,” he said, lifting up a powder compact to inspect it. “I thought you’d be a neat freak, but you’re actually kind of a mess.”

She plucked the compact from his hand and set it back onto the counter. In the mirror, his reflection flashed her a dimpled grin. “I like it. It makes you feel a little more human.”

I’m not normally messy , she confessed. I’ve been having a hard time.

She didn’t know what made her admit it. Embarrassment crept in on a pink flush, heating her cheeks. At her side, Thomas’s expression went solemn.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Why? So you can use it against me the next time you need something?

He winced. “That’s fair.”

An uneasy silence sank between them. Neither of them seemed to know how to breach it. He fell to poking around in her cosmetics, prying a pair of tweezers out of a rumpled mess of ribbon. “I can work with these. Give me your hand.”

She hung back, wary. This isn’t part of your job description.

“Yeah, well, I’m off the clock.” He held out his hand between them. “Let me see.”

Grudgingly, she relented, stepping away from the vanity and placing her hand in his. The subtle shift guided him away from the glass, so that his back was to the mirror, and also the girl inside it. It brought a fraction of relief, and only that. Gently maneuvering her hand, Thomas leaned in to inspect the damage.

It wasn’t so bad up close. She’d done far worse. She pressed the heel of her good hand to her eye, rubbing until she saw a phosphene sheen. Her hand came away wet, which startled her. She hadn’t even realized she’d been crying.

“I have a question,” said Thomas, pretending not to notice as she swiped a tear from her cheek. “What kind of fish do you catch on your trips out to the Sound? Philip said the two of you have a tradition.”

He asked it conversationally enough, but worry wormed into her all the same.

It was a dangerous question, with an equally dangerous answer.

“I went fishing for pike with my uncle once,” he said, setting the first shard in her silver soap dish. “He took this fillet knife and deboned them right there on the boat. The bottom was so thick with fish guts, you could sink in it. I couldn’t get the smell out of my shoes for weeks.”

The last of the glass came free with a pinch. Setting aside the tweezers, Thomas dampened a washcloth and pressed it to her wrist. She winced at the sting. The soft hiss of breath brought his eyes to hers.

“It’s just that you don’t really seem like the type of person to enjoy fishing,” he said, and she knew then that he was prying.

There wasn’t time to be angry. An odd, quirking movement pulled her focus. In the mirror, something peered out over the top of Thomas’s shoulder, its eyes honeycomb dark. Fear collapsed in on her and she wrenched her hand out of his.

You have no idea what type of person I am.

“I’d like to.”

It came out reflex-quick—a little nervously—as though he’d been working up the courage to say it. Her heart hurled itself violently at the wall of her chest. In the mirror, a set of gangrene fingers curled impossibly around Thomas’s throat. The sharp points of its nails made shallow crescents along the top of his spine.

“You, uh, still haven’t answered my question,” said Thomas, reaching up to paw at the nape of his neck. “What kind of fish do you catch?”

She stared up at him, horror-struck. He felt it. He felt it . It shouldn’t have been possible. It was in there, and she was out here. She was the one awake. She was the one in control.

Wasn’t she?

In the mirror, the other Vivienne’s grip tightened like a noose.

“Miss Farrow?”

Vivienne watched, arrested, as the creature’s jaw unhinged, revealing gray gums crowded with gleaming eyeteeth. Her fingers flew to her own solidly closed mouth, as its drooling maw gaped open just over Thomas’s carotid artery. She staggered back, slamming into the opposite wall hard enough to rattle her perfumes on their little ladder shelf.

Thomas tugged at the collar of his shirt, frowning over at her. “Are you okay?”

Get out , she signed.

He didn’t budge. “I’m not comfortable leaving you in here when you’re—”

She didn’t let him finish. She lifted a crystal atomizer from the shelf and hefted it at the wall. Thomas ducked, throwing up his hands as the bottle exploded into a thousand glimmering shards. The smell of white geranium flooded the space between them. She reached for another.

“I’ll go,” said Thomas, straightening. “I’ll go, okay?”

Behind him, the creature looked enthralled by the chaos, its bones disjointed, its smile jubilant. It wanted her like this, she knew—friendless and half feral, alone but for her own face in the mirror. She blinked back tears.

“I’ll be in the hall if you need me,” said Thomas, still holding up his hands in surrender. She couldn’t blame him. An amber glass of sweet vetiver sat in her bloodied grip like a stone, her arm catapult-ready. She didn’t lower it until she was certain he was gone.

Out in the room, Judd let out a whine. The door snicked shut. She felt strangely ground down, her heart an ugly, wet pulp inside her chest.

Setting the perfume back onto the shelf, she sank to the floor and wept.