Page 88 of The Narrow

“I don’t know. But I’m willing to try.”

Del turns away. She walks to the bedside table. On it rests the pages ofGrave BellesI gave her. She’s nearly at the end of whatI’ve written. Lenore’s face in stark black-and-white fills the entire page as caption boxes seem to swarm around her, each with a fragment of her panicked thoughts as she realizes that Belle has been discovered by her brother and is in mortal danger. It’s also the moment she realizes she’s in love with Belle.

“What happens to Belle and Lenore?” Del asks softly. She looks up at me through her pale lashes. “Do they survive? Do they get to be together?”

“I don’t know,” I say. Sometimes I think it has to be a tragedy. Sometimes I can’t bear any ending but one in which they’re happy and in love.

“I would really like to find out,” Del says. Her voice breaks. “Promise me you’ll finish it.”

“I promise.” And they’ll live. They’ll be happy and they’ll never die, and they’ll get a forever that can never be taken away.

“Let’s do it,” Del says. Her voice is rough but confident.

“When?” I ask, my heart hammering.

She looks to the window, out at the overcast sky. “It’s going to rain tonight,” she says.

Tonight.

Tonight I will find Maeve.

Tonight I will drown.

And then maybe, just maybe, both of us will live.

29

I CREEP BACKto Westmore and hope no one will notice me. But of course that was never going to happen. Veronica and Zoya and Ruth are in the common room, and the way their conversation cuts off as soon as I enter makes it clear what they’ve been talking about.

Who they’ve been talking about.

“Hey,” I say with a weary wave. “I’m pretty beat. I’m going to go crash.” I start to make my way toward the back hall.

“Eden, hold on,” Veronica says, standing. Ruth is scrunched up in the corner of the couch, looking deeply uncomfortable. Zoya chews her lip, folded up so her elbows and knees stick out at angles, giving her the air of an anxious daddy longlegs.

“I’m really not up for a What’s Wrong With Eden Talk,” I say.

“We haven’t talked about what happened,” Veronica says.

“What is there to say?” I ask.

Ruth makes a strangled noise. “Are you kidding? There was a ghost. Here. In this room. And it tried to kill you.”

“Maeve didn’t try to kill me,” I snap. “She wouldn’t.”

“She almost killed Aubrey,” Veronica points out.

“That was an accident,” I say.

“According to who?” Zoya asks, her tone quiet and reasonable.

I glare at her. “She wasn’t aware of what she was doing. Not really. She couldn’t think—she barely knew who she was. All she knew was that she had to find Grace.”

“And drowning Aubrey helped with that how?” Ruth asks.

“She wasn’ttryingto drown her. She was trying to... to communicate, to connect. But she couldn’t. Not without hurting people.”

“Like she hurt you,” Veronica says. Her jaw is set. Anger is a hard light in her eye. She’s always been set against Maeve, even before she really believed in her. She doesn’t understand what Maeve has been through or what it’s done to her.

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