Page 100 of How to Seduce a Slender

She was a ghost, trailing after Elyth. A small girl, no more than seven, as she followed her mother deep into the library.

“Bram, I found your daughter in the mausoleum again.”

“Elyth!”

Bram Rosemont was a tall, brick wall of a man. Broad shoulders dressed in elegant satin, a fuzzy mustache that connected with a robust beard. His shadow loomed over the whole library, swallowing up Melody as she followed the tiny necromancer through the room. He sat the parchment he had been reading down to address her. His monocle flashed dangerously. “What have I told you about playing with the dead?”

“I wasn’t playing,” Elyth huffed, crossed her arms under her bust. A tiny, angry child in a pretty purple gown. The edges were ruined with soot and mud. Unlike her mother, who was statuesque. A tall, lithe thing with long blond hair, chiseled cheeks, and wore her dress like a queen. She arched a brow at the small girl.

“I found you fiddling with the bones.”

“I was reassembling them. They don’t come out good if they’re not assembled!” Elyth protested, stomping a foot.

Smack.Loud and ringing, the echo filled the room as an elderly woman stepped out of the aisles. Her palm landed across Elyth’s cheek and shoved the girl to the ground. Despite her age, the grandmother stood just as tall.Just as proud.And she glared down at the girl with tears welling in her eyes.

“I told you she was a witch, and here she is, playing with bones. Bram, you should have tossed her in the well when you had a chance.” The elderly Rosemont snarled at Elyth, cowering on the floor. “She’d survive it now. Mayhaps we should burn her?”

“Mother,” Bram sighed.

“Edna, please.” Lady Rosemont crouched beside her daughter, helping the young girl to her feet. “She’s just a girl. They go through phases. She’s merely interested in death, it’s a natural response to losing someone close to her.”

“A peasant girl. Something for us to pity, not mourn. Keep it up girl, and I’ll give you something to mourn!” Edna Rosemont threatened as she took up her cane and stalked out of the library.

Lady Rosemont glared at Bram with daggers for eyes. “You promised me she wouldn’t lay another hand on the girls.”

“My mother is stern but good for them, Selene. Elyth needs to learn to present herself to society as Lady Rosemont. She’s betrothed to Prince Everheart! What do you think he will think if word gets around she plays with bones?” Bram sat up, shooing the other children from the room. The other Rosemont daughters all stared at Elyth with confusion before they skuttled out the door.

“I doubt word will get out, Father,” Elyth hissed, dusting off her hands on her dress and ripping away from her mother. “We’re nowhere near anything. We could all rot away in this house and no one would know until taxes weren’t collected.”

Bram glared at his daughter, grabbing her by the arm. Elyth immediately turned into a frozen statue, dangling from his grip, as he loomed over her. “Listen here, girl. If you so much as step another toe out of line and cost this family that marriage, I will let her burn you.”

“Bram!” Selene hissed but the threat landed on belligerent ears. Elyth trembled as she tried to wrench herself free from his grip.

“If you burn me, who will marry the prince, huh?” Elyth shot back, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.

“You have sisters.”

And Elyth was thrown to the floor. Melody was tossed with her. But it wasn’t the library floor she hit. It was the dusty earth of the graveyard. Her sisters around her, Melody looked up from the symbol hastily drawn in their dog’s blood to a figure looming over the small girl. One lanky, Slender creature with razor sharp teeth and a blurred face. Smith lurched forward, reaching for Elyth. The other sisters screamed, racing from the graveyard, but Elyth stayed. She stared up into the creature she summoned in awe.

Smith glanced left and right, his body wobbly and confused. Then, he exploded in a cloud of fizzy, spitting electricity. Elyth climbed to her feet, looking at the carved symbol in the ground.

“I can make it better,” she breathed, glancing around the foggy graveyard. “Where did those ninnies go?”

But it didn’t take long. Just before she could bury the dog in a fresh grave, Edna Rosemont came storming up a row of headstones.

“That is it! I’ve had it with your witchcraft!” the elderly Rosemont roared, rattling her cane at Elyth.

Melody turned to face the woman storming up in a heavy black gown. Everyone was gone but the necromancer child and the woman raising her cane to strike her. Melody stumbled back a step as Elyth ripped the sacrificial blade out of her own apron pockets and buried it in her grandmother.

“I’m going to be the greatest witch there ever was…” Elyth giggled, ripping the blade out from her grandmother’s belly, and plunging it into her chest again. Blow after blow, red painted the little girl’s face. She bathed in it, stroked it across her skin, cackling as she did. Melody tried to throw her hands up to hide the image in front of her, but her body was frozen. The illusion forced her to watch the gruesome murder till Elyth was drenched.

Then, she followed Elyth into the mausoleum, the doors shutting behind her. Drenched in the inky black, Melody closed her eyes for a long moment.

When she opened them, she was in the library, arms trembling, holding the doors closed. Melody twisted, inch by inch to face the cold, dusty library. The air glinted with a singular candle lit on a candelabra. The ghosts of Bram, Selene, and Edna Rosemont sat in large plush chairs around the dead fireplace. Three ghostly girls played with a hound at the foot of the hearth. All of the ghosts glanced up to see her, their hollow eyes staring right through her.

And Melody knew how Elyth picked them off one by one. Her sisters for threatening to tell on her. Her mother for eventually trying to replace her. And lastly her father when he tried to stop her. Elyth saved him for last, to ensure he saw her face when she opened the doors, allowing her own zombies to surge inside and eat him alive. And she stood over him while they ripped him apart.

She’d unburied her mother, so when the kingdom came to check on the house, they’d believe she was dead.

---