Page 40 of Holly & Hemlock
I finally pick up the handkerchief. The fabric is cool, smooth, almost wet, and I press it to my cheek. There is comfort in it, but also accusation. I remember the way Larkin looked at me, the cut on his lip and the wildness in his eyes. I remember Lane’s face at the door, the momentary shatter before he rebuilt himself, stronger and less accessible than before. I remember Whitby, hands folded and mouth pursed, inventorying my soul from across the kitchen table.
I go to the mirror, clutching the linen in one fist. My hair is wild, stray curls at the temples, and there is a red mark on my jaw that was not there before. I touch my lips—bruised, swollen, both from the cold and from the men.
I look at myself, really look, and I don’t recognize the girl in the glass. She looks older, wilder. More dangerous.
I smooth my hair, trace the line of the scar in my brow, and fold the handkerchief in half, then quarters. I place it on the table by the bed, a treaty with the dead.
I get beneath the covers, tuck my feet tight, and try to warm myself while cold crawls over me like a second skin.
In the dark, I think about the people I’ve lost, and the ones I keep losing. I think about the hunger in this place, and how it is never satisfied. I think about Lane,and Larkin, and Whitby, and the idea of my aunt pressing that same handkerchief to her lips in a room just like this one, long before I was born.
I fall asleep holding nothing at all, and when I wake, the handkerchief is gone.
The house, I realize, is never done with you. But I still don’t understand what it wants.
11
Dinner for Three
I’ve sequestered myself in my room all day when the invitation arrives—if it can be called an invitation. It is a square of thick cardstock, the edges watermarked with an ancient family crest, the ink so dark it glistens. Mrs. Whitby does not bother with pleasantries; her script is vertical, almost violent.
Miss Vale,
Dinner will be served at seven. Attire: formal. Attendance is not optional.
I finally headdownstairs to get some tea. The kitchen is empty, but the scent of boiled chicory still hangs in the air, sharp and rooty.
At precisely five, Whitby appears. She glides in, black dress fanned out like a priest’s vestments, a string of dull pearls tight at the throat. Her face is lacquered with theexpression of one who has already buried the evening’s disappointments. She regards me with a patience so dry it could start fires.
“You’ll want to prepare,” she says, not a question.
“For what?”
She tuts, as if I am a child refusing medicine. “Tradition is all that stands between us and the wolves, Miss Vale. Best to honor it.”
She sweeps out, and the silence that follows is somehow heavier than her presence.
I retreat to my bedroom and find, laid across the bed, a dress. Black velvet, thin-strap, the kind of garment I have only ever encountered in photographs. The tag at the neck bears a designer’s name I recognize but cannot pronounce. There is no note, but the implication is clear: put this on or be a disgrace to your lineage. I hold the dress up by its hanger, let it swing, and try not to imagine the hands that measured, or the eyes that selected it.
The mirror confirms my suspicions. It fits, not only in the physical sense—though it cinches at the waist and skims the hips with a precision that is almost surgical—but in the psychic one, as if the house had been sizing me up since the moment I crossed the threshold.
I braid my hair and twist it up. I do my makeup for the first time since my arrival, filling in the scar at my brow with a pencil borrowed from Whitby’s own vanity. The transformation is total. I look like the subject of an oil painting, the kind that hangs in mausoleums to haunt the living.
The stairs are ridiculous in heels, but I refuse to remove them. If I’m to be paraded, I will act the part. The house receives me in silence, save for the faint music of the radiators and the slow tick of the grandfather clock in the east hall. Myfootsteps echo—four stories of hunger, condensed into a single, fragile sound.
The dining room is unrecognizable. Candles, arranged in spires, stand along the length of the table, their flames doubled and redoubled in the mirrors that line the wainscot. The mahogany is so polished I can see the veins in my hands reflected back, blue beneath the surface. The cutlery—silver, all of it, enough to bankrupt a small city—is set with military precision. Each place setting is accompanied by three crystal goblets, aligned as if awaiting an alchemical ritual.
Larkin is already seated. He wears a tuxedo, the fabric so black it seems to consume the candlelight, collar crisp and white against the edge of his jaw. He is reading, or pretending to, the spine of the book half-hidden beneath the curve of his hand. His cufflinks are emerald, a match for his eyes; his posture is less relaxed than calculated, a pose learned from generations of men who have never needed to justify their presence at a table like this.
Lane stands at the far end of the room, by the fireplace. He has submitted to the indignity of a suit, though the jacket sits on him like a borrowed skin. The shoulders are too narrow, the sleeves a touch too short. He looks like he is preparing to lift the casket at his own funeral.
Whitby floats between them, topping off glasses of wine and rearranging napkins with the care of a surgeon prepping an operating theater. She nods to me as I enter, her eyes glancing over my attire before flicking to the empty chair at the head of the table.
“Miss Vale,” she says. “We are complete.”
I take my seat, with the help of Lane who pulls my chair out for me. The chair is heavier than it looks, and I wonder how many bodies have occupied it before mine, how many generations have gripped the lion’s head at the end of thearmrest and wished to be anywhere else. The linen napkin is folded into a fan, the edge crisp enough to draw blood.
I’m suddenly conscious of every inch of exposed skin, every stray hair. Larkin watches me, unblinking, his eyes a challenge. Lane seats himself at the far end, as if planning his own escape.
