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“He’s not a murderer!” she screamed and flung me to the side.
I wasn’t sure if it was because I was bracing for it, or if she was getting weaker, but I didn’t go flying. I only stumbled to my left a bit.
Catching myself, I let out another groan of annoyance. At least she was talking. I just needed to keep her talking until God knew when. “I’m not an expert on nineteenth-century law, but I’m pretty sure strangling your wife is murder.”
“Mistake. Mistake.” She kept repeating, and once again, I saw something around her neck.
“He mistakenly strangled you?” I stood up straighter, and this time, I looked over like she was crazy. “How?”
She opened to answer than shook her head. “Mistake!”
“How?”
She screamed, and I was so freaking sick of it, I shouted back. I screamed as loudly as I could until I couldn’t hear her and stopped myself.
“I can shout, too!” I snapped at her. “I can shriek for the rest of eternity. You and I can make a contest out of it if you like!”
“Mistake!” she shot back again.
“It was not!” I hollered. “And you know that, which is why you started to screech! You don’t know how it was a mistake; you just want it to be one!” The moment the words came out of my mouth, I paused. All the days and years I had spent reading romance novels and fiction came to my mind, along with my own moment of clarity. “You still love him?” I said, and her eyes widened when she opened her mouth to scream. I held out my hand to her. “Don’t you dare!”
This time she was the one who flew back, sliding across the library floor. I glanced at my hands, not sure what was happening. There were no directions this time, but I was going to roll with it.
“Why are you attacking me? I’m not the one who killed you!”
She didn’t snap back up in front of me like she had done the other times. This time when she rose from the ground, it was like a human. Her face was fuller, less sunken, less pale. She looked more like she was a sickly woman on the verge of death, and less like the woman in black out to give me nightmares. For the first time, I saw what looked like a crown of thorns. It pierced her neck, and I remembered another female, another artist who had drawn the same thing around herself. Frida Kahlo.
“Summon him,” she insisted again.
“No.” I shook my head gently. “I think the reason why you can’t go to him is that
he’s being punished for doing that to you.” I pointed to her neck. “And everything else he must have done before and after that. I, for one, do not want to interrupt that punishment.”
“Die!” She shrieked, getting up and lunging.
“No,” I said again at the flick of my wrist. Even though there was no wind, the gust knocked her to the ground. “That’s why you’re attacking me? Do you think if you hurt me or someone else that you’ll be able to get punished with him?”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even try to get up. Instead, she crawled toward a now ripped and broken canvas on the ground.
“No,” I said again, hands outstretched and the canvas came into my hands. “You don’t get to hide and wait there, either!”
“Give it back!” she cried out, it was purely a scream but a sob. “It’s mine!”
“You can’t own anything because you’re a ghost!” I reminded her because apparently, she had forgotten. “You’ve been hiding in this painting, haven’t you? Waiting for another witch powerful enough, or stupid enough to help you. Unfortunately for both of us, it was me. And this is my way of helping.”
I felt the fire heat through my left hand, and smoke started to rise from the canvas.
“No! No!” She tried to rush me, but with my right hand, I sent her back to her stomach.
“You are a ghost, Elisa-Maria Götze. Your husband murdered you. He murdered you because cursing you wasn’t enough. Cursing you didn’t stop you from being the great artist you were. He could not handle being inferior to you. Your talent scared him.”
“It was my fault,” she whispered, peeling herself off the ground. “I should have been happy painting. He brought me to the school to paint with him. It was my fault. I should have never—”
“Been yourself?” I asked, dropping the burning canvas. “If a person can’t love you for who you are, then they can never love you at all.”
“We…we would have been happy.” When she looked up to me, her tears fell from her green eyes without reservation. Her face was full and pink and round. No longer the ghost, but now fully Elisa-Maria Götze and still with a crown of thrones around her neck.
“Happier than when you were painting?” I asked gently. “Happier than when were you in that moment—right before he killed you—that moment when you must have thought how lucky you were to be with him, to be so supported?”
