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“And now? Are you still Helen?” she asked in a whisper. “Are you the little girl I loved?”
“I think she’s dead, too,” I told her, and she choked out a sob. I held my hand out to her.“It’s time for you to leave.”Part of me was there with her. Another part of me called the roots from the ground to find the gaps between the stones of the foundation, pulling them apart. The eastern wall buckled.
“What is happening?” Mom asked.
“Harrow is dying,” I told her.“If you leave, you won’t be harmed.”
I left my figment to lead her to safety and turned my attention elsewhere. The folly, designed to look like a ruin, became one as its stones toppled. When a fire started in the kitchens, I let it burn and released it down the corridors I’d walked.
I was in the woods, and I was in the halls, watching Harrow burn. I was leading my mother to the gates of Harrow. I was with the shadows, bidding them to let my aunt and cousins pass, and I was with Bryony, fetching her father from his house.
And I was with Eli, down below.
Eli sat with his back against the standing stone. Iris and Caleb lay dead before him, limbs at unnatural angles.
I made myself into the shape of the girl who had loved him best and knelt beside him. “You have to leave,” I said.
“Hello, Haley,” he said, smiling faintly.
“I’m not really her,” I told him.
“I know,” he said, with a helpless shrug.
“The house is collapsing. This place will not survive. You will be killed,” I said. My voice sounded strange. Detached. It couldn’t hold the wild storm of emotions within me, the joy and the desolation. I couldmakehim feel those things, shove them into his mind. But the part of me that had been Helen understood now why that had frightened people, and so I held back.
He let out a long, ragged breath. “I have given my life and my heart to Harrow,” he said. “It has taken everything from me, and there is nothing left. I would like to die knowing I ended things with one good deed, at least. One way or another, I was never going to survive this night. Let me do this on my own terms.”
“I understand,” I said.“Would you like me to stay?”
“Yes. Yes, I would like that,” he said. His eyes grew distant. “Can you do something for me? Can you make me forget that you aren’t real? Can you fool me one last time?”
Dust fell from the ceiling, the stones rumbling as more of the house succumbed to roots and flames and the assault of my will. But Eli saw the sun, and a park bench, and a girl in a pink jacket beside him wearing purple butterfly barrettes.
“You’ll have to be getting home soon,” he said.
“I can stay a little longer, Uncle Eli,” she replied, and took his hand.
I stayed with him until the stones came down and made sure he never felt them.
—
My figment stood at the end of the road that led out of Harrow. The last living members of the Vaughan family were gone. They had fled beyond the gates, and the system which had stood in balance for a century and a half had fallen, at last, to ruin. I was alone.
And yet, not quite.
“Helen,” Bryony called. She stood at the gates alone. Dust from the tunnels lay thick over her shoulders, leaving gray streaks in her hair.
Bryony stepped toward my figment, but she stayed on the other side of the gates. The cold winter sun cut between the trees, casting everything in harsh light. “You can stop. It’s over.” She held out her hand. “You can leave now. Let’s go.”
I reached out for her. My fingertips touched the very edge of Harrow and went no farther.
“Please, Rabbit. Come with me,” Bryony whispered.
My lips parted. A breath escaped my lips, and for an instant, the figment teetered toward reality, and her fingertips, now solid, brushed against Bryony’s outstretched hand. Of all the things that clamored in my fresh-woken soul, my love for her blazed brightest.
But I wasn’t Helen. Not anymore.
I cast aside the image of that girl and left Bryony there, beyond my reach.
