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I screamed. No sound came out. Dark waters closed over me, and I lost myself again.
Time slipped. The morning bell was ringing.
We began again. And again. And again.
I stopped fighting it. Why should I? I deserved this. I was the monster at the heart of Harrow. I had stolen my mother’s life,caused Jessamine’s death, torn Roman apart. Such evil should be contained. I drifted.
In surrender, I found a horrible kind of peace.
—
“Your mind isn’t meant to exist within set structures,” someone said. I had no idea how many times I’d slipped by then. “That’s why Harrow is as rigid as it is. The halls, the bells, the traditions. It is all designed to blunt your mind and bind your senses.”
I was sitting in my room, on the bed. My grandfather was talking to me.
“You are not alone, Helen. You never have been. We’ll help you if we can. But you have to do this yourself. That’s always been the key. No one else can save you.”
I tried to look at him, but that wasn’t what I did right now, and so I couldn’t. Right now, I sat and looked at nothing in particular because Harrow had not instructed me on what to do.
Time slipped. I was eating dinner. Salad fork, dinner fork, knife, soup spoon. I picked up the knife and cut into the slab of beef on my plate.
“I hate this,” Mom muttered. I took another bite. Time slipped.
I was sitting in the drawing room. I held a book and turned the pages, but I didn’t really read it. The door opened and shut softly, and footsteps padded across the carpet.
“I only have a minute,” Desmond said, crouching next to me. “Helen, can you hear me?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t really remember how to answer orwhy I would. This was the time of day I was in the drawing room, reading.
“I managed to talk to Bryony,” he said. I turned the page. “We’re trying to come up with something, but we’re running out of time.” I turned the page. “We only have a few weeks left.”
I turned the page.
“Helen, listen to me!” Desmond slapped the book out of my hands.
I gasped. My hands closed over nothing, and everything flooded back—the fear, the desperation, the wretched sorrow.Desmond. Desmond, help me. Oh God you have to—“Help,” I whispered, and it was all I could manage.
“We’re trying,” Desmond said, relieved. “Caleb and Iris had to tell everybody what’s going on. Sort of. They’ve convinced everybody that you killed Jessamine. And they won’t let any of us leave Harrow. But we think—”
I bent and picked up the book. My eyes drifted down, not absorbing any of the words. I turned the page.No, no, no—
I was vanishing again, and I couldn’t stop it.
“Helen, if we’re going to find a way to disrupt the ritual, we need your help. You have to fight this. Damn it—”
Time slipped. I drifted.
I was in my room, and my mother was with me, and I might have wept if there was enough of me left to weep. I might have clung to her, if I could move at all, and burrowed against her like I was a child again, afraid of the storm outside.
She stood and looked at me, and there was nothing in her eyesbut grief and hatred. “Why would you do it?” she asked me. “You didn’t need me once you were gone. Why keep toying with me like that? Did you enjoy it? Did you laugh when you made me believe there was a man who cared about me? Was it a game to you, pretending that you loved me? Say something!”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell her how sorry I was, how much I loved her, how all of it had been true even though every bit of it was a lie.
“Say something!” she screamed, and slapped me across the face.
I seized the pain and surged forward. I grabbed her hand. “Mom—” I said, voice weak.
She flung me away. I fell back across the bed and rose sluggishly, my limbs leaden. She held her hand as if she’d touched something foul, and her face twisted with disgust. “Don’t call me that,” she said. “I was never your mother.”
