Page 19 of Wolfsbane Hall
“Will you tell me your name, so I don’t have to call you the Specter?” It was an appeal.Tell me something profound. Tell me something real, please.
Please.
He said nothing.
“What would you like me to call you?” Celestine stared at her ceiling and pulled her covers ever so slightly up, as if defending against the inevitable rejection.
The Specter may not tell her anything tangible, but he showed his thoughts in the rustling of the curtains, the whispered hum of the electricity, and the oh-so-slight rattling of the shadows. The room twisted with his emotions, but Celestine wasn’t scared. It sometimes shifted with hers, too, but only after she’d drunk the elixir.
“For now, call me Winter.” His voice echoed through the pages of the books strewn throughout her room, even causing some ofthem to flip.
A muscle in her cheek twitched, unprepared for an actual answer.
“Winter,” she whispered back, testing the name on her tongue.
“Yes, like your favorite season.”
Celestine gulped, and her face burned with unwanted emotion. Emotion she couldn’t let him see. But his response meant far too much.
And that was dangerous.
“Wolfsbane was incredibly helpful tonight,” Celestine said. “It did everything I asked.”
“Ah, yes.” The air sparkled as he spoke. “I made sure of it. It was the least I could do after…”After I forced you to murder again. He didn’t need to finish, and never would. He changed the subject instead. “If you could have anything, what would it be?”
He never talked shop in her rooms. He only asked about her life, books, and their common interests. They had comfort and camaraderie in her chambers, but never work. Never. Except to sometimes reprimand her for being too lenient with people, like Babette.
She rolled her fingers into her blanket and propped herself up. “Including impossible things?”
“Yes, of course.”
“A family.”
“Children?”
“No, children are not in my future.” Celestine swallowed. “I mean siblings, parents…people to infuriate and love me.Family. I desire nothing more than to have people who will be there for me no matter what. People to be by my side through thick and thin.” She was forced to stop, because her throat grew too dry to continue. So she swallowed several times inorder to finish what she truly wanted to say. “Someone to mourn me when I am gone.”
“You already have that.” He didn’t saywith me, but it was implied. Tears leaked from her eyes, and the Specter reached out with his shadows to stroke them away. “I will mourn you when you’re gone.”
He said it like it was a foregone conclusion that she would die before him—which it was. With his magic, he would outlive her. It was inevitable.
Celestine sucked in a breath, and her eyes burned from withholding more tears. She was frail. It was the one thing everyone knew about her, but just because it was true didn’t mean she had to display her weakness for the world to see—and especially not him.
But inevitably, she feared they already saw everything anyway, despite her attempts at hiding it.
She cleared her throat. “So, a book or piano tonight?”
Every night, they fell asleep with either her reading to him or him playing the piano for her.
“Your choice,” he said. “Always your choice.”
Celestine reached out and touched the wall as if he were there on the other side. “I’ll read to you. Would you like to rereadAnd Then There Were Noneor startDeath on the Nile?”
The Specter didn’t like reading; he found the practice difficult, so she always read them their favorites, which were always Agatha Christie.
“Death on the Nile. We’ve readAnd Then There Were Nonetoo many times.”
Celestine nodded, leaned down to the bookshelf holding up her bed, plucked out the book, opened it, and began to read.
