Page 36 of Persephone's Curse
No. How mad is Evelyn now?
She has taken up smoking and used her cigarettes to burn your face out of every photo in the house
How’s the painting coming?
It’s coming. I still don’t know what it is, but when I look at it, I get a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach
Oh that’s just great
In the interest of full disclosure, I have already borrowed your lipstick and it looks very good on me, probably better than it looks on you
Jerk
I put my phone on the table and bit my bottom lip.
NowIhad a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I made myself another cheese and cracker and tried to ignore what the pit was telling me—that something was coming, that something was here.
We played Aunt Bea’s favorite game—Trivial Pursuit—which we were all hopelessly terrible at (including Aunt Bea). Mom opened a bottle of wine without asking and it turned out to be some incredibly expensive bottle Aunt Bea had been saving for a special occasion (“Although, I guess,” she announced amiably, “what’s a more special occasion than simply being alive and with people you love”), and Bernadette made us all ice cream sundaes at ten o’clock. We enjoyed short-lived sugar highs and then their inevitable crash, and everyone headed to bed by eleven. I’d just settled under the comforter when I realized I forgot water. Groaning, I dragged myself up again and plodded downstairs to get some.
Halfway down the stairs, I paused.
Aunt Esme was back, poised in her usual spot by the fire, playing with her dolls. Despite no lamps being on, the living room was bathed in a warm, comfortable glow. Esme herself was mostly transparent, and her eyes were glowing in a sort of creepy way. She looked up at me and smiled, and that was sort of creepy, too.
“Play with me?” she said, which is exactly what creepy little ghost girls say in movies before they drag you down to Hell. But I knew Esme didn’t mean anything by it, and I was happy to oblige, folding myself into a cross-legged seat in front of her.
“It’s nice to see you again,” I said.
Esme shrugged and kept playing. When she asked you to play with her, this is what she meant: you sat and watched and were preferably quiet and didn’t contribute much, while she moved her dolls around. She really just wanted a companion, someone to sit with her. She was more distinct than all of the ghosts I ran into in Manhattan, but I still knew it wasn’treallyEsme. This wasn’t how she was when she was alive, this wasn’t the full, complete Esme, but a pale copy of her, an imprint left on the earth. A ghost.
But Henry…
Henry was different.
Henry had always been different.
In the right light, in the right moment, from the right angle…
It was impossible to tell him apart from a real boy.
And that was why Evelyn had fallen in love with him. How could younotfall in love with a sweet, kind, handsome undead boy who lived in your bedroom and knocked at your closet door when he wanted to come out and court you? How could you not love Henry? We all loved Henry. But Evelyn had just taken it too far.
“She can’t stay in that house forever,” I said aloud now, to Esme,who actually cocked her head a little, like she was interested in the drama. “He’ll ruin her life. He’llstopher life. I can’t let that happen, right?”
“Who are you talking about?” Esme asked, pausing her game, looking up at me properly now.
“Evelyn.”
“I like Evelyn,” Esme said. “Our names start with the same letter.”
“She’s just… I’m worried she’s making a terrible mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“Throwing her life away. For a…” I trailed off, not wanting to hurt Esme’s feelings.
She let her dolls drop to the floor, then looked around her, as if seeing the living room properly for the first time. When she looked back at me, her eyes were bright. “I could see them, too, you know. Back when I wasn’t dead.”
