After Always Read online

  “I’m not going to leave. We’re going to help you. We’ll face midnight together,” I said. Michael’s eyes met mine over Hannah’s mussed head. He was pale beneath his tan. I wish it wasn’t because he thought he was dealing with two demented girls. But whatever he thought, he reached to put his other hand on her shoulder.

  Slowly, slowly the trembling eased.

  “Octavia is trying,” Hannah said into my shoulder. “She’s trying to help.”

  I still didn’t like Chopin. It was a haunted and horrible sound from my childhood. It seemed saturated with my mother’s tears. Yet I hummed it at Stonebridge. Why? Did it really keep the boogey man away? And, if so, for how long?

  Chapter Fifteen

  “…for earth too dear…”

  (Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5)

  No one noticed Mrs. Brighton played the same album for an hour. I hadn’t been impressed by Mme. Shreve before. I was less so now. She continued to talk and laugh with barely a glance her shattered daughter’s way.

  My mother would have noticed.

  I’m sure of it.

  She would have quietly noticed. There wouldn’t have been a fuss, but she would have noticed.

  I think she’d known something was wrong in my relationship with Tristan. She just hadn’t come close to imagining how wrong.

  Hannah sat on a chair placed at the nearest window. Every now and then her face went drawn and tight. In those tense moments, I think she searched some landscape I couldn’t imagine for her grandmother. Twice, when her face relaxed and her lips eased, a large crystalline tear coursed down her face.

  If a door opened tonight…if Hannah’s abilities were real…maybe Tristan would also be here at midnight. The thought didn’t appeal because if he came he would be coming for me.

  Forever seemed like a threat instead of a promise.

  Michael brought Hannah ginger ale. She asked for scotch. He said no. I laughed with them, but it was hollow and vague. The numbness had gotten worse. My ears rang as if the pressure in the room was high. As if I’d climbed a mountain all the way to the top and couldn’t yawn to make my inner ears pop.

  I heard Michael’s reassurances through a tunnel where the distant roar of surf seemed to be caught in the echoing confines of my head.

  Just before midnight, with a showy flutter of bohemian skirts and with waving arms that made a myriad of bangle bracelets jangle, Mme. Shreve called for everyone’s attention.

  The music stopped.

  In the silence, I thought I heard a great gathering of breath.

  Anticipation tingled in the air. Newbies laughed in high-pitched peals, expecting excitement and revelation. Experienced members, devout after yearly disappointment, still talked among themselves about why this year would be the one when something really happened. They ranged from the curious to the gothic to the grieving. Little did they know, they might be right.

  The pressure in my ears had finally eased. In the equalized space of my inner ear, I heard a song. Not Chopin. And I suddenly missed it. Wishing for its protective embrace. Because what I heard was an echo of my own playing—“The Butterfly Lovers’ Concerto”—it began halting and squeaky, but it continued stronger, ever stronger. I had no doubt these were my own performances somehow caught and kept and replayed now to taunt me.

  “Resist him,” Hannah said. She’d risen and come to my side.

  “What?” Michael said. His hands clenched and unclenched with nothing concrete to fix or fight.

  “She’s hearing music. He’s teasing her, but it isn’t a game. He’s already inside of you, Lydia. He’s already manipulating you,” she said.

  “Who, Hannah, who?” I said. The music was confusing me. How could Jericho have known about Shanbo and Zhu?

  “Jericho knows what you know, Lydia. Anything he can glean from your thoughts, from your heart. He knows about Tristan, what you had, and what you didn’t tell,” Hannah said softly in my ear. She respected my privacy in front of others. Even if Jericho didn’t. “I can’t tell you whether or not Tristan is gone for good. I don’t know. But I can tell you that Jericho loves your pain and confusion.”

  Michael came closer. He stood on the other side of me so I was flanked by friends. The music played faster, more frantic, the timing all wrong. Had I played it this way? No wonder my fingers were raw. I’d played until they bled. Then played some more. Evermore. But the music was only a doorway he’d used to open my soul. He wanted more than music. I felt the avarice, the hunger…the fear.

  “He’s afraid,” I said. The music eased. “He’s afraid I’ll be able to resist.”

  We followed the others into the adjacent room where a large round table had been prepared. A pillar candle made with black wax sat in front of one of the chairs. That’s where Mme. Shreve placed herself in a rustle of colorful silk and a clank of bracelets.

  “She uses the flame to channel. Or pretends to,” Hannah said.

  We sat on the opposite side of the table as far from the candle as we could get.

  “Please…I must have absolute silence,” Mme. Shreve commanded. Hannah sighed. Her mother’s voice was high and loud and suddenly touched with a British accent, as if she had taken the stage.

  No one else seemed to notice. Whispers died out. People settled themselves into chairs. We were all holding our breaths and every scrape of a leg on the floor seemed jarring and loud.

  Hannah’s mother took a long fireplace match from a box and struck it on the side with a magician’s flourish. She lit the pillar candle’s wick. It sputtered and popped with explosive sparks. Mme. Shreve jumped as if she’d been frightened by the sudden crackle of the leaping flame. The rest of us startled as well.

  All except Michael.

  He sat on my opposite side as still as stone.

  Watching.

  A sentinel.

  His amber eyes were trained on my face.

  Hannah reached for my hand. Then, everyone else was joining hands as well. It was in the séance playbook, after all, but I think it was the shock of the startle that caused it. This was suddenly happening and real even to those of us who’d never experienced a séance before.

  Hannah’s face went tight. I watched her red lips purse and her jaw clench. But no rose appeared. Not in her hair. Not on her dress. She was still alone.

  This time there were no tears when her face relaxed. Instead, she squeezed my fingers and sat up straight and tall.

  Mme. Shreve started to speak again. I wanted to shout over her. She welcomed the spirits into our midst. I wanted to tell them to go away. She asked them for knowledge and guidance. I hoped only Hannah’s grandmother would answer her daughter’s call.

  Without the stereo’s buffer, the surf had grown loud. I could easily hear it—crashing, crashing, crashing. Suddenly, the collective table jumped again as rain began to lash against the windows with driving force, rattling the glass.

  A storm.

  A midnight storm.

  The flame guttered as if blown by a sudden breeze. Grotesque shadows out of proportion and detached from the objects that threw them danced around the walls.

  Mme. Shreve’s eyes closed, and her head fell forward with her chin down. Hannah’s fingers went lax in mine. It wasn’t Mme. Shreve who spoke next. It was Hannah. She spoke, but it was an alien voice that came guttural and deep from her chest.

  “Welcome to Stonebridge,” Hannah said. “I hope you’re enjoying your stay.”

  There were gasps, sighs, and one woman began to cry. Mme. Shreve looked at her daughter, and I could only describe her expression as horrible—all fear and loathing with nothing of motherly love.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” I asked.

  I shouldn’t have gotten the tattoo when I didn’t want to. I shouldn’t have agonized over every action trying to keep him happy long after I thought my happiness was at risk. And the second he had become violent I should have walked away.

  Michael squeezed my hand. A warning? A reflex? I couldn�
�t be sure. But I needed to know.

  A different voice came now, soft and gasping, from Hannah’s lips as her chest rose and fell.

  “I found his papers. I read them. The rituals he planned to carry out. I couldn’t allow it. I was afraid, but I told him no more. I told him the bloodletting was making me ill, as if I didn’t know what they were doing. So, so afraid. They watched me. His valet was always there. I couldn’t run away. Then my time came. I was desperate. I was going to run, but it was too late. I know it was him. I saw the doll in his hand. I fought. I tried to resist. But…I…I walked into the sea.”

  It had to be Octavia speaking through Hannah.

  She’d drowned herself and her baby as it was being born, but she’d been forced to do it by an occult-obsessed madman.

  “He wouldn’t let us go. Dead, I couldn’t stop him. He fished my body from the sea. Our baby…our baby was born on the sand. She never took her first breath. She never cried. He carried out his horrible intentions. He used our ashes and our blood,” Hannah said in an older, wearier voice, backed by decades of pain. The voice of Octavia Jericho. “Now my baby cries from his portrait on the wall. Can’t you hear her?”

  Another woman at the table had started to cry. Her sobs were soft and low but deep and groaning as if the sobs came from some empty place inside that echoed.

  I didn’t know what to say to Octavia. It seemed wrong that she was using my new friend to speak to me. Unnatural. I couldn’t imagine the compulsion for sharing her horrible story that kept her going a hundred years after she’d been murdered. I wanted her to leave Hannah alone. It couldn’t be safe for a young girl to give voice to that much festered pain.

  But just as a silence had seemed to fall, Hannah jerked. The large, heavy table rattled as if it was something larger than a petite teenage girl slamming into it.

  “I miss you, Zhu. Very much. I want to see you again. You promised me forever, remember?” This time it wasn’t Octavia. Hannah’s voice had gone deeper, more guttural. Like the first voice that had welcomed us to Stonebridge. Not Hannah. Not Hannah at all.

  Her hand had come to life again. It now gripped mine with crushing force causing my knuckles to ache.

  My chest had gone tight. My eyes burned. Tristan was gone. Gone for good. He wasn’t coming back. And the reason I ached was because I was glad. He’d been a force of nature that tumbled and tossed like the storm outside. I’d been wrecked by our relationship and then I’d been devastated by his death, but part of my tragedy was that I’d also felt relief.

  Because a dead Tristan could be remade into the perfect lover he hadn’t been.

  I had been standing in my own way, blocking the possibility of moving on with Michael because I didn’t want to admit to the world that I’d made a huge mistake with Tristan. I had been afraid of trying again, of trusting again, with someone new.

  “No,” I said. In the end, forever wouldn’t have satisfied Tristan. He’d needed more. And no one could survive giving that much of themselves to another person. Michael didn’t want me to lose myself all the way to the bone for him. He liked me. He wanted to be with me. He didn’t want to own me and control me. And he never would.

  The butterfly on my neck blazed to life as if to punish me for giving Tristan up. I cried out. Michael’s chair crashed to the floor. He’d sprung to his feet. He tried to pull me away, but Not Hannah wouldn’t let me go. Fingers ground into mine, crushing skin and bone.

  “Stop, Hannah. Stop. Let go,” I begged. But Not Hannah liked my pain. Whatever was in her, speaking through her, only tightened her fingers.

  Mrs. Brighton made her way to us, using the backs of chairs to steady her wobbly knees.

  “What’s happening, Michael?” she asked, obviously afraid.

  My vision was blackening at the edges. The pain in my already raw fingers made my stomach queasy and my head grow light.

  Michael reached for our hands. He started to pry Hannah’s fingers from mine, one by one.

  “Be careful. It isn’t her,” I said.

  “What do you mean it isn’t her?” Mme. Shreve exclaimed. “She’s obviously acting. This is all a joke. She’s ruined everything.”

  No one listened. There wasn’t anyone in the room who doubted that something had possessed Hannah Shreve including Mme. Shreve herself.

  “Come to me, Zhu. Be with me again.” Not Hannah pulled me closer using the leverage of my hand I couldn’t bear to resist.

  Our bodies came together, breast to breast, and I blushed. But it wasn’t Hannah who held me. The light blue eyes I’d noticed from the start had gone dark. Her pupils were huge, making her eyes startling black pools. From her feminine red lips, a man’s voice came, and when Not Hannah pulled me even closer, it was him that brushed those lips along my cheeks to taste my tear-dampened skin.

  “You are mine, Zhu Liang. Don’t doubt it. Don’t fight it,” Not Hannah said.

  She lashed out at Michael with her free hand. Her arm caught him across the chest with such force he was knocked back several feet to slam against the wall.

  “No!” I shouted when he slumped to the floor.

  I slapped Hannah’s face. The strength of the blow rocked her head backward, but when she lifted her face again and smiled, it wasn’t her smile. I ached to see her beautiful pale skin showing the pink imprint of my hand. Her face, but Jericho’s smile. Not Tristan, no matter what he said. Tristan was a troubled man who was gone from my life forever.

  Jericho was using poor Hannah as he tried to use me. He’d made me play the violin. He made Hannah hurt me. I thought maybe he wanted to hurt Octavia for trying to help me as well. Though she was small, Hannah grabbed my arms and crushed me to her chest. She pressed her lips to mine and kissed me, but it wasn’t her. She tasted sweet. Like strawberries. But it wasn’t her. It was him. He had no right to use her this way. No right to open her lips against mine. The force of the “kiss” was so great he made our lips bleed, corrupting something that should have been intimate and pleasurable.

  I struggled. I fought.

  But it wasn’t until the scent of roses began to fill the air that the crush eased.

  Soft tickles of something silky fell along my cheeks and on my hands. Hannah started. She pulled back. A trickle of blood trailed down her pointed chin where my teeth had cut her lip. We both looked up and around. Rose petals fell from above our heads, materializing from nowhere. It was their silky touch I felt on my skin. They fell on Hannah exclusively now. Only her. A shower of rose petals on her head.

  She blinked. She licked her lips. My lips were swollen and a hint of blood met my tongue when I touched it to a corner of my mouth. Hannah’s eyes widened. As I watched, her pupils contracted, returning to normal. But then twin spots of color flared in her cheeks.

  Michael had staggered to his feet, but he clutched his ribs.

  Mrs. Brighton had collapsed onto a chair.

  “It’s okay. We’re okay,” I said.

  The woman who had been crying earlier came to Mrs. B. Her tears had been shocked away. She placed a hand on Mrs. Brighton’s shoulder and Mrs. B. patted it absently while she watched us with wide eyes. She nodded. I’m not sure she accepted my assessment or if she just wanted the rest of the drama to unfold.

  Hannah’s eyes locked on mine. I didn’t know what she’d experienced in those moments when Jericho had used her, but I wouldn’t compound the horror by holding it against her.

  “Your grandmother…” I said.

  I reached to pick up a handful of rose petals. They were as real in my fingers as if I’d picked them from a garden. Other guests were picking them up, smelling them, throwing them into the air to watch them fall.

  Mme. Shreve stood. She came around the table in a rush of skirts and rose petals.

  “Why did you do this?” she demanded. “Why would you do this to me?”

  “I’m only following in your footsteps, Mom. We are Shreves, after all,” Hannah replied.

  I watched in wonder as Hannah stood.
I blinked as the blood disappeared from her chin and her hair was smoothed as if by an invisible brush. The red satin rose reappeared in her now-sleek hair. I wanted to kiss her again because I think it took a lot to stand up to Mme. Shreve.

  Hannah walked away. I glanced at Mrs. Brighton. She sat straighter in her chair, and she was calming others around her. She noted my concern and waved me away, gesturing toward Hannah’s back. I ignored Mme. Shreve’s sputtering protests and followed her daughter. I heard Michael’s footsteps behind me. I caught up with Hannah in the ballroom and grabbed her hand with the aching hand she’d crushed when she hadn’t been herself. Michael reached for her other hand. When we passed the turntable, a jazz record began to play, echoing up and out to fill the room.

  I smiled because midnight had come and gone and we’d survived.

  I think Grandmother Shreve approved.

  …

  Hannah said she needed to sleep. Michael offered to walk her to her room. She was shy with me, awkward as she hadn’t been before. Two spots of color persisted in her porcelain cheeks echoing the ruby red of her lips.

  The heat in my cheeks probably indicated a matching blush.

  But I wasn’t going to be stupid about it. The kiss had been Jericho, and it had been as much about punishing Octavia as it had been about hurting me and Hannah. He loved to hurt us all because pain was the only power he had.

  I squeezed Hannah’s hand before I let it go. She smiled in response, but it was fleeting. Her cool fingers easily slipped from mine. The music slowed to an echoing halt in the ballroom as Hannah’s grandmother must have left the room, too.

  Footsteps sounded up the stairs and down the hall long after they disappeared, until I was alone in the foyer. The storm outside had gentled to a steady rain. It was nothing to walk out in it. The heavy side door responded to my tug. I stepped out onto wet flagstones in my heels. Cool moisture falling from the sky soothed my blush, but it soon had my gray dress slicked to my skin even though I was partially sheltered under the overhang of the house.