Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil — Chapter no 81

V

When Alice lurches back into her body, she’s standing in an elevator.

The darkened hallway of the club is gone, replaced by walls and doors of hammered copper, a hundred bits of warped reflection staring back. Alice’s vision is stained red, as if she got blood in her eyes, but no matter how many times she blinks the color is still there, until she finally realizes that someone has changed out the overhead light, replaced the normal white with red, tinting the world inside the elevator crimson.

She’s not alone. Sabine leans against the other wall, humming softly to herself as the elevator rises up, and up, and up.

Panic floods Alice’s mouth like bile, because there’s a void where time should be, and she doesn’t remember leaving the club, doesn’t remember walking through the streets of Boston—she must have, because she can smell the night air on her skin—doesn’t remember getting here, but here she is, Sabine humming beside her as if nothing is wrong.

Alice shrinks back into the wall and tries to smother her racing mind, her frantic thoughts, tells herself—quietly, quietly—that this is what she wanted, or at least, what she needs.

The elevator dings as it reaches the top, and then the doors are sliding open, onto a penthouse, exposed brick with floor-to-ceiling views of Boston, the floor a stretch of black concrete, polished to a shine, and Alice remembers what Lottie said about Sabine’s love of luxury, her insistence on fine things.

Sabine strolls into the penthouse foyer as if it’s hers—which it might be now, but it was clearly someone else’s first. There are picture frames face down on all the shelves, marks on the floor where the low furniture has been dragged into a new shape. The scent on the air is leather, cologne, musk.

Sabine glances back at Alice pressed into the elevator walls, clearly waiting for her to follow. Alice pushes herself off the copper, starts forward,

but something happens at the elevator doors. A sudden force, heavy as stone, holding her back, and she thinks it must be her own body trying to

protect her, until Sabine chuckles.

“Of course. Apologies. Come in.”

And just like that, the air loosens, the boundary dissolves, and Alice steps into the penthouse. The elevator doors slide shut behind her with grim finality as she forces herself forward.

Sabine sinks onto the edge of a low suede sofa, and leans down to slip off her shoes, and while her head is bowed Alice steals a look around the massive room for anything that might serve as a makeshift weapon, but apparently the businessman Sabine has stolen this place from cared more about fine art and books than weaponry.

“Relax,” says Sabine without looking up. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”

Alice tenses, tries to rein her thoughts back in, even as she says, “I am.”

Sabine tuts. “Death is rot and ruin. Death is bones and dirt. You are a rose that grew out of it.” Her gaze drifts up, and Alice sees that the light in her eyes isn’t entirely gone. It flickers, somehow dark and bright at once, like coals. “You should be grateful.”

Alice clenches her teeth against the words she’d like to say to that. But one still hisses out. “Grateful?”

Sabine’s mouth twitches, and she rises, bare feet padding across the concrete floor as she approaches, and Alice, to her credit, doesn’t retreat, even though it takes every modicum of strength to let the distance close between them.

Sabine is almost to her when she says, “Sit.”

The word lands like a hand on Alice’s shoulder, and her knees fold before her mind can register, a chair catching her before she hits the floor. And she doesn’t know how she’s going to do this, do anything, when her own body listens to Sabine instead of her.

Why didn’t Lottie warn her this would happen?

Why did she let her think she had a chance?

Sabine drifts behind Alice, and she listens to the soft padding of her steps as she looks around for something, anything she might be able to use.

But if there was clutter, Sabine has done away with almost all of it.

On the table in front of her there is a single photography book, the cover showing the Scottish Highlands of all places.

On the kitchen island, the knife block has been emptied, but beside it there’s a vase of flowers just beginning to wilt.

On a bar cart against the wall, she spots something that clearly didn’t come with the house: a glass carafe atop a warming plate, the contents thick and crimson.

Alice’s throat tightens at the sight, and then she notices the steps have stopped, a heady silence pooling behind her back right before a cold hand slides along her collarbone. Sabine drapes her arms around Alice’s shoulders, a coil of red hair snaking down her front.

“Tell me, Alice,” she whispers in that voice like sand and silk, “why are you here?”

Alice frowns, forces one truth from her head in favor of another. “You made me follow you.”

She feels Sabine’s mouth twitch against her cheek. “Did I?”

Alice blinks, and she’s back in the club, the world dropping into darkness.

“You compelled me.”

Sabine hums in thought. “When you nudge a body, do you know which way it always falls?” The arms withdraw, and Sabine rounds the chair to face her. “It falls the way it’s leaning. Compulsion is a lie you tell yourself.

The truth is, you’re here because some part of you wanted to come with me.”

Alice could deny it. But the thing is that she’s right.

On some level, if she’s being honest with herself, she wanted this, she needed it, not just for the plan to work, and not just because of what Sabine did, what Lottie did, what Alice has to find a way to do.

No, ever since she first woke up the day after the party, the world tipped off its axis, the ground gone out beneath her feet, Alice has felt like she is falling. She thought finding Lottie would make the feeling stop, but it didn’t, because Lottie wasn’t the one standing at the bottom.

Sabine is.

She’s the ground at the end of the long, long drop.

And now that Alice is here, the falling has stopped.

Sabine tips her head to one side. “Exactly. Now,” she says, “what are we

going to do about our Charlotte?”

Our Charlotte.

Alice tries to conjure the warmth she felt when they were walking down

the street, when Lottie turned and kissed her at the corner, but instead her mind goes to the club, the moment Lottie let go of her and slipped away.

Leaving her alone.

To be caught.

“She killed you,” says Sabine, and the words force her back.

“You killed me,” says Alice, unable to stop the anger that rises up, can almost feel it wicking off of her. But Sabine only shakes her head.

“No,” she says, lowering herself onto the sofa. She stretches her arms along the top, her hair cascading down the back. A dozen pendants hang on brittle chains around her neck, tokens from her latest kills, and Alice searches, wondering if there is something of hers there, stolen with the rest, or if she doesn’t count.

“Charlotte knew what would happen if she took you to bed,” says Sabine, “and she did it anyway. Just like she did to all those other girls.” She lets her head fall back, her throat exposed as her gaze drifts over the ceiling high above. “Even Penny.” The name hangs there before her chin tips down, her strange eyes finding Alice. “Did you hear about poor Penny?”

She nods, and Sabine sits forward, hands and hair trailing down the sofa in her wake.

“So tell me, dear Alice,” she says, those eyes searching her as if she’s a puzzle to be solved, “why our Charlotte didn’t do the same to you.”

Alice blinks and in that fraction of a second, she is back in the hotel, Lottie meeting her gaze in the mirror and mouthing the words before Alice

says them.

“She told me I was special.”

At that, Sabine laughs. And it’s a horrible sound, not because of the tone —bright and high as bells—but because it’s just as hollow.

Indignation rises inside Alice, and it feels better than fear, so she doesn’t try to hold it back. “Maybe you’re just mad that she’s finally moved on,” she mutters. “Maybe you can’t stand that she’s found someone else.”

Sabine’s laughter dies. Her smile doesn’t, but it’s gone as cold and stiff as ice.

“Alice, sweet Alice,” she purrs, “Charlotte doesn’t care about you. She hates you. Hates what you are. What we are. She looks at you and all she

feels is guilt.”

Alice winces.

“You’re just another broken toy discarded in her wake. But don’t worry. I

won’t let you go to waste.”

Alice doesn’t know what Sabine’s planning to do, but she knows she’s running out of time, and she forces herself to breathe, in and then out, trying to think and unthink at the same time, trying to find a way out of this, or through. The scent of blood wafts toward her from the cart against the wall, fills her nose and throat. And it gives her an idea.

She swallows, glances up.

“I’m thirsty.”

Sabine cocks her head, amused. “Of course you are.” She flicks her fingers toward the bar cart. “Help yourself.”

Alice feels her body come unstuck from the chair, has to force her legs not to betray her by surging up too fast. She stands, and tries to imagine the air is made of syrup. She wades slowly toward the cart, fingers shaking as she reaches for the carafe with one hand, and her necklace with the other.

She doesn’t dare look back over her shoulder but she listens, as closely as she can, for any sign Sabine has moved. Even without a heartbeat, without the steady in and out of breath, bodies make sound. The suede sofa groans beneath the slightest motion. Her hair will whisper if she rises, the lace will shift against her skin, and even as Alice thinks these things, she tries not to,

instead fills her head with Lottie.

Think about her.

(And how she kissed you.)

Think about her.

(And how she promised you.)

Think about her. (And how she left you again.) Fear and panic begin to bubble up, but instead of shoving them back down, Alice lets them boil over, spill into the air around her as she tips the last of her mother’s grave dirt into one of the glasses, and pours the blood over the top. Every passing fraction of a second, she expects to turn and see Sabine right there, knows that face will be the last thing she sees before the world snaps off like a light.

But the moment passes, and Sabine doesn’t come, and the vial is closed, the necklace back beneath Alice’s dress, and the glasses are in her hands, and she is turning, and Sabine is still there on the sofa, her head tipped back but her eyes locked fast on Alice, like a cat considering a mouse.

Alice nearly falters, but carries the glasses to the coffee table, sets one

before Sabine, and then, instead of returning to the chair, she sits on the sofa beside her, just out of arm’s reach. If Sabine cares about the closeness, it doesn’t show.

Alice lifts her own glass to her lips and drinks, feels the well open inside her, the blood dropping down, down, and out of reach without even touching the sides. She empties the glass and sets it down.

Languidly, Sabine sits forward. “You and I,” she says, “are going to help each other.”

Alice tenses as she watches Sabine’s hand drift toward her glass. “How?”

“You’re going to help me catch Charlotte.”

Alice almost laughs, despite herself, at the absurdity of it, of this, of the fact that somehow after everything these two have put her through, she is still just a pawn to them, a piece, to be used, or thrown away.

“Is that so?” she says through gritted teeth, fighting her anger down again as she forces her attention to the glass before Sabine, watches as her fingers graze the rim of the glass. Only to nudge it back toward Alice. “Go ahead.”

Alice tenses. “You aren’t thirsty?” she asks, trying to keep her voice—her mind—from showing anything.

Sabine’s mouth twitches. “Always. But I don’t drink anything that’s already been decanted.” She flicks her fingers toward the bar cart. “That was all for you.”

Disappointment washes over Alice, but she fights it back, knows she can’t let it get too loud. Instead, she thinks about the hunger, looks from her empty glass to Sabine’s full one, and thinks about how hard it is, how horrible, that even knowing that it’s tainted, she has to fight the urge to reach for it, to drink, the hunger inside her somehow disconnected from her sense of reason, and no wonder it’s the thing that makes them reckless, like Ezra said, the hunger that undoes them, when the rest has rotted.

Sabine settles back, and this time the light catches on something beneath her dress. At first, Alice thinks it is a bit of jewelry, like the pendants hanging round her neck, but then she sees the silver glint of the mesh and realizes with rising horror.

That Sabine is wearing fucking chain mail.

Alice feels the last of her hope gutter, right then and there, because how the fuck is she supposed to—no.

She forces her panic to change course, her attention going back to the

sofa, back to Sabine, remembers something Lottie said, that all she had left

was the hunt.

The need to stalk, to catch, to kill.

Alice shifts a little closer on the couch and asks, “What happens when we find her?”

Sabine’s lips press into a thin grim line. “I think it’s time for this game of ours to end.”

A game, even now. A fucking game. Alice lets annoyance stain the air.

She doesn’t care. “I never asked to play.”

Sabine inclines her head, reaches out a cool hand to Alice’s cheek. “I know,” she says.

Alice doesn’t recoil, even though she wants to. Because there’s only one way out of this, and if she had a human heart it might give her away, but she doesn’t. Not anymore. So she reaches up, and lays her fingers over Sabine’s, and says, “I’ll help you. If it means she pays.”

Sabine looks at her again, only this time not like she’s a problem or a puzzle, but a pet. Her hand slides through Alice’s hair, cups the back of her neck.

“Maybe there is something special to you after all.”

Alice smiles, feels herself go warm as Sabine’s mouth hovers over hers, because Lottie was right, there is a power to her, a heat to her attention, like all the lights switched on inside the house. Like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

But when Sabine leans in to kiss her, Alice pulls back.

Sabine’s eyes narrow in annoyance, but she only ducks her head. “Sorry,” she says with a light chuckle. “It’s been a long few nights.” Her gaze flicks back up. “Would you mind if I had a shower first?”

First, that word like a promise in the air.

Sabine’s hand unwinds itself from Alice’s hair, slides like a tear down her cheek, drops away.

“By all means,” she says, the benevolent host, nodding to the open doorway on the right. Slowly, Alice rises from the sofa, and ambles toward the room as if she has all the time in the world.

She glances back once, to make sure Sabine is watching, then steps through into a master bedroom, and then a master bath, leaving each door ajar in her wake. Alice turns on the shower as hot as it will go, and peels out of her clothes, fills her mind with a song she knows by heart.

When I was a child / I got lost in the woods.

The trees parted for me / made such a clear trail Then closed up behind me / now I’m turned around Been trying so long now / to find a way out.

And by the time she’s done with the first verse, steam has filled the tiled room, so thick it fogs the mirror, too, but when Alice pauses at the slate sink, she doesn’t search for her reflection. Instead, she sings aloud, soft but high and sweet, as her hands press flat against the stone counter.

“I live in these woods now / the trees hold me close.”

Her voice just loud enough to cover the sound as it cracks.

Alice pushes off the sink and steps into the shower, singing the last line, the one Catty never listened long enough to hear.

“No longer lost now / I found my way home.”

Catty leaves a voice note on a Monday. (Not a call, if it had been a call, she would have answered, day or night, which Catty must have known.) “Hey, Bones,” it starts, as all their conversations do, and when Alice listens to it later, the first thing she’ll always notice is that her sister sounds exhausted, her voice foxed at the edges, the way it used to be when they shared a bed, and stayed up talking under their covers until their thoughts went slow, dragged down with sleep.

“You ever think about how mad it is, that we only get one life?”

The sound of a lighter flicking. A long inhale.

“There are all these things I want to do. People I want to be. And sometimes it breaks my heart, that I’m stuck with just this one.”

A pause, the kind she loves to take, and Alice can see her, can’t she?

Striking a pose.

Waiting to be noticed.

“Wouldn’t it be better if it were a game? If we could play until we lose, and then just start again? New Alice. New Catty. Maybe that’s what death is, and we just don’t know it. A chance to play again.”

A laugh that’s not a laugh. A sound lodged in her throat.

“Sorry, I’m tired . . . What did Mum used to say?” A sigh. “I know, you don’t remember . . . something about tired minds being good soil for bad thoughts. How the best thing you can do is go to bed. Bet I’ll wake up, and feel brand new.”

Catty leaves that message on a Monday.

And on Tuesday, Alice’s whole world just—stops.

Her cell phone rings (her number, it turns out, is the only one saved in Catty’s phone) and even though she doesn’t recognize the caller, she picks up, and she knows.

She knows in the silence before the man starts talking, in the breath he sucks in.

She knows, before he asks to speak to a parent, a guardian, to anyone but her.

She knows, before she hands the phone to her father, before she watches his face collapse, and then his knees— She knows that her sister is dead.

Brilliant, terrifying, angry, tired Catty, hit by a car in Glasgow, which is how Alice learns she never got away, never made it to London.

Maddening, gorgeous, miserable, proud Catty, who didn’t call from Trafalgar Square, didn’t journey south at all, who was in fact an hour north of Hoxburn, with nothing on her but a crumpled tenner in the pocket of her jeans, and a cheap pay-as-you-go phone in the pocket of her coat, which somehow survived the accident.

Catty, who, according to the driver, stepped right out in front of him.

The driver, who stayed with her until the ambulance came, even though it was too late. There was nothing they could do.

And Alice can’t fathom how she didn’t feel it happen.

The moment the metal connected with Catty’s side, the moment she folded like a house of cards beneath the wheel, the kind of violence that’s supposed to vibrate down the line, the kind of absence that yawns like an open pit, a sinkhole.

She should have felt it right at the moment Catty stopped, not an hour later, when the phone rang and she was doing dishes, elbows sloshing in the soapy water so it took her an extra few seconds to dry her hands, dig out her cell. Seconds that meant nothing because by that point, Catty was already dead.

It was fast, the man on the phone assures her father, and all Alice can see is Catty sprinting down the road ahead of her.

Slow down.

Come back.

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