A Darkness Strange and Lovely

mattered was the future and regaining the Wilcox family’s favor.

She’d stopped screaming once the whole truth came out.

Shifting in my seat, I wet my lips and resumed my cold account. “The man . . . the man raising the

Dead across the city,” I said, “was my brother. Elijah killed Clarence out of revenge for our father.”

Allison’s body turned rigid, but she made no other indication that she’d heard. So I kept talking.

“After Clarence died and I learned the truth, I went with the Spirit-Hunters to Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Elijah was there, trying to raise our father’s corpse. I—” My voice broke, and I had to grit my teeth to keep going. “I stopped Elijah, but then . . . he died.” I glanced at Allison, finally meeting her eyes.

They were hard—unnaturally so—and it took me a moment to recognize the emotion she wore.

Revulsion.

Yet before I could think how to react, we turned onto a new street and Allison spoke. “Why couldn’t you simply tell me that all this was happening? While it was happening?”

“Would it have changed things?” I rubbed my wrist. “Clarence would still have died, and it would still be my brother’s fault.” And Mama would still have cracked, and I would still be friendless, handless, and fleeing Philadelphia.

Allison clenched her jaw and didn’t answer for several long seconds. Then she said, “Why are you going to Paris all by yourself?”

I tensed. “How did you know Paris? I only mentioned France.”

“Lucky guess.” She frowned. “Now explain. ”

“Do you . . .” I gulped. I had to keep talking—and I had to keep shoving my feelings aside as I did.

“Do you remember the seance my mother held in June? The one where all the guests fainted?”

“Of course.”

“Well, Mama did let in a spirit that night.”

Allison’s brows drew together. “So it wasn’t all theatrics as you claimed?”

“I wish . . . but no. The spirit was a dead necromancer named Marcus. He’d been waiting for years to reenter the earthly realm. His time in death had made him strong, and once he was out of the spirit world, he found my brother. Marcus used Elijah’s magic against him. When Elijah cast a spell to bring

Father back to life, Marcus was able to use the spell instead to bring himself back to life . . . and he was able to possess the nearest corpse.”

“Your father’s body?”

“No. Elijah’s.” I cringed as an image of my father’s skeleton, its jaws latched onto my brother’s throat, formed in my mind. “My father’s skeleton killed Elijah, thereby giving Marcus access to the freshly dead body. And the spell—a spell to bind a ghost to a corpse—was Marcus’s ticket to a new life in the earthly realm.”

A life I would end as soon as I had the chance.

Allison’s eyes grew wide. “So you’re saying your brother’s body is walking around with this

Marcus spirit inside?”

“Yes.” Yellow eyes and howling dogs flared in my mind, sending a ghostly pain through my wrist.

Distractedly, I massaged it.

“And your hand,” Allison said, her nose curling up slightly, “what happened?”

“One of the Hungry Dead bit it.” More memories, more flashes of blood and chaos, flooded through my mind. The Hungry who had bitten me—a long-dead Civil War soldier—had been so fast.

So rabid. There’d been no chance for me to escape.

“By the time I broke free,” I added softly, “it was too late. My hand was destroyed, and I had to have it amputated.”

Her face paled, but other than that she was surprisingly calm. It was . . . odd. And so very, very different from Mama’s reaction. “You are handling it all quite stoically,” I told her.

Allison’s eyes flicked to the window. “I would hardly call my reaction stoic. But I do not deal with my grief through hysterics.” She spat the word.

“My mother does not have hysterics,” I said sharply. “Mama has melancholia. For days I could not get her to eat, to leave her bed, or even to speak to me. Her mind—her will to live—simply vanished.

And Kirkbride’s,” I tried to say in a gentler tone, “was the only solution I could conjure.”

Allison gave no response, and I was grateful when, moments later, we rattled to the end of the street—to where Kirkbride’s famous hospital for the insane stood. I scooted to the edge of my seat.

“We’re here.” I pointed at the wrought iron fence, behind which were gold-tipped trees and an enormous white mansion. With its long, ever-growing wings and cupolas, and its beautiful grounds and gardens, the hospital was meant to be a soothing place for the mentally disturbed to regain their wits. A haven of peace and beauty right in the middle of Philadelphia’s hustle.

I set my hand on the door as the carriage slowed to a halt before the entrance gate. “Thank you for the ride.”

Allison’s lips puckered. “I am not finished with you yet.”

I hesitated. “I told you what you wanted to know.”

“And I want to know more. Now shut pan and get out. I’ll come with you into the hospital.”

“No!” I lifted a pleading hand. “It’s dangerous. Please, Allie—”

“Don’t,” she hissed. “Don’t you ever call me that. That was his name for me.”

Shame seared through my face, hot and heavy. I turned away. Of course I had to use Clarence’s nickname right when Allison’s heart was no doubt aching. But it was too late for apologies or for begging that she stay. I had lost the argument, and Allison was already pushing out the carriage door. I hurried after her.

We strode through the gate, where the guard bobbed his head at me in recognition. I spared a quick glance for the wide, grassy front lawn—sometimes Mama liked to sit there—but all I found were vacant benches and the bronze statue of William Penn standing guard.

“My mother is probably in the back,” I murmured to Allison, waving to a gravel path that circled the huge hospital. Despite more than a hundred acres of gardens and forest to entertain the mental patients, Mama was always on that front lawn or beside the same azalea bush in the back. There was a low fountain there that kept the summer heat away.

We set off, our feet crunching on the gravel.

“So what,” Allison said with carefully flat inflection, “does your mother do here? It seems like a holiday resort.”

“It’s meant to be that way.” I glanced at her, but it wasn’t until we reached the end of the white mansion that I added, “My mother needs calm, not violence and straitjackets.”

Allison’s eyebrows lifted. “And has it worked?”

No, I thought as we passed a wisteria bush. But I do not think anything will work. . . . I took in a breath to tell her this, to explain that I had tried everything, when a long, throat-rattling shriek rang out—a shriek I knew well.

Fright burst inside me, and I broke into a sprint. My heels kicked up gravel, and I could hear

Allison running just behind.

We bounded past azalea bushes when another scream ripped out. With it came shouts.

I skidded around the last bush beside the fountain, only to find struggling figures on the other side of the low pool: my mother, screeching and wrestling with two nurses. I surged to the fountain’s lip.

“Mrs. Fitt, settle down!” shouted one nurse, her uniform rumpled and her hat missing. She held

Mama’s hands clasped.

“Let go of me!” Mama shoved and tugged, trying to free her arms.

The second nurse spotted me. “Miss Fitt, thank heavens! Help us get her back to her room! We’ve dragged her across the entire grounds.”

I stepped forward just as Mama whipped around. She yanked once, and her hands broke free of the nurse’s grasp. My mother was a powerfully built woman—it was a wonder the two small nurses had managed to contain her this long.

“You!” Mama thrust a pointed finger at me. “You!” Her gray hair was falling from