“Have you fought Aunt Tillie before?” The mere possibility had my mind buzzing. “Will she recognize you when she sees you?”
“I’ve never fought her. I knew better than to take her on. But like I said, she’s not what she once was.”
“You should say that to her face.”
Rosemary’s chuckle was low, drawn out, and tinged with evil. “You’re so amusing. Even now, when I’ve told you that she’s diminishing, you believe she’ll walk through the door and save you.”
I didn’t believe that. I didn’t even hope for it. I wanted Aunt Tillie to be safe. Whatever entity had taken up residence in Rosemary was dangerous. “How long have you been inside of Rosemary?”
“Long enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“What answer will make you feel better?” She cocked her head and regarded me with overt amusement. “Do you want to hear that I took her over yesterday? That she had a vulnerable moment and couldn’t hold me off? That she’s somewhere close, just beneath the surface, fighting to escape?”
I ground my molars together. “I don’t really know if that would make me feel better,” I said. “I just want the truth.”
“Rosemary has been ... struggling ... for some time,” she replied. “The weight of her grandmother’s expectations and her mother’s indifference had her feeling sorry for herself. She met Brian here, as you recall, and when he enacted a plan to get back at you for stealing his newspaper, he enlisted her.
“He romanced her, pretended to care about her, and gave Rosemary the things she’d always yearned for,” she continued. “Rosemary thought he really cared for her. Even when he showed up one day and was markedly different, almost as if another person was living in his skin, she believed he was her salvation.”
The amusement flitting across the thing that had taken over Rosemary’s face turned my stomach. “Somehow the thing inside Brian convinced her to open herself up to possession,” I surmised.
“That’s an ugly word. She’s not possessed. She’s simply sharing herself with another individual.”
“Except you’re the one in control here,” I argued. “You have all the say in what’s happening. Does Rosemary even grasp what’s happening?”
“Rosemary had no idea what she was agreeing to. She only knew that Brian wanted it, so she gave in. Now she spends all her time walled off in a prison of her own making. She doesn’t want to know what he’s doing. She doesn’t want to know what I’m doing. All the better for me.”
“Because?”
“Because there’s nothing I hate more than a vessel that rebels against the process.”
Something about the way she stated it piqued my interest. “You’ve been in other people before.”
“I prefer thinking of them as vessels.”
“If you strip them of dignity, make them things instead of people, it’s easier for you to ignore what you’re really doing.”
“And what’s that?”
“Raping them. You’re erasing what they were, forcing them to be what they’re not, and taking away their choice. You’re pretty much the evilest of the evil. What I want to know is how you got this way. You weren’t always a disembodied soul looking to invade people.”
“I certainly wasn’t,” she readily agreed, smirking. “I was human once. A long time ago. Before your Tillie even graced this earth. I knew your grandmother, Caroline. She made a name for herself selling potions and spells when it was unheard of for women to run their own businesses.
“Your grandfather was a philanderer of the highest order,” she continued. “He embarrassed your grandmother, even going so far as to bring another child home. I was one of the women he spent his time with, so I got to know him extremely well.”
A germ of suspicion invaded my mind. “Are you Willa’s mother?”
She laughed, the sound light and playful. The spark of evil in her eyes told me that I’d guessed correctly. “Why would you assume that?”
“You have to be obsessed with us for a reason. You’ve followed Aunt Tillie multiple times, which indicates that you’ve come to Hemlock Cove more than once.”
“I visited Hemlock Cove only once. But Walkerville was my home for a time.”
I searched my memory. What did I know about Willa’s birth mother? Even when Aunt Tillie dropped the bomb regarding Willa’s true parentage, she never filled us in on the salacious details.
“You abandoned Willa to be raised by my great-grandfather and great-grandmother,” I said.
“I didn’t abandon her.” Her expression shifted from delight to fury. “I was a single mother in a time when you couldn’t be a single mother. I demanded that your great-grandfather leave your great-grandmother and marry me. Decorum dictated he do so.”
“I’m guessing he said no.”
“He said it would cost too much to divorce your great-grandmother. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was the primary breadwinner in that home. She owned the house. She made the money. She raised the children.”
“He had nothing to offer you,” I mused. “That must’ve been a hard reality to swallow.”
“It was impossible.”
“You had no choice but to leave Willa with my great-grandmother. You would’ve been branded and forever disparaged if you tried to keep her.”
“Your great-grandmother promised to take care of her. Then I left town.”
“You never saw Willa again?”
“I was ... otherwise engaged.” Her smile was back. “I moved to Detroit and got a different job, the sort that paid well but had an age limit. I put my dancing moves to good use.”
I nodded in understanding. “You lived a hard life.”
“And when I returned to Walkerville to check on my daughter I was not greeted with open arms. I was told to leave and never return.”
“I take it you didn’t follow those orders.”
“Oh, but I did. I moved to Bay City and got a job as a waitress. By then I was past my prime for dancing. I spent my nights slinging drinks and putting up with wandering hands ... and sometimes tongues. It was demeaning, but
