“But you didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t.” Emilie unclenched her fists and pressed her hands hard against the sides of her legs. “Which brings us back to Lady Ardun.”
“She does seem the most likely person to have killed Lady Bianca,” Lizette agreed. “But what concern is that of yours?”
“She killed Lady Bianca, and Lady Bianca thought it was me and arranged for vengeance. Which means it was Lady Ardun, really, who caused my death.”
Lizette rolled her eyes. “Even if that’s true, she didn’t do it on purpose. Killing her isn’t vengeance.”
“Are you sure?”
Slowly Lizette straightened. Her lips thinned. “Yes. I’m sure.”
Emilie straightened as well. “I think it’s worth a try.”
They stood staring at each other for a moment, and then Emilie turned around. Before she could take so much as a single step, Lizette was in front of her, the wall lamps flickering through her coiled hair and pale translucent face.
“I’m afraid,” she said, “that I can’t let you try.”
Never trust a ghost, the living said in furtive whispers. The living cannot understand how the dead think.
But Emilie was a ghost now, too, and she still didn’t understand.
“Why?” she said. “We’ve been friends for years . . . at least, I thought we were friends. What is Lady Ardun to you?”
“She didn’t kill you,” Lizette said. “She had no reason to kill you. You were never a threat to her. That’s why I—”
She stopped talking and looked away, and Emilie caught her breath.
“That’s why you what?” she said.
Lizette said nothing. But she didn’t have to.
You should think about it, Lady Ardun had said. Lady Ardun, who wasn’t stupid, but who kept hiring pretty maids to parade in front of her husband.
You were never a threat to her. And something else Lizette had said: I’ve helped you more than you even know.
“That’s why she hired me as her personal maid,” Emilie said slowly. “She wanted her husband to notice me. She threw me in his path. Because I wouldn’t be a threat, not like a real noblewoman could have been.” She stepped back. “And you . . . you told her to choose me?”
“Of course,” Lizette said. “I pointed you out to her, mentioned how you were the type of woman her husband liked to go after. And then I pointed you out to Lord Ardun. I am your friend, Emilie. I was doing it for both of you.” She hesitated, then reached forward and clasped Emilie’s hands, suddenly solid again. “I’m sorry I never told you. And for what happened to you. Truly I am. But I can still help you, Emilie.”
Emilie started to yank her hands away, then changed her mind and made them translucent instead. They slid right through Lizette’s fingers as she stepped backward. “I don’t want your help.”
“I’m sorry,” Lizette said again. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t be reasonable about it.”
“Why? What is she to you? She’s nothing but a pompous, boring, ugly—”
“She’s my great-great-granddaughter,” Lizette said.
A moment of silence. Emilie was afraid that if she spoke, she would cry. Besides, she wasn’t sure what there was to say.
“You’re my friend,” Lizette said. “I never lied about that. But she is my family. Whatever you think she did, you had better leave her alone.”
“Maybe you didn’t lie.” Emilie’s voice was thicker than she would have liked, but she managed to keep it steady. “Maybe you think this is friendship. I suppose it’s true, then, what they say about the dead: that after hundreds of years, you start to forget how to be human.”
She saw a flash of—something—on Lizette’s face as she turned. She hoped it was hurt.
But as she started down the hall, it occurred to her that a ghost who could change her hairstyle with a thought could certainly smooth out a scratch in her long-dead, imaginary skin.
Chapter Five
She knew it was a bad idea. But when she reached the end of the hallway, Emilie went down the stairs and then through the kitchens. She marched into the banquet hall and straight to Lord Ardun’s table.
Lord and Lady Ardun looked up simultaneously as Emilie slid into a chair, this time across from both of them. One look at her former lover’s face told Emilie that he knew she was dead. He looked horrified, but also—to her vast relief—sad.
“Emilie . . .” Lord Ardun stammered, and reached over the table for her hand—an indiscreet move, with his wife right there. Once Emilie would have taken that gesture into her heart and hugged it to herself for the rest of the day. Now she kept her hands in her lap and looked at Lady Ardun.
“I did ask Lizette,” she said. “As you suggested.”
Lady Ardun placed her fork carefully next to her plate.
“She told me everything,” Emilie said.
“That’s not quite true.” Lizette slid through the back of the chair beside Emilie’s, going solid just in time to sit. “I did tell her everything that concerned her, though. She had already figured out most of it on her own.”
Lady Ardun looked from one ghost to the other, ignoring her husband’s confusion. “Then she knows I didn’t kill her.”
“No,” Lizette agreed. “Lady Bianca killed her.”
“In that case, why are you both here?”
“I don’t know why Emilie’s here,” Lizette said, “but I’m here to make sure she doesn’t do anything foolish. She’s distressed and not thinking straight. You know how the recently dead can get.”
Lord Ardun had stiffened with outrage as soon as Lizette spoke, and now he burst out, “That’s ridiculous. Bianca would never—”
“No,” Emilie said. “It’s true. Lady Bianca is the one who ordered my death.”
He flattened one hand on the table, not meeting her eyes. “I don’t believe it.”
Rage flared through Emilie, even though his naïveté about the women he pursued had served her well enough in the past. “That’s not particularly relevant. But don’t worry, my love, I won’t kill her.”
Both lord and lady looked shocked. For a moment, Emilie thought it was because of her tone, or the phrase “my love.” But their stiff, scandalized expressions seemed too excessive for that, and after a moment she realized what they had missed. “I would kill her, of course, if I could. Sadly for me, she is already dead.”
She probably should have watched Lady Ardun when she said it. Instead she kept her eyes on Lord Ardun’s face and saw its rapid transition from shock to horror. He met her gaze for a bewildered second, then looked down at his plate, his entire bearing weighted with grief.
Far more grief than he had shown over Emilie’s death.
For a moment Emilie wished he had killed her, so that she could take her revenge on him and make her death matter to him more than anything. For a moment she couldn’t breathe, the need for vengeance thick and hot within her.
“Don’t be so sad,” she said. “She never loved you. Not any more than I did.”
Lord Ardun flinched, and hurting him back—even just a little—took the edge off the pain. For a moment, at least.
Emilie turned to Lady Ardun, trying to pull her thoughts clear. Find the killer. Then she could leave all the hurt and jealousy behind forever. “Let me see your hands,” she said.
Lady Ardun glanced at Lizette, who shrugged. “Go ahead.”
Slowly Lady Ardun stripped off her gloves. Her arms were thick and fleshy, her fingers stubby. The backs of her hands were smooth and flawless.
Emilie had not really expected anything different, but she bit her lip all the same, a knot of helpless frustration twisting within her. For the first time, she allowed herself to consider the possibility that she might never find her killer.
The knot tightened, hard and painful. The last time she had wanted something this badly had been before Lord Ardun, when she had wanted food and warmth and comfort and safety and had known that a commoner lik
e her had only one way of getting those things.
Now, as then, it made her desperate.
“But you did kill Lady Bianca,” she said.
“Emilie,” Lizette said warningly. Lord Ardun turned and looked at his wife with horror.
“Of course I didn’t,” Lady Ardun said without blinking. “What a thing to say.”
“She was a threat to you. I was not.” Emilie’s hands clenched into fists. “If you felt you had to kill her . . . I suppose her victory over me must have been pretty certain.”
A flush crept over Lord Ardun’s face.
Not just certain, then. It had already happened.
“So she already had you, and she had no reason to be jealous of me.” Emilie turned and looked at Lady Ardun, who was slowly putting her gloves back on. “The only one with reason to be jealous of me was you.”
Lady Ardun smiled coldly, straightening the gloves’ fingers. “Not really. You had already lost him.”
“But he loved me, for a time, and he never loved you.” Emilie took care not to look at Lord Ardun, keeping her focus on Lady Ardun’s face. “Even if you arranged for him to be with me. Even if I was the lesser evil, just an unusually pretty commoner who could never truly threaten you. Don’t tell me you weren’t jealous.”
Lady Ardun looked at her, and in that moment, there was no doubt in Emilie’s mind that she had killed Lady Bianca—and that she had wanted to kill Emilie, too, many, many times over the last three years.
“Oh, Emilie,” Lizette said. “Do you really think Lady Ardun and Lady Bianca were the only people with reason to be jealous of you?”
“I don’t—” Emilie began, and stopped short.
He was only a means to an end.
She had forgotten what he was. What he should have been, to her.
Lizette was right. Only two people might be jealous of her for having him. But for having what he had brought her . . . the food and the clothes and the pretty private room, a fireplace in the winter and chilled drinks in summer, parties and dances and carefree laughter . . .
All the things she truly, deep down, had loved about him.
She was able to look at Lord Ardun then, for a painless moment, before she turned to look at Lizette.
“Lady Bianca didn’t know I was dead at first,” she said slowly. “But you did. Because . . . Lady Ardun told you?”
“Obviously,” Lizette said.
Emilie turned to Lady Ardun. “Did you tell anyone else?”
“No.”
Of course not. Gossip spread like wildfire in the castle, from party to party, from the living to the dead and back. If Lady Ardun had told everyone, then Lady Bianca would have known before Emilie showed up at the card party.
She hadn’t known. But someone else had.
“Where are you going?” Lizette demanded, but Emilie was already racing away from the table.
When she got to her room, Lizette was waiting, leaning against the door with her arms crossed over her chest. She had taken the short way, straight up through the ceiling. It hadn’t even occurred to Emilie to try that.
She walked past Lizette and right through the door. It felt odd, but not unpleasant, like pushing her way through a thick fog.
On the other side of the door, she went solid. Annette, who was tidying up the bed, turned and began to curtsey, then saw the expression on Emilie’s face. Her eyes widened and she backed away, but not before Emilie had grabbed Annette’s wrist and twisted it to reveal the back of her hand.
And there it was. Emilie must have seen it a dozen times since her murder. But the pale pink mark was almost invisible among the many scratches and ridges that crisscrossed Annette’s callused hand.
Emilie was too astonished—for the moment—to move in for the kill. She looked up at Annette’s face slowly, struggling to come up with a question. Eventually she could come up with nothing more articulate than “You.”
Annette jerked her arm futilely, then looked up at Emilie. The sullen resentment in her eyes was no longer subdued, revealed at last for what it truly was—naked hatred.
“You never even thought of me, did you?” she said. “Because you think like them now, for all that you were once one of us. Only nobles matter. Only they can do things worth taking notice of.”
Lizette drifted through the door behind them, but Emilie barely noticed. Her body felt like it was on fire, and Annette’s scratched-up hand was all she could focus on. This was the hand that had choked her life away. Annette had watched Emilie flail and gasp and die, had made it happen. And now, finally, she would pay.
But not yet. Even through her fury and need, Emilie wanted to understand why.
“But it was a noblewoman,” she said, tightening her grip until she heard Annette gasp. “Lady Bianca came to you, didn’t she, and asked you to betray me.”
“Betray you?” Pain was clear in Annette’s voice, but she still managed to sneer. “What have you ever done for me, to call it betrayal?”
Deliberately, Emilie dug her fingernails into the maid’s wrist. “What did she offer you in return for killing me?”
“You have to ask?” Annette made another futile effort to pull away. “Everything he offered you. The life we all want. I don’t have the looks to whore for it, so I had to find a different way.”
“Too bad,” Emilie said, and then she did look at her maid. Annette’s face was white with terror, and Emilie liked that; she liked it very much. “Neither of us will have that life now, will we?”
Annette opened her mouth, but nothing came out. After waiting a moment, Emilie realized that she was too afraid to speak.
Good. Because Emilie didn’t want to wait anymore. She dragged Annette sideways, to the table where she had been standing when she died, and picked up the small razor next to her hairbrush.
Annette began to struggle in earnest then, but ghosts could be unnaturally strong if they wanted to be. Power flowed through Emilie, fueled by the nearness of her vengeance, and she laughed.
“Emilie,” Lizette said. “Wait.”
“I don’t want to wait.” She could almost taste it: Annette’s death, and justice, and finally the sweet darkness of true death. All so close. She thought of how Annette’s blood would look, how it would smell. She wondered if Annette would scream, if that would be the last sound she ever heard.
“I lied to you,” Lizette said.
Emile couldn’t quite manage a laugh. “That much is clear.”
“When I told you that my murderess killed herself.”
Emilie turned and stared at her, keeping the razor at Annette’s throat. “She didn’t? But how can you—”
“She did.” Lizette took a deep breath. “Ten years after she killed me. For ten years, Emilie, I knew she was guilty. And I let her live.”
“Why?” Emilie’s hand was trembling with the effort of holding the blade. She knew it couldn’t truly be trembling—it wasn’t real—but she didn’t have enough control to make it stop.
“Because I’m still here. Because I didn’t want to leave this court.” Lizette took a deep breath. “Because I may be dead, but I’m still afraid to die.”
“That’s sick,” Emilie whispered. “You did this to yourself on purpose?”
“Did what? Attended balls and parties for several centuries? Really, Emilie, what is it about being dead that you think is going to be better than this?”
“I—” Just the thought made bile rise in Emilie’s throat. She needed to use the blade, to make sure Annette could no longer eat and drink and love, or her own rage would surely destroy her. A ghost’s reason for existence was vengeance; she had known that all her life, and even if she hadn’t, the desperate fury inside her told her it was true. Because of Annette, Emilie could no longer eat and drink and love. She didn’t deserve to live when Emilie was dead. “I need—”
“You don’t. You can control it.” Lizette took a careful step toward Emilie; then, when there was no reaction, another. “The urge for vengeance fades,
with time. It will be very difficult, in the beginning, but in time you learn to . . . to bear it. It’s hard, and sometimes it hurts, but other times I don’t even notice it. It doesn’t keep me from enjoying my . . .” She hesitated, then said it deliberately. “Life.”
Life.
A shudder ran through Emilie. She had worked so hard for exactly this: to attend balls and parties, to be someone who couldn’t be used carelessly and dismissed, to not ever have to be hungry. She had allowed her heart to get tangled with Lord Ardun for this, and now she wouldn’t need him anymore.
Death is a sort of nobility. One that no one could take away.
But oh, how badly she wanted to sink the razor’s hungry blade into Annette’s throat, to watch her choke on her own blood and die. To slake her thirst for vengeance, no matter what came next. Nothing she had ever done, nothing she ever could do, would feel as good as that one moment of making things right.
One moment, and then it would all be over.
She pressed the blade in, a tiny twist of the wrist, and watched mesmerized as blood welled up around it. Annette hissed through her teeth and tried again to yank away, a move that made Emilie’s heart pound in her ears. She pressed the blade harder, felt her breath catch in her throat, felt the desperate vengeful force that was keeping her tied to earth stretch thin.
She yanked back, so abruptly that the razor flew from her hand and clattered to the floor. Annette drew in a deep, sobbing breath and pressed her hand to the blood spreading across her white skin.
The sound made Emilie want to lunge for the razor again. But Lizette was smiling at her, broad and welcoming, and her room was cozy and familiar around her. She exerted every ounce of willpower she had and remained still.
“I can’t do it,” she whispered, when she could speak. “I can’t let her live if I have to see her every day. I’m not that strong.”
The words hung in the air like a challenge. Lizette nodded thoughtfully.
“We’ll have her sent back to her village,” she said. “She’ll never be allowed at court again.”
Annette’s strangled cry was not as satisfying as a death scream would have been. Not even close. But it took the edge off, for now. Enough for Emilie to turn her back on her and say, “Speaking of which. I don’t think the party is over yet.”