Page 3 of Mortdale

“Too late.”

“Tongue involved?”

“Fingers, too.”

“Ugh. You know I love fingers—” She jumped back, yelping when I sprinkled water on her face. “Was that corpse juice?” She licked her lips and smacked them together. “Tastes fruity.”

Ethel and I were both abandoned as infants on the steps of the orphanage where we’d lived for seven years—only a few weeks apart in age. When we’d outgrown sharing a bassinet, the matrons had moved us into what had been a larder, far away from the rest of the children. And we’d shared that tiny, enclosed space that had barely fit our mattress for all the rest of those seven years. After the Holy Mother had picked us up from the orphanage and made us pledge to the Crimson Weaver Coven, we’d been separated, pulled into different cadres. But still, every night, she’d somehow found her way to my room, and had curled up by my side like we’d always done.

“Ronnie!” I shouted when the creature lurched at Ethel, who’d taken another step past the doorway.

She blinked slowly at me, entirely unaware of the spectre who was looking to frighten the living daylights out of her. “Eh-thuhl. Come on, my darling hag, we’ve known each other for twenty-six years now. You once held my hand after I ate a red wartberry cake and nearly shat my guts out.” She extended her hands in my direction and wiggled her fingers. “Beautiful times. We should do that again.”

Pretty sure I’d held her hand through worse things. Ethel had a tendency to tiptoe on the precipices of what stood between life and the Beyond. She’d once entered us in a poison testing competition for some wealthy merchant who was dabbling in trades for—you guessed it—poison. Of course, she’d won. But I was pretty sure she was now missing at least a few parts of her stomach and intestines.

“I’ve told you Ronnie doesn’t like people coming in here.”

Her eyes narrowed on me as I moved about my work room, tidying the mess I’d made. “When are you going to tell the Holy Mother and the rest of our coven that your curse isn't killing anyone, your ghost friend is?”

I threw a white cotton sheet over the warlock’s corpse. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You can’t keep taking the fall for Ronnie’s mistakes. They’ve nearly killed you for it.”

Nearly being the keyword. They could only torment me for as long as I was the Holy Mother’s closest advisor. And I knew they enjoyed tormenting me more than killing me. I’d been their entertainment for nineteen years. The dart board for every joke, every prank, every pointing finger. They loved to laugh at me more than they’d love to see me dead.

I carried the tray of instruments to the sink. “They won’t. It’s more fun if they just watch what this curse does to me. I’m safe.”

She glared even harder, her jaw set tight. “What if I tell her?”

“Please,” I whispered, wrestling the stained white apron and hat off my body. “They will exorcise him, you know it. Whoever he is waiting for, they will come. I know they will.” Ronnie, despite his unsightly appearance, was a big romantic fleshy guimauve who had only wanted one thing. To meet his old lover one last time before passing through the gates of the Beyond. I’d found their letters stuck to the crevices of the tile walls back when they’d fitted the orangery into a post-mortem room. According to what I'd pieced together, they’d snuck around behind everyone’s backs, meeting here in secret. Then he’d gone and died in the coven fire. And she’d never come back for him.

“He’s just a ghost.”

“He’s kind.”

Her anger softened. “He kills people.”

“What do you think those people came down here to do? Chat with me? Braid my hair? I’m lacking in the department of sympathy.”

I grabbed my grey cloak and threw it over my shoulders to cover some of the muck that still clung to my skirts. There was no point stopping in front of a mirror. I knew a crow could find a perfect nest in my greying hair and my eye bags had fully fermented into two puffy skin bags after nearly thirty-eight hours of no sleep.

I stopped by the exit, turning to him one last time. Ronnie had gone back to sit at his corner to watch the shadows on the walls twisting with each ebb wind against the high tree branches surrounding the orangery. With each flicker, I could see him shift closer, hopeful.

Oh, Ronnie.

Ethel handed me a licorice root as we stepped into the gardens of the atrium, already suffering from this summer heat. “You look more tired than usual.”

“Thanks. You look wonderful, too.” I raised a brow at her. “Did you steal these?

“Of course, I’m not paying a penny for uncooked licorice.” Wiggling her brows at me, she pressed her nose to my cheek, invading all of my private space. “I bet your ankles still look phenomenal,” she said, shoving her hands under my skirts.

I easily put her in a headlock since she was a few inches shorter than me. “Pervert!”

“Just let me have a look, you virginal hag. I won’t bite ‘em.”

She jumped back when a small white rodent with two piercing red eyes launched at her face, clawing at her skin.

“Only I eat her corpse.” My familiar’s hoarse voice rattled as he shapeshifted from his earthly form into a puddle of thick black tar. “We have a bargain.”