Jenny’s bedroom door hung open just a crack, and it swung inward as I knocked. “Jenny?” The chamber was dim and silent. “If you’re in here, I just wanted to say thank you—and that I’m still very sorry about yesterday.”
I stood in the doorway, feeling stupid and foolish. I could see that the flowers I had picked were all slumped to one side of the vase, and the asphodels were drooping mournfully. I took a deep breath and tiptoed into the room. As silently as I could, I adjusted the stalks, trying to bring the bright little clusters of bittersweets to the front. It was a meaningless gesture, but my lessons in etiquette had somehow failed to cover what to do when one had been unintentionally unkind to the undead. Perhaps I ought to have simply removed the whole unhappy arrangement before Jenny returned.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The voice from behind me was forceful but frightened, accompanied by a sudden chill. It was as startling as if someone had poured ice water down my collar. I started and spun, knocking the bouquet off the table as I did. The vase did a quick pirouette in the air, and then shattered against the ground, splashing water and flowers across the floorboards. Jenny’s slate-gray eyes looked lost and confused, fixating on the lopsided pool that was darkening the floor.
“Oh bother! I’m so sorry!” I dropped to the floor, mortified, and began picking up the shards of porcelain as quickly as I could. “I’m so, so sorry. I’ll have it tidied up in a moment.”
“No!” Jenny’s voice was urgent and somehow distant. I stopped and looked up. She was staring at me and at the broken vase, visibly agitated, but somehow at the same time she was also facing away, toward the doorway. I blinked as my mind tried to process the double image. “No!” she repeated. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Jenny?” I set down the broken pieces and stood up slowly. “Jenny, it’s all right.”
“I know who you are.” Jenny’s voice was cold and quavering, and it hurt my eyes to try to focus on both of her.
“That’s right, it’s me . . . ,” I began, but Jenny continued as though she hadn’t heard me.
“You work with my fiancé.”
“I—what? No I don’t. I work here with . . .”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The little puddle of water at my feet began to crystalize as the room grew colder, and a stalk of asphodel slid along the floor as an icy gust of wind whipped through the small room.
“Jenny, you’re frightening me,” I said.
“You shouldn’t be here!”
The gust became a torrent, and the curtains began to flap madly in the rapidly building maelstrom. The duvet flipped off Jenny’s always impeccably made bed, and the doors to the armoire rattled and then whipped open and closed with a violent slap. The sound snapped something primal inside of me, and I found myself out of the room and in the hallway before I realized I was moving. When I turned back, the bedroom had fallen completely still and silent, and Jenny had sunk to the floor. Some part of her was looking up in terrible distress, and another part was crouching over the broken vase, her delicate fingers reaching toward a fallen sprig of bittersweets. Her silvery hand passed through the little purple buds like vapor, and at the same moment she screamed, “No!” once more, and the door slammed shut like a gunshot.
Chapter Eleven
I knocked and called out, but Jenny’s room was as silent as the grave, and her door would not budge. I felt like I had just been punched in the gut, and I wanted to cry. With a deep breath, I plucked up my suitcase and what little fortitude I had left, and trod wretchedly down the spiral staircase.
I heard the sound of movement and found Jackaby in his office. He was unloading a basket of odds and ends, tucking the occasional object into his traveling satchel and leaving the rest in a heap on his desk. The wooden noisemaker lay beside the pile, and the scent of fresh garlic hung in the air.
“Nearly ready,” he said. “Just reorganizing a few items I picked up yesterday.”