I.
Miss Covington is dead before Frederick finds me.
Despite the damages, she is still attractive. A swathe of unbound hair curls across the snow. Her cheeks aren’t so round and fleshy as when she lived, and she would have appreciated the change—or so I tell myself. She always envied the shape of my face, sometimes touching the line of my jaw with good-natured jealousy.
“I should kill you, Livana.” Frederick turns aside, perhaps to cringe.
We both know it’s an empty threat. I’m already lifeless, you see.
Lifeless—but not quite dead.
My skirt is torn, exposing a layer of petticoat to whip snowflakes across my feet. White coat, white dress, white shift, white gloves, white shoes—I’m an eccentric young lady, they say. Why else would I wear nothing but white since I was a child?
But today I’ve broken my own rule. I’m not entirely blended into the snow.
The boots give me away. They’re dark, clunky things, cut for a man, and my toes slide with every step. They belonged to my father. I shouldn’t have worn them—others call it bad luck to wear clothes of the dead—but Miss Covington had already fled the house.
I remember little of our chase. I remember less of finding her. But even with a steady diet of macabre tales—ghosts, vampires, penny-dreadful murderers—she was terrified.
I almost hated her for that.
I took her hand. I tucked it into the crux of my elbow, as if we were little girls on safari in my father’s greenhouse.
Then…red.
Red on my gloves. Red on my chin and my waist. Red everywhere.
And beneath that, the soft apples of her cheeks.
Miss Covington disliked fruity colors, never appreciating herself in orange or apricot or lime. But now she wears a hue of strawberries. I watched it pool into the bites, diluted by bubbles of saliva, while her nails carved tiny crescents into my forearm.
“Livana—” Frederick’s clothes rustle as he crouches beside me.
I want to apologize for my disheveled appearance. I’m ashamed that he’s found me like this. Even worse, I can still taste Miss Covington. She was dense and sweet, like a warm slice of peach, but I spat her blood onto the snow.
I detest blood. It’s the flesh I crave.
“Look at me,” Frederick says, voice hard and commanding.
An edge of black waistcoat fills my horizon. Fingers cover my mouth and throat, warming the contact until I burn with skin on skin. I wonder if he will snuff me out.
He doesn’t.
Instead he bows his head toward mine—so close our noses touch, melting snowflakes between—and then I’m released. I snatch one breath before he braces the curve of my spine and peels me upward. My hands itch beneath their gloves, flashing white as I grope for purchase at the nape of his neck.
“How long have you been here?” he asks. His voice is softer now.
My tongue slaps and slides against the back of my teeth, but words won’t come. I open my mouth and the skin on my lips breaks open.
“And how could you leave without a coat?” he says, brushing bits of snow from my forehead.
I should tell him it’s absurd to worry about frostbite. Instead I peek at Miss Covington. A large curl drapes across her eyes, waving limply in the wind.
I’m frightened by the red splatters we’ve left behind—just us girls.
II.
When I was young, my father kept me close.
You shouldn’t read too much into that. I know what sorts of stories can be written about unconventional families, but this isn’t one of them. It’s much simpler. My father was lonely, you see—and I liked to watch him work. The larger greenhouse, always bright with showy blossoms, was completed when I was eight; the smaller, decorated with less flamboyant greenery, when I was twelve.
That was the year my father decided to board an apprentice. Frederick arrived by train one rainy night—two a.m., delayed by a dead cow across the track—and he hasn’t left since.
Back then, we were the same height. Now my eyes are barely level with his nose.
Frederick and I are the tallest of my father’s cultivars, but not the most exotic. That honor belongs to his tuber collection. The dahlias are what guests like to admire after they’re done cooing over me.
Apparently I am a miracle.
My seventeenth birthday was the first day of illness. After that, you’d have to consult my father’s records. Each dryly technical detail is bound in black leather and sandwiched between the burgundy journal (Hemerocallis, generation six) and the watercolor slipcase (terrestrial begonia hybrids).
People enjoy hearing about my dramatic turn—the perilous adventure of Miss Livana Graves, from the deathbed to the drawing room, complete with tea and cake. They are fond of reminding me that I should be dead. They exclaim how lucky I am to be alive. Then they slant their eyes across the sugar bowl, as if ashamed to notice the obvious.
Shouldn’t you be wearing black, Miss Graves?
I smile and pretend to nibble the food I’ve served. I smile again and sip my tea, then manage an escape to vomit in privacy.
They know nothing of the blight inside me.
They can’t imagine the crunch of Miss Covington when my teeth cut through her cheek—and I can’t forget her staring at the chunk I’ve torn away, grinding flesh like a carnivorous jersey cow.
I remember every swallow as I sag against Frederick. He smells spicy, like cedar and cinnamon.
Miss Covington was partial to cinnamon cakes.
The memory makes me swoon.
III.
When I wake, the snow is gone. A shawl drapes loosely across my waist. My first gasp of consciousness wrinkles the wool, and immediately I feel the weight of Frederick’s gaze. Now that I’m safely tucked into my bedroom, his appraisal is calm. Dark eyes linger at my collarbone but bypass my torn skirt.
“Your color is better,” Frederick says.
There are wounded feelings beneath such neutral words—not because I’ve eaten, but because I was afraid to tell him.
“I’m sorry,” I answer.
“You couldn’t help it.”
My hands flutter at my neck, then my waist. I breathe deeply and am rewarded with a pinch at my left side. The bones of my corset have shifted. I would like to blame Frederick—to know his hands have rumpled my clothes, unable to settle the whalebone into place—but he has only tucked the shawl across my lap.
“Is it very late?” I say.
“Past two.”
For now, he sits beside the fireplace. His complexion is pale behind wire-rimmed spectacles; his eyes are golden-brown and framed by mink-colored hair, unfashionably tousled.
He must have carried me upstairs. I try to remember, but sated hunger makes everything blurry.
I want to pound the pillow with my fist. There would be a steady rhythm of violence—two thumps for Miss Covington, two more for my father, and three for this blight that drives me. But I do nothing so dramatic. Instead I smooth the front of my gown. I can’t repair the damage to my corset; I need someone to unlace me.
Frederick shifts in the chair, further mussing his hair with one hand.
“I’m not tired,” he says. “Come downstairs to read.”
We often search my father’s books for a horticultural clue to my hunger. But I’m tired of that cramped, tilted hand—so meticulous whether describing dahlias or potato tubers.
I wrinkle my nose.
“Something pleasant,” he says, offering a lopsided grin. “Dickens, perhaps?”
“Yes. That would be lovely, thank you.”
I can’t help returning his smile. Is it natural that I love the first boy who shared our library, or helped me from a carriage, or laughed with me over dinner? Perhaps. Miss Covington thought it was.
Then I remember her flesh against the white of my gloves, and my stomach twists in panic.
“Frederick,” I whisper. “She’s out there.”
He looks at me, one eyebrow quirked. “Not anymore.”
“Someone might—”
“I fetched her myself.”
My tongue touches the corner of my mouth. “Where did you put her?”
“The same place.”
The way he says it—so unphased at what I’ve done—makes me wish I’d stayed in the snow.
“They’ll find out,” I say.
He arches that eyebrow again, but doesn’t answer.
“They’ll take me away. They’ll—”
“No,” he says, picking up the poker and rolling it between his palms.
“How can you be sure?” I twist one hand in the shawl. Wool catches at kidskin gloves—spoiled leather, stained red at the fingers. I resolve to burn them later.
“Because they have no reason to doubt us. Anyway, they accepted your recovery.”
“Don’t talk about that,” I say, color rising in my cheeks. It’s a hideous reaction. He looks away, giving me a chance to recover.
We have no secrets.
He knows I died that night. He knows I live again.
And tonight, he knows my stomach no longer cramps with hunger.
IV.
Miss Covington haunts me.
Only hours ago we sat in the drawing room—just us girls. Her voice is high and sharp in my memory, chastising my lackluster response to sympathy calls.
“You can’t keep living this way, Livana,” she says to me.
“Can’t I?”
She glances at my white silk gown. The housekeeper and her underlings—what few we have—creep through the house like coal-colored wraiths. But I refuse to follow suit. Black clothes won’t bring my father back. Black clothes won’t undo what I’ve done, or what Frederick helped to disguise.
“It’s been two months. How long will you stay so isolated?”
“This is my home,” I say, shrugging. My eyes are shadowed in the mirror above the fireplace. “Where else should I hide from vultures?”
Miss Covington sighs and picks up a cinnamon cake, holding it on the tips of her fingers like a dainty doll. She wears gray velvet trimmed in black ribbon—a fashionable homage to my loss.
“It isn’t proper, you know.”
“Don’t be coy, Abby.” I fiddle with the teapot. “Say what’s on your mind.”
“It’s only…” She nibbles the cake, then sets it aside. “Mr. Silas. It’s very romantic, isn’t it? On paper, I mean. But you live here, virtually alone, with a man. And he’s not much older than you.”
My free hand clenches, straining the knuckles of my glove.
“You understand what I mean?”
“Perfectly,” I say, making myself taste the tea. “I’m only ignoring it.”
“Darling, I see what you feel for him. It’s no secret.”
My smile is tighter than my corset. “Then there’s no reason to leave.”
“But people will talk.”
“They know nothing. And as for Frederick—” My voice falters. “He has no other home.”
“He isn’t your husband. He isn’t even your brother. It’s not proper,” she says again, more gently. “Not with your father gone.”
I force another sip of tea. “I had a dream about him. Did I tell you?”
“No,” she answers, reluctantly following my lead.
I put my cup aside and touch my belly, tracing a thumb along the blight that crosses my navel. “I dreamed I killed him,” I say.
She’s shocked—not in a deliciously creepy way, like her penny-dreadfuls, but as if I’ve pulled a maggot from behind her ear. A flicker of uneasiness sharpens the pert little lines in her forehead. She glances at the teacup, then her half-eaten cake, then at me.
Her cheeks are pink.
Meanwhile, the tea has begun to rise from my stomach. I smile and excuse myself to hurry upstairs, then lock the door and kneel beside my bed. Hidden beneath the frame is a white bowl, the mate to another I know well.
V.
My new maid is blind. She worked for a dressmaker before losing her sight to scarlet fever—an inconvenience for most employers, but perfect for me.
She helps to dress me by touch. Her fingers understand the lay of petticoats and the pressure of corsets and the angle of seams, but they can’t sense the blight that coils in my belly. I have always been pale—unhealthily so, according to my father—but beneath that is something else. My navel peeks from bruised skin like the eye of a potato.
“Now, miss?”
I grip the bedpost while Tilly yawns against her wrist. She is younger than I, with a sweet smile and hair the color of lemons. If she thinks it unusual for her mistress to request fresh clothes at this hour, she gives no sign.
“Not quite. Pull them harder,” I say to her.
Her fingers close around the laces and yank. I imagine the rigid pattern of whalebone caging my middle, squeezing the blight into my stomach—imprisoning it.
“There,” I say. “That will do.”
Tilly yawns again, then slips a clean dress over my head. I watch in the mirror while she buttons the back. My torso is stiff beneath boned fabric; my breathing is stilted and high in the chest. There are dark circles beneath my eyes. I pull at the corner of each lid and the circles stretch grotesquely in response. Maybe they’re from lack of sleep, but maybe not.
“Are you going out, miss?”
Tilly’s voice is so incredulous that I want to laugh.
“No,” I answer, settling myself at the vanity. “Only to the library.”
She hesitates. Her blank eyes dart at nothing in particular. “Mr. Silas is already there.”
“Do you imagine us engaged in wanton embraces?” I say, lifting a line from one of Miss Covington’s most sensational novels.
“No, miss—of course not!” She blushes.
“Be easy. I was only teasing.” I touch her shoulder and turn her towards the door.
Tilly hesitates again, then curtseys vaguely in my direction. I wait until she’s felt her way into the hall, then press my fingers to my temples and sag against the pressure of my corset. The blight is there, hidden beneath its cage.
Miss Covington is also hidden. I picture Frederick hefting her across one shoulder and dropping her over the edge. It’s a lonely spot, but she’ll have company. Her dress—a changeable gray, like pearls—will sink beneath waves that consumed two others. Her parents are already dead. We will lie to her guardian, a doddering old woman with more cats than brains.
I once clipped a newspaper story where a recluse was devoured by felines. He died in his bed. The cats, desperate for a meal, prowled the house until they found meat.
I appreciate their dilemma. My thumbs twitch as I remember Miss Covington’s dead weight in the snow.
I couldn’t carry her. Instead I dropped to my knees and cradled her arm against my chest. I pressed my nose to the underside of her wrist. I angled her one way, then another—disgusted myself and flung the arm down—then picked up the other, rucking the sleeve above her elbow. But then I saw the hollows of her cheeks, their bones peeking from beneath stringy bits of skin. I touched those hollows. I remembered her face flushed from the heat of the fireplace.
Even now, in the solitude of my bedroom, she’s too vivid.
I lean closer to the mirror so my breath fogs the glass. I pucker my lips, then examine my tongue—red and glossy, with miniscule bumps trailing down my throat. My teeth are bright and straight, as white as gloves—new ones, that is, not the pair I burned.
I find no sign of the blight.
But suddenly, I do—a dark thread trailing from my lips, just enough to crack the line of my jaw. My eyes widen in panic. I begin rubbing furiously at my cheek, and then I laugh.
It’s only a strand of hair stuck to the corner of my mouth. I pluck it from my scalp and let it flutter to the floor.
VI.
There are stories of others who share my affliction. I should know, because I’ve read them all. I remember every word—sordid tales of undead ghouls, some even feeding on their family’s flesh.
The night I die, my father catches me reading.
“They know nothing of it,” he says, snatching the newspaper away.
He burns the stories without asking permission, and I’m too tired to protest.
The crackling of a fire almost drowns the wheezing of my father’s chest. I would like to ignore his gaunt cheeks and shadowed eyes. But I brought this to our house—somehow, somewhere—and now it clings just as stubbornly to my father.
Despite his fragile health, he nurses me. He trusts no one else to do it properly.
Tonight the spoon is slick with soup—pale and chunky, with ribbons of green among larger lumps. A plush, steamy heat fills my nose, making my stomach curl.
“Potato,” he says.
Though my belly churns, I accept the spoon.
“There. Better?”
I nod. I’ve never felt less like eating, but I try to ease his conscience. His hand shakes in counterpoint to each rattling breath, dripping soup down my chin. My father and I have always been prone to weakness of the stomach—but this is far worse than anything I remember growing up.
“Please, Livana. You must eat more” he says, leaning the spoon closer. “I’ve grown them myself. For you.”
I swallow again. The bowl is familiar, something from the farthest corner of our china cabinet. I remember there’s another. Together they make a pair with gold rims, like Frederick’s spectacles.
Buoyed by that thought, I sleep.
And when I wake, I’m different.
Frederick is there—I’m pleased at that—but his words are jumbled and fuzzy in my ears. My head flops against the bed, making the room roll from side to side, and suddenly I’m seized with sickness. I clutch my middle and bend, coughing into my lap. But my stomach is empty and aching. There’s nothing left to expel; the blanket is already wet with disgusting remains of soup.
“What’s happened?” I say, tugging a bit of hair from my face.
My father is paler than a ghost. His eyes are wild with something I can’t quite identify. “Livana, you—”
“You were dead,” Frederick says.
My hands flutter at my waist, then my throat. Everything is too sharp in the firelight—my father’s cheeks, Frederick’s spectacles, the curve of my pillow, the hunger gnawing at my belly. It’s meat I crave—something substantial to chew upon.
“You were dead,” Frederick says again. His voice is awed.
I blink at my nightgown, clammy with sweat and plastered to my body. I’m thin and bony—a scarecrow with twisted limbs and matted clumps of hair. My cheeks color at such disarray.
“Please leave,” I say, yanking the soggy blanket to my neck.
The men are confused.
“I would like fresh clothes,” I explain, blushing more. “And then—perhaps some dinner.”
They are too polite to deny me. They send Rebecca to change my linen and appease my female sensibilities.
But my maid must have read the newspaper stories. She gives me frightened glances—as if wondering whether I’m alive, or merely grasping at dignity in my last hours. When she lifts the nightgown over my head, she can’t smother a squeak of horror at the bruised flesh around my navel.
“Oh, miss! It’s the blight, surely it is!”
I order her away. I don’t show anyone else—not my father, and not Frederick. The three of us make indifferent conversation while I attempt another bowl of soup. But the scent of potato disgusts me. Once the men have gone, I open the window and vomit into the bushes.
Later that night, Frederick returns.
I pretend to sleep while he crawls under the covers, so close that his waistcoat snags my nightgown. His face hovers just above mine and I can smell wine on his breath.
But he doesn’t kiss me—not properly. At the last moment he presses his lips to my forehead.
“I won’t leave you, Livana.”
His voice is low enough to be my imagination. But if this was a dream, I know what might happen. I’ve imagined it before.
He would cup his hand around the curve in my cheek. I would open my mouth ever-so-slightly, inviting the touch. His fingers would drag across the bow of my lips and I would press the tip of my tongue to his palm. He would gather me away from the pillow, stroking my hair and my nose and my shoulders, and I would catch his hand between mine, returning his fingers to my mouth.
But the dream changes.
My kisses are wrong. His flesh peels away under my teeth and he fills the empty hole inside—a blight that turns my belly the color of ash.
I’m glad when something startles me awake.
But Frederick was here—that much was real, for I can smell him on the pillow.
My bare feet weave an unsteady path to the door. The hunger that infects my dreams has made my knees weak; I clutch the banister with both hands, limping down the steps at an angle. The household staff clogs the door to the greenhouse, but there’s enough space to tilt myself between them—and then I see everything.
My father is on the floor. Frederick stands over the body, a pistol smoking in his hand.
“But he—he was dead!” The housekeeper is crying. She tugs her apron above her waist to swab her cheeks.
“How long did you leave him?” Frederick doesn’t look at me, or at anyone. His hair has ruffled forward across his cheekbone.
“Only to fetch you, sir! I sent the lad to the garden, but when he couldn’t find…”
“Mr. Graves was still in his room, then?”
She nods, leaking tears with each glance at the hole in my father’s head, but I don’t try to comfort her. Instead I stagger to Frederick’s side and wrap my arm around his waist, propping myself against his shoulder.
Our feet are smearing a puddle of red. It belongs to Rebecca. My maid is also dead, sprawled beside a plot of begonia starts. There are bite marks on her face—her arm—even her bare ankle, and the young begonias are glossy under a spray of droplets, like blushing water beads.
My father’s chin is slick with blood and spittle.
I think of Frederick stretched beside me. I think of his breath against my ear.
“Oh,” I whisper, clasping a hand over my mouth.
“He was dead, Mr. Silas!” The housekeeper wrings her apron. “I’d not have gone—if I’d known he was—”
“I believe you,” Frederick says. He is calm despite the hideous scene.
“But Mr. Graves seemed so normal, sir. Not the sort of crazy things they’ve said. Stories of such…ghouls.” She shakes her head, sobbing anew.
I don’t cry. I only flatten my hands to my waist.
“Livana. You must come now.”
Behind me, Frederick has ushered the staff aside—somewhere they can discuss what my father has done.
Somewhere they won’t see what I might do.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“You’re not.”
“You think I will become like this?” I gesture at my father.
“I know you already are,” he says. The flecks in his irises are dull behind his spectacles. “Please, come away.”
“They think I’m well.”
“Yes.”
“Rebecca was the only one who saw.”
“Yes.”
I shiver, tightening my grip on my belly.
“They know nothing of it,” I say.
For a long minute, he doesn’t answer. He still carries the pistol, and I wonder if I should ask him to use it.
But I don’t. Instead I press my lips together and shake my head—slowly, not enough to upset the nausea in my stomach.
“We’ll keep it secret,” Frederick says then.
His footsteps pass from the greenhouse. I hold my breath one second, then another. Finally I kneel between the bodies and pluck the hem of my father’s shirt from his trousers—just enough to see his belly.
The blight is there—my secret, his hunger, and the maid’s terror.
Rebecca is still gripping the stone floor, fingers contorted so her nails have cracked in half. The other hand is cradled against her chest, broken and hanging at an awkward angle. Her eyes are wide, even in death. That fear stirs petulant hunger beneath my loose cotton nightgown.
“You know nothing,” I whisper.
I dig my fingertips into her unbroken wrist and peel a strip of meat from her thumb. I close my eyes and put it on my tongue. I chew, and chew, and swallow. Her insides are pink and greasy like bacon. I want to gag, but my father’s words echo in the empty greenhouse.
Please, Livana. You must eat more.
When Frederick returns, that hand is a web of tiny white bones.
VII.
Despite the cold, I’ve grown accustomed to creeping about the house in stocking feet.
Tilly’s bedroom links to mine. I pause to gather my skirts, muffling the fabric against my waist, but she’s already snoring. For such a slender girl, she makes a lot of noise.
The rest of the house is hibernating in the snow. Even in the library, where I’m expected, the light is low; there’s only just enough to see. To my left is a pair of French doors that lead to the larger greenhouse and its carefully arranged displays of color. The top door creaks a welcome as I pass.
“Is that you?” a voice says.
“Yes.”
“Come in, then.”
Frederick waits in the next room, a place for resting after grueling horticultural battles. My father’s notebooks are still piled around the writing table, partially blocking my view of the bed. It’s a small thing, made to fit servant’s quarters and accented with metal flourishes at the head and foot. Frederick’s lanky body seems to fill the space. His waistcoat is undone and his spectacles are burnished in the firelight. A heavy book is open in his lap.
“How do you feel?” he asks, polite as always.
“Fine,” I answer. “Considering.”
Slowly he angles himself further up the mattress, wrinkling the blankets beneath. His expression is curious, as if I’m a wraith called into existence by word alone.
“You changed your dress.” His lips twitch, and I feel myself smiling back.
“Tilly’s already used to my eccentricities,” I say.
He draws his legs aside, inviting me to sit. “I think you’d enjoy what they say about you, Miss Graves.”
I adjust my skirt and perch on the foot of the bed. “Will you ever tell me?”
“No,” he says. “I don’t think I will.”
I grin, lowering my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. It’s no worse than the truth.”
Without warning he slams the book closed. “Livana!”
My breath catches. When I exhale, my sleeve rubs against metallic curls on the bedframe. Across the room I see a spread of papers on the desk. There are sketches with labeled charts and botanical hybrids through several generations.
A potato sits in the crux of the smallest notebook, holding pages open.
“Not tonight,” he says. “We could forget everything.”
Shadowy lines ripple across his cheekbones. I want to wipe them away and see the skin beneath, bare and pink and clean. I want to press my corset to his ribcage, tangling our bones in a knot, and sleep for days.
“I’d like that,” I say.
Frederick relaxes and opens the book, shifting the weight on his lap. “Then, shall I?”
I nod and squirm across the blankets, wedging my back between the wall and the bed. My hands fumble at the folds of my skirt, lifting it enough to tuck my feet beneath the fabric. “Are you still set on Dickens?”
“Great Expectations,” he says, giving me a sly look.
“Very funny, Mr. Silas.” I close my eyes, resting my head against the wall, and the blight settles in my stomach, uncoiling like a cat before the fire. His legs are flush to the angle of my knee. His feet are naked beneath their socks, and sometimes they shift against my thigh.
I inhale each time his toes wriggle.
He reads for hours. The words flow easily at first, then begin to stumble. He pauses, rubs his eyes, and begins the paragraph again, speaking with more deliberation. But it’s not enough. The pages ruffle as he yawns.
I lower myself onto the bed, folding my narrow body beside his.
Tonight, I will sleep.