thirty-two.
Such long, blond hair.
The very first time she’d seen it on the newest girl to sign on with Nina, Marsden had thought of it as Alice hair, what the made-up girl from the made-up world of Wonderland had had. She’d been eleven when she’d thought that, but she hadn’t ever really stopped thinking of it that way, despite finding out not long after that the quiet girl’s actual name was Lucy. That she came from the very real place of Florida. That the Wonderland that had been her life was something she refused to talk about.
Such long, blond hair, worn in nearly the same kind of loose braid Marsden had woven for her with nervous fingers just yesterday morning.
But its crown had since been dusted with a generous handful of soil, its end now tipped with blood.
It was the first time in a long time the covert smelled of something more strongly than wild ginger.
She fell to her knees in front of Lucy’s body and tried to keep the world of the covert from swaying. Lucy’s wrists, the blackened soil at her sides, all still glistening with wet. Marsden swept the scene with eyes that moved jaggedly in their sockets, desperate to be wrong.
Lucy and all her sadness, the depths of which only she could see.
“Who was she?” Jude asked, his words faint. He was standing beside her, only inches away, but he might as well have been speaking to her from the other side of the forest, her shock a thick cocoon all around her.
“Her name was Lucy,” she whispered. “She lived at the boardinghouse with us. She worked for Nina.” Her chest hurt, an ache stinging her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying so hard to hear her. She sent out her mind as though they were fingers, feeling the covert, touching all its trees, testing the wind. It hurt, how much she wanted to hear.
Lucy, you’re still here, right? Please talk to me.
“I’m sorry.” Jude’s voice floated out from the darkness behind her lids, from the deep silence of the covert behind that darkness. “Was she your friend?”
Marsden nodded, opening her eyes. Though, she wasn’t sure they had been, not really. Maybe at times, for moments and over the course of conversations, before Marsden hit reset. She knew no more about Lucy than she knew about any of Nina’s girls, had never been able to ask, just as Lucy had never shown signs of wanting to share. Lucy, in her own way, had drifted through the rooms and halls of the boardinghouse, just as Rigby had lived yet not lived in his own home. As she and Wynn sometimes lived in the boardinghouse—hidden while in plain sight, their existence carefully portioned out between kitchen and covert and away from the whole place, time spent with Shine and Nina and all the rest spread out thin, easy to tuck away.
Ghosts, all of them.
Barely thinking, Marsden pulled her gardening gloves from the back pocket of her shorts and put them on. She reached out, her hand moving automatically like a dowsing rod over fresh and untouched land. She checked Lucy’s clothing, saw the lack of pockets, saw how there was no purse or bag slung nearby. She turned the girl’s hands over, pushed back the cuff of her sleeves—no rings, no bracelets, no watch.
Her necklace, though.
A dark silver chain that she’d worn for years, for as long as Marsden could remember.
She would have left it alone, the same way she always left jewelry alone. But because she knew the body, she knew the necklace—knew its meaning and significance. It was a match to the necklace Peaches wore all the time, the one piece of jewelry the other girl never seemed to tire of, for all the carefree ways she seemed to cycle through the rest of her belongings.
Marsden slipped the silver necklace from Lucy’s neck and slowly placed it over her own, settling it beneath her long, black hair. She pictured soft, white, greedy hands gathering pies off a plate and shuddered. There was no way to prevent Hadley from the body—she would have to call as soon as she got back to the house—but she would not leave the necklace to him.
She pulled the hem of Lucy’s dress lower over her legs and smoothed out the fabric.
She adjusted the dark framed glasses on her pale face so they weren’t so askew.
She moved the thick woven braid so it draped over her shoulder again, the way she recalled Lucy wearing it.
Done, Marsden slowly stood up. Slipping off her gloves, she was momentarily startled to see Jude there. He was watching her, his eyes dark and hollow and shadowed with his brother.
Panic was a bow in her blood and strummed her pulse into racing. He had just seen her at work, the unfeeling way she’d flicked on autopilot. Who else but a skimmer could ever do what she just did without going insane? Had he imagined that day his brother had come? Saw it the way she knew it’d been, the day she’d found Rigby in the covert, and felt all of it like a blow? The way she’d bent over him and had calmly dug through his pockets, her face as blank as a fresh canvas even as Rigby’s would have been blasted apart beyond recognition? How neither of them would have looked fully human?
She dropped her eyes as she shoved her gloves away. “I have to go back to the boardinghouse now.” She heard the odd flatness of her voice, the cold void of her words, and didn’t know how to sound different, better. Or had never learned, maybe, had always known what was required of her. “I have to call Hadley about the body. I have to tell Nina, Dany . . . Peaches.”
Jude’s expression was a slow migration of shock to confusion to a kind of quiet caution. Checking for bodies, skimming—she’d drawn the line between the two as fine as it could get. Only his being overwhelmed kept him from really seeing what she’d just done.
“Okay,” he said. “Can I walk you over?”
“No, I’ll be fine. I’ll meet you here tomorrow, though. Right by the fence, same as always.”