By now, this shadow world was familiar. In fact, floating in the endless darkness was beginning to feel almost... safe. At least, safer than where we had been. I glanced up at the surface of the shadow. Overhead, blurred shapes and flashes of blue scrambled about. There was a distant dull growl, like hearing a scream underwater. Up there, Luc was trapped and wounded—alongside the Beast, or Malix, or whatever it was now.
We needed to help him.
I searched the darkness for the bloated corpse that was my usual companion in this place. The unwelcome spirit that lingered inside me.
The darkness stretched on in every direction, but there was nothing I could see, not even in the murky distance.
Of course, I thought, when I actually need them, they're nowhere to be found...
"We have to go back!" I shouted into nothingness, hoping they could hear me, wherever they were.
"We can't," came a voice from right behind me.
I turned and there she was, looming just over my shoulder. I jumped back to face her properly. Despite her corpse-like appearance, she was no longer lifeless—her eyes were open, staring back at me in a bright blue that matched the blue-stain of her deadened lips.
"We can't take on that many of them at once."
"But they're going to kill him!" I shouted, pointing at the blur of colour overhead. "We have to go back!"
"She was bluffing," the dead girl replied, sounding calm. Her voice was flat and didn't have even a hint of the rasp that I'd expect from a reanimated corpse. "I see that now. He's safe for now... They'll need time to prepare for that."
"What? Time to prepare what?"
"They intend to kill it—the Malix. And it is not an easy thing to kill a Malix. You have to do it just right... or you'll get very fucked up," she said. She pulled back the tatters of her shirt. "I would know."
Her mottled skin was slashed up, lines upon lines cut into her flesh. At first I thought the markings were random, but it was just because her decomposition warped their position. They formed symbols, writing...
I tore my gaze away from the wounds to look her in the eye. "You tried to kill it?" I breathed, nodding up to where the creature was still fighting.
Even when bound to the ground, it was not subdued. There were still crowds pushing in, trying to keep it down. There were also spreading pools of red...
"Yes, and I failed," the girl said "Spectacularly. Hence, ghost."
As I stared into those bright blue eyes, a strange feeling began to brew inside my chest. My breath hitched and I suddenly felt very cold...
"Who are you?"
She said nothing, only closed her eyes and sighed.
I realized then. This horrific appearance of hers... It was on purpose. She didn't have to look like that. She was hiding something.
"Show me who you are."
"It's not that simple—"
"You are inside me," I snarled. "If you want to stay, you better start giving me some fucking answers. Who. Are. You?"
Her eyes flashed open again. "I'll tell you," she said, her voice slow and quiet. ""But before I do, I just want to say that it wasn't me that was supposed to possess you."
"Wait, what? Supposed to possess me?"
"Believe me, I didn't want to be in this position," she continued, ignoring my question. "The plan was for someone nice, someone like Henri, but then that thing showed up and everything went sideways—"
Her rambling was giving me flashbacks to my last night in the shop. They were still blurred with booze, but now I could make out the girl who had spoken to me—the willowy girl from Ethan's drawing, the ghost of Luc's other ex. Had that been Henri? But then the memories cut away to hands, so many reaching hands, and I had to shake my head to snap out of it.
"—and so I had to step up," the girl continued, "and now we're here. Okay?"
"Whatever! I don't care!" I shouted. "Get rid of this stupid getup!"
"It's not a getup," she said with a sniff. "This is what I looked like, in the end."
"And what about before that?" I snapped. "What did you look like then?"
She pressed her blue lips into a ragged line, before she blinked slowly and exhaled. "Fine, fine. I'll show you. But like I said, it wasn't supposed to be me."
And like that, the ragged edges of skin began to mend and the icy blue faded from her cheeks and lips. Her sodden, limp hair began to dry, its true colour beginning to show.
Only the wounds on her stomach looked worse. The cuts looked fresh now, all clean and red. And the symbols were clearer, though I had no idea what they meant.
I was so focussed on unsettling wounds that I jumped when I finally looked up and met the eyes of my 'guest'.
I gasped. "You gotta be fucking kidding me."
Beneath her rose-gold curls, Lillian stared back with her bright blue eyes.
"Unfortunately not," she said.
My mouth opened and closed, not even sure where to start. I didn't know whether I wanted to scream or... or... No. Screaming seemed good.
"What the fuck?!"
"I knew you were gonna react like this," she said, pinching her nose like she was trying to stave off a migraine.
"How could you expect me NOT to?"
"What was I supposed to say?" she snapped, her perfect looks fading back to their familiar rotten state. "Oh, maybe I should've gone with, 'Hey Rachel, it's me, Lillian! I'll just be hanging out inside your body for a bit, don't mind me. I know we got off on a bad foot back then—" she shook her leg, and I glanced down long enough to realize that her corpse had no foot— "when my possessed corpse tried to kill you and all, but I promise this time it's different.' Yeah, you guys would've taken that sooo good."
I shook my head. "I'm starting to see the resemblance between you and Polly."
"Rude," she said as she returned to her healed form. But the corner of her lip twitched up for a second.
I narrowed my eyes at her. I had seen this trick before—something evil pretending to be Lillian. And she had shown me that she could shapeshift...
But she had helped—
A thud resonated overhead.
We both looked up. The shapes were slightly more clear, but that could be because they were now gathered directly overhead. A few were on their hands and knees, staring down like they were trying to peer right through the floor. They wanted us.
"Can they get in here?" I asked, my voice shaking.
"Yeah," Lillian said, sounding just as worried. "We need to get out of here."
"How?" I asked.
"I have an idea," she said. She met my gaze and considered me a moment like she was sizing me up for a fight. "But you're not going to like it."
🔮
Do you think Rachel should trust Lillian? Well. Now you know (don't kill me, lol).
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