Chapter Nine
ProserpinaPresent Day
I wake to rain.
I wake without either of the two men I fell asleep with, but plus a big, sleepy dog curled against me. I wake with my back stinging, cunt sore, eyes swollen; I wake with a mind jumbled with fragments of dreams that feel unlike any dreams I’ve ever had before, and yet it’s the rain I wake to above all else.
A silver cerement to wrap up the world, sheets and veils of cloistering, pattering wet. As if Thornchapel is sealed off from the rest of space and time. As if the six of us are alone with the house’s secrets and sins.
If only it could stay that way, I think. If only the six of us were the entire world.
The next thing I notice is the strange lightness in my body—or maybe it’s a heaviness? The kind of heavy you feel when you’re
