She Haunts Me Still

by De Elizabeth

Genres: Fantasy; Dark Fantasy; General Fiction; Horror; Romance; LGBT & Pride

Synopsis

These violent delights have violent ends.

Most Anticipated by Goodreads • Reactor • Autostraddle

After surviving a shadowed childhood marked by ghost stories and loss, Mallory Webb is ready to start fresh as a theater major at her mother’s alma mater, a sanitarium turned liberal arts university in Rhode Island. Landing the lead role in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet feels like a dream—until the blood-soaked spirit she suspects caused her mother’s death resurfaces after years of quiet. With nothing to go on but cryptic symbols in an old college notebook, Mallory hopes the reason behind her mother’s haunting lies somewhere on campus, and resolves to find answers before she meets the same fate.

She’s surprised to make an unexpected ally in Ezra Pierce, the magnetic fourth year directing the play, and takes solace in their undeniable chemistry. But Ezra is a master secret-keeper, and it’s clear he knows more than he’s letting on about Saskia Garin, Mallory’s elusive understudy whose past eerily mirrors her own.

When an ancient, bloodthirsty evil calls to collect on a bargain that dates back to the New England vampire panic, Mallory, Ezra, and Saskia will have to untangle the tragic ways in which their histories are linked—and face the devastating consequences of their own star-crossed love story.

Release date: August 11, 2026

Publisher: Dutton

Print pages: 432

Sample

1
Secrets are a kind of sickness.

They can warp cells and hollow out bones, wear through muscles over time. They can chew away organs, turn a person into a husk of themselves, until the shape of their entire being and their ugliest, most poisonous lies are one and the same.

Mallory Webb has been infected with secrets her whole life, but tonight she's keeping only one: the silver blade tucked carefully inside her bag, wedged between a tin of mints and her brand-new cell phone.

She's ten minutes late but takes her time on the stone steps outside the theater, fingers skimming the railing, relishing the burning September twilight and gentle swish of her favorite black dress against her thighs. The hushed quiet of the lobby greets her as she slinks past dimly lit rehearsal studios and poster-covered walls, twisting through dark corridors until she finds the door she needs. Dressing Room A.

Arden is likely waiting inside, where they'd agreed to meet before a slew of hopeful first-years descend upon the theater. To most people, the last hour before an audition can feel like a slow, miserable death, but it's also when Mallory feels most alive. Soon, the walls will be rattling with eager voices, the air thick with sweaty bodies. But right now, the empty building breathes with seductive possibilities, with all the ways she could succeed.

And all the ways she could fail.

And not just at tonight's auditions, but why she's at Shore College to begin with. The reason no one else can know.

Mallory swallows that last thought like a pill. Plastering a smile on her face, she shoves the dressing room door open with a hollow clang.

"Did you bring the knife?"

Arden doesn't even turn to ask. She phrases it like one long word-didyoubringtheknife-as she leans toward the bulb-lined mirror. Her highlighted hair is freshly curled, and her gold cross necklace catches the light as she applies coat after coat of mascara.

Mallory nudges the door shut with her lace-up boot. A mothball cloud washes over her as she drops her bag onto the counter, but she hardly minds the smell. The dressing room is the heart of any theater, where preshow butterflies fly freely and inside jokes are forged. One day, it'll feel like home.

"Obviously."

"You locked yourself out of our dorm three times this week and lost your phone twice," Arden says, capping the mascara and looking at Mallory in the mirror. "It's a fair question."

"Not the same thing. I had my keys." Mallory rummages in her bag for the pocketknife she purchased earlier that day. "Something is wrong with our door-the lock sticks." She huffs a shock of chestnut hair away from her lip gloss and flips the blade. "Ready to commit a crime?"

Arden arches a razor-thin brow. "Vandalism is hardly a crime. And besides-we're not the first ones."

Mallory follows her stare to the letters and numbers carved into the makeup counter: the ghosts of theater majors who came before, lingering in the wood, sleeping in silent haunt.

She and Arden first noticed the carvings during Shore College's orientation over the summer, skin sticking in sundresses as they wandered the school's sprawling thousand-acre grounds. The tour took them from the brick dorms of west campus all the way to the white wooden chapel at the eastern border. They peered into academic buildings with old oak tables, climbed the dome-roofed library's teetering four floors, and finally combed the quiet halls of the theater, where they'd spotted the counter. It was Arden's idea to add their initials on audition night, seal themselves into the foundation as if to say, We were here, too.

"You go first," Arden urges. "I'll watch the door."

Mallory scoots onto the counter, the edge clipping the bare skin above her knit tights, and traces a pair of heart-framed initials. Who were you?

"We should do this every year," Arden says, watching Mallory scrape the careful corners of MW. "Make it another ritual."

Mallory smiles. Arden and her rituals. It's been this way since they were kids. Wishes during a November snowfall. Picnics on the final day of school. Commemorating firsts and lasts, moments that might otherwise pass without notice.

Most people might roll their eyes, but Arden was the first person who made Mallory want to memorialize parts of her life. Everything that came before is best buried, sealed. Forgotten.

"Are you nervous?" Arden asks, taking the knife.

"No." The lie is bitter on Mallory's tongue. "Are you?"

"Extremely." Arden's blonde-streaked hair spills forward as she bends, scratching out a messy AT next to Mallory's initials. "I know it's Shore's policy to make us complete a show before we officially become theater majors, but an entire Shakespearean play with less than a month of rehearsals? On top of classes? It's diabolical. But we won't mess up. We're gonna get lead roles."

"Stop. You'll jinx it."

Arden nudges her. "We're manifesting, bitch."

Mallory fidgets with the brass locket at her neck. Arden doesn't reel in her hopes; she names them, weaves them with intention into prayer. But Mallory knows better than to let her own thoughts run wild, lest they push her toward an inevitable cliff of disappointment.

Noticing her expression, Arden presses the knife handle into Mallory's palm.

"Fine, I'll play by your rules. But just know I'm silently conjuring great success for us both." She slaps the pocket of her denim jacket. "There's rose quartz in here."

Mallory shakes her head and slides off the counter, now engraved with a rough MW + AT, 1999. She thinks of the same letters scratched into the bench outside their old boarding school in New Hampshire, lit up at night by the cigarettes they'd sneak out to smoke after curfew. They've been a unit ever since they met in seventh grade, when Mallory was alone in the cafeteria, wrapped in an ill-fitting uniform and sagging knee socks. While other students hadn't paid any attention to the strange new girl, Arden had. Plucked her from the shadows, as though she were a scrawny kitten in a shelter. From that moment on, it was them against the world.

By winter that year, their special pact was written on paper, sealed in a folded triangle. Going to the same college, rooming together-it was all part of their agreement, forged beneath a stretch of ivy and brick. Never leave each other behind.

Arden slings her bag over her arm. "Did you finish the reading for psych?"

Mallory sighs at the reminder. "Not yet. We could get pizza and work in the lounge."

"Perfect. I wasn't able to eat dinner. Too nervous."

"I . . ." Mallory starts folding the pocketknife. "Do you smell that?"

"Smell what?"

"Did you leave your curling iron on?" She eyes the cluttered counters. "I smell smoke."

Arden frowns, scanning plastic Caboodles of makeup. "I don't smell anything."

Mallory pauses in the doorway, sniffing again. This time, there's no mistaking the tangy, ashy scent. It curls under her nostrils in bitter gray tendrils. Smoke, like from a campfire, but with an undertone of something rotten.

Like skin burning.

Most people would shrug it off. The theater is an old building with an array of unpleasant odors. Surely there's an explanation-a failing furnace, perhaps.

To Mallory, however, the smell means something else.

It conjures images of the blue house she once called home, a forgotten cottage at the end of a dirt road where she lived for five short years with a mother she can barely remember.

But there is one memory of her mother that's crystal clear. The final one, tinged with this exact odor: something burning, something rotting.

Something more dead than alive.

Mallory takes another deep breath. Another. Another-

"Mal- Oh my god, your hand!"

Arden's voice is like a burst of cold water, and Mallory snaps her gaze to where she's still clutching the knife-the knife she didn't close all the way.

She's squeezing the blade like a stress ball, completely unaware she'd sliced open her hand. As if the pain were secondary to the memories threatening to break free.

"Shit," Mallory mutters, dropping the blood-slick object with a clatter. Her knees buckle at the sight of her palm slashed down the center, the edges of the wound puffy and raw. She flexes her fingers, and pain follows in a zigzag, crimson trickling toward her wrist.

She takes another dizzying sniff, but the odor is gone now, like she imagined it altogether.

"That's a bad cut." Concern is woven into Arden's peach-toned complexion as she peers down the hall. "Let me see if I can find help." She pauses, waving her hands like she's directing air traffic. "Hey! Hey, you! Over here!"

"Arden, what are you doing?" Mallory hisses, cradling her palm.

"You need stitches," Arden says before turning toward an approaching dark-haired man. "Are you heading to the first-year auditions for Romeo and Juliet?"

The tall man fixes them with a curious stare. "Yeah, I'm actually the-"

"Fantastic," she barrels on. "Can you tell them Mallory Webb and Arden Thatcher had a medical emergency? I'm taking her to the ER."

"No, Arden, wait . . ." Mallory inhales unevenly. The room tips on its side; dizzying stars float beneath her lashes. "We can't miss auditions. Are you serious?"

"Are you?" Arden's expression turns incredulous. "You need to go to the hospital. They'll let us audition a different day-they have to."

Mallory dares another peek at her injured hand. Her normally creamy skin is flushed purple around the cut, and her palm is throbbing. Deep down, she knows Arden is right, but the idea of being last to audition makes anxiety coil in her stomach.

She didn't get this far to miss the most important moment of her college career. She'll do her monologue bleeding out if she has to.

"We can go to the ER after," Mallory says. "I'll find something to wrap it with in the meantime."

"Mal, that's ridiculous-"

"What did you say your names were?" the man asks, and Mallory looks up, fully registering his presence.

He's wearing a long dark coat with the collar pulled high, the edges skimming the hard lines of his jaw. Black pants. Black boots. The pale slices of his cheekbones gather shadows in the dim light, and Mallory's mouth suddenly feels like cotton.

"Mallory Webb," she answers. "And Arden Thatcher. We're first-years."

He nods, dark green eyes cutting toward the shelves. "Here." He reaches for a bin of vintage scarves and handkerchiefs. "Use this. To wrap your hand, I mean."

"What? Absolutely not." Disgust blossoms on Arden's face. "Mal, don't listen to him. You'll get sepsis or something."

The dark-haired man gives Arden an amused smile as he pulls out a lace-trimmed white handkerchief embroidered with violet flowers. "I'm fairly certain the theater department is obligated to wash these. She's got to stop the bleeding before she passes out." He turns to Mallory. "May I?"

Too lightheaded to argue, Mallory nods. She extends her wounded palm to this stranger, trying not to notice how large his hands are, or the engraved silver rings on his long, bony fingers. But her face flushes anyway as she anticipates what's sure to be a firm grip, the meticulous way he'll clean her up, the-

"I'll do it," Arden says suddenly, snatching Mallory's hand before he can.

"Wait," the man protests as Arden plucks the handkerchief, "that's going to-"

Arden flattens the cloth into Mallory's palm, and Mal cries out at the swift sting.

"Hurt," he finishes with a sympathetic wince.

Breathless and dizzy, Mallory holds his gaze over Arden's shoulder. He's far too old to be a first-year, but too young to be a professor. She studies his face, trying to recall if she saw him at orientation, and something flips inside her at the inquisitive way he's staring right back. As if he's trying to place her, too.

Arden drops the bloodied handkerchief onto the counter. "I can take it from here," she clips, snatching a second scarf from the basket. She softens her tone. "Thanks, though."

"You seem like a good friend," he says as Arden winds the cloth around Mallory's hand. "If she starts to feel weak, or her temperature drops, take her to a hospital." He returns his attention to Mallory. "No audition is worth hypovolemic shock."

Mallory fiddles with her hair, unsure how to tell both this stranger and Arden that she's been clawing her way toward this moment for years. Tonight isn't just an audition-it's the first crucial step in unraveling the knotted pieces of her past.

Because her mother went to this school.

Like her mother before. And before. And before.

If she spends the next four years at Shore College, perhaps she can find answers to the questions that have plagued her for her entire life. What was my mother like? What did she dream about? Who did she hope to become?

What, exactly, killed her?

Instead of saying any of that, though, Mallory forces her mouth into another smile.

"I'm a big girl," she says, looking right at him. "I can handle a little blood."

o


Inside the theater, Mallory shakily fills out her audition form with her left hand, trying to ignore the whispers around her. Do you know when the cast list is going up? I can’t believe Winston fucking Hendrix is directing this. . . .

Somewhere along the line, students nicknamed Shore's theater "the Crypt," an apt moniker for a space perpetually bathed in darkness. Endless tiers of metallic scaffolding loom like a space station, while red velvet curtains form the gaping mouth of a cave. Rows of cushioned scarlet chairs flank the stage on three sides, each seat bearing a plaque in memory of a deceased professor or alum.

Mallory doesn't have to look to know that the third seat in the thirteenth row holds a constant reminder of the way her past and present are all tangled up.

In memory of Jasmine Webb, Class of 1977

She'd first spotted her mother's plaque during orientation and assumed Aunt Penelope was behind it. Mallory has called Penelope "aunt" her entire life, even though she's not a relative by blood-just a close family friend, and Mallory's legal guardian since her mother's passing. Penelope has always been a human vault, containing countless stories about Mallory's mother yet keeping most of them locked up. When Mallory asked about the plaque, Penelope denied responsibility. It must've been an anonymous donor, she reasoned. Your mother had many friends at school.

Mallory traces the edges of her locket now. The brass and ruby butterfly is the only item she has left of her mother, and touching it usually comforts her.

But tonight, there's only a vague sense of dread, coupled with a question that's been emerging since that rotten smell permeated her nostrils in the dressing room.