Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

by V.E. Schwab

“Dangerous?” asks Charlotte, as Sabine holds her hand out for the lantern. “How?” “Few things can hurt you now,” she says, letting it swing from her fingers. “Only the destruction of your heart will end your life. But sunlight will make you sick. And grave dirt will draw you down.”

It is a lie, Sabine told her, that you only get one story. And she’s right. This is how the first one ends, Charlotte tells herself as the letter disappears, taking young Miss Hastings with it. This is how the next one starts.

“Sabine seduced you,” says Alice. “Is that it? You fell for her, and she stole you away. And somehow, that’s enough of an excuse. Because she made you what you are? She hurt you. So you hurt me. And it’s all just some cruel cycle?” Hurt people hurt people, she’s heard the words a hundred times.

“But to understand what happened to you,” she says, “you need to know what happened to me first.”

And since those first years are happy ones, they blur. It does not matter where they go. They are an island, alone together in the vast wide world. And they are happy. Perhaps that is what makes them monsters—the fact their love is marked by violence, and death, and yet. And yet. She would not change a thing.

They dance. They drink. They dream. And in the morning, Sabine pulls Charlotte down into the sheets and whispers poetry against her skin, lines about midnight soil and soft red petals and sharp white teeth. And every time, Charlotte drifts off surrounded by the scent of her lover. Like damp earth and dry bark. And in the circle of her arms, she feels safe. She feels home.

She decides early on that she will only take the lives of men.

When they are weak, and she is strong. When they are trapped. And she is free.

Sabine was right. This is why the past is left behind. Why they can only move forward, like Eurydice and Orpheus, never glancing back, lest they be trapped among the dead.

But Sabine, Sabine is there to steady Charlotte. To kiss away the worries. To vow that nothing bad will ever happen, so long as they’re together.

“Life is messy. People, too. And you can tie yourself in knots, trying to make yourself feel better, or you can face the truth.” “Which is?” Antonia sighs out a plume of smoke. “No one should play God. Least of all us.”

That is like asking—why stay inside a house on fire? Easy to say when you are standing on the street, a safe distance from the flames. Harder when you are still inside, convinced you can douse the blaze before it spreads, or rushing room to room, trying to save what you love before it burns.

Charlotte is Orpheus, Sabine, Eurydice. And she does not look back.

“You know,” says Jack. “We think ourselves immortal, but we’re not.” Charlotte blinks, forcing her attention back to him. “Live long enough, and things begin to rot.” He draws a hand from his pocket, taps a fingertip against his chest. “Compassion, affection, humility, care.” One strike with every word. “They drop away like petals, till all that’s left is stem and thorn. Hunger, and the urge to hunt.”

“Well,” continues Jack, “William made me promise that when he ceased to be himself, I would kill him. And since he could not be trusted to tell me when that moment was, I would have to choose it for myself. I would have to measure, have to weigh, have to decide how much a person—my person—can lose before they are lost.”

“The fact is, whether death takes you all at once, or steals pieces over time, in the end there is no such thing as immortality. Some of us just die slower than the rest.”

“You want me to feel sorry for you? Because you had a toxic ex?”

“But it doesn’t make up for what you did—” “The story isn’t over yet,” she says. “Get to the part that matters, then,” snaps Alice.

“I had a story, too,” she seethes. “Before you ended it. I had a life. I had a—a chance to—” Her voice cracks. “I had a future. And now—” Lottie looks up. “You still do.” “Oh, fuck off!”

“Great,” mutters Alice. “You guys get pipe smoke and fresh bread, and I get anxiety. Doesn’t seem fair.”

Let it go, let it go, let it go, she wills. And by some miracle, Giada does. She flings herself onto her back among the sheets. “Fine,” she says dramatically. “But just you wait. I will get old, and ugly, and you won’t want me anymore.” Charlotte wilts in sheer relief. “Never,” she swears, sweeping over Giada like a blanket. “I will always want you,” she says.

Always, always, always, Charlotte thinks as she kisses the questions away.

Panic rings through Charlotte like a bell, and she knows Sabine can hear it. It’s been so long, she’s let her walls come down. There was no reason for them anymore, she thought. She thought that chapter of her life was over. What a fool.

“You should have come back to bed.” Charlotte drags her gaze from the dead to death itself. “How did you find me?” “How could I lose you?” Sabine steps over Giada. “You are my heartbeat. My feral rose. I laid you down in the midnight soil. I watered you until you bloomed. It is my job to tend our plot, and prune any weeds that try to grow.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers hoarsely into Giada’s hair. Then she gets to her feet. She doesn’t pack. There is no point. The only thing worth saving is already dead. She leaves the front door open, so someone will come. And then, once again, Charlotte runs.

When Charlotte fails to laugh, Ezra sighs dramatically. “You know, I’m always amazed when vampires take themselves so seriously.” Vampire. It’s an odd word, one Sabine disdained, even before Bela Lugosi with his widow’s peak and overly affected speech. As if Ezra senses her distaste, he says, “Let me guess, you prefer the metaphor of gardens, and roses.”

He shakes his head. “Not her story,” he says. And Charlotte knows he’s giving her a choice. To tell or not to tell. To share the burden or keep it to herself. But she is so tired of carrying the weight alone.

But when you live forever, time is something far less constant. When you are happy, a decade rushes by.

When you are sad, a minute crawls. When you are lonely and afraid, time seems to lose all meaning. Blink, and a year is gone. Blink, and it has only been a night. Only, it is not a life at all. It is a prison sentence.

Flimsy paper things, printed with trite little sayings. One catches her eye, in the section marked Condolences: a picture of a clock wrapping its arms gingerly around a girl, beneath the words Time Heals. And Charlotte thinks, they’ve gotten it wrong. Time doesn’t heal. It just wears you down.

She swallows. “Isn’t it lonely?” “It doesn’t have to be. After all, loneliness is just like us,” says Ezra. “It has to be invited in.”

So that’s what Charlotte does. She learns the difference between lonely and alone. She falls for no one.

Why me? Why me? Why me?—doesn’t have an answer, other than Why not? Because it wasn’t about her at all. It was a shot fired by a jealous ex. She was just collateral in someone else’s war, and Sabine killed her because she was there, because Lottie couldn’t keep her hands to herself, she did it to prove a point, to play a game, and that means it was meaningless, her death was meaningless, and she doesn’t realize how hard she’s been gripping the marble surface of the table until finally it breaks.

“I died for nothing,” she whispers, because she’s afraid that if she starts shouting, she’ll never stop, and then she thinks, Fuck that, and raises her voice and says, “I died for NOTHING.”

(And it turns out you can in fact have a panic attack without a beating heart, or a working pair of lungs, because the room is spinning and Ezra has her by the shoulders, eyes locked on hers as he tells her to breathe, or at least she thinks that’s what his mouth is saying, but she can’t hear the word, not over the white noise climbing in her head.)

Brief as a tombstone in damning purple ink. Alice. Scottish. Gentle. Tastes like grief. She reads it twice, three times, till the lines become words and the words become letters and the letters break apart and still she can’t understand how her entire life has been reduced to six words in this small and sloping script.

“I sent him home,” says Lottie. “This isn’t Ezra’s problem. It’s mine.” And Alice doesn’t appreciate being called a problem,

“You want to know why I didn’t kill you?” she says, looking down at her hands. “I wish I could tell you it was kindness, or that I knew you’d been through enough. But it’s not. It’s because I’m tired, Alice.” Her gaze flicks up. “I’m tired of running. Tired of living in fear. Tired of playing cat and mouse, of knowing it’s only a matter of time before Sabine catches up again. I didn’t kill you because someone has to stop her, and I can’t. But maybe you can.”

“Do you remember what I told you, about Sabine, and what she said drew her to me on the stairs that night? That I was loud and full of longing. That whatever I felt, I couldn’t keep it in. It took up space, even when I didn’t. That hunger to be seen.” Lottie’s thumb brushes Alice’s cheek. “That’s why I chose you, too. Because I looked at you, and I saw me. Who I was.” Tears shimmer, crimson, at the corners of her eyes. “And for all that happened after, for everything she did to me, I still remember what it felt like, to be noticed, to be wanted, to be seen. I wanted you to feel that, too.” She pulls away, wiping her eyes.

She steps out of the bathroom. “I look like bait,” she says, and she meant it as a joke, but Lottie doesn’t laugh. She only smiles and says, “I’d fall for you again.”

They are just two girls, dancing. And they have their whole lives ahead.

“You should always finish what you start.” The swift clean snap of bone, and the girl crumples, like dead weight, onto the darkened floor, and Alice turns and finds herself face-to-face with a nightmare. With a dream. The heartbeat dies inside her chest as she says the name. “Sabine.”

“Relax,” says Sabine without looking up. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.” Alice tenses, tries to rein her thoughts back in, even as she says, “I am.” Sabine tuts. “Death is rot and ruin. Death is bones and dirt. You are a rose that grew out of it.”

Alice shifts a little closer on the couch and asks, “What happens when we find her?” Sabine’s lips press into a thin grim line. “I think it’s time for this game of ours to end.” A game, even now. A fucking game. Alice lets annoyance stain the air. She doesn’t care. “I never asked to play.” Sabine inclines her head, reaches out a cool hand to Alice’s cheek. “I know,” she says.

“Wouldn’t it be better if it were a game? If we could play until we lose, and then just start again? New Alice. New Catty. Maybe that’s what death is, and we just don’t know it. A chance to play again.”

She knows in the silence before the man starts talking, in the breath he sucks in. She knows, before he asks to speak to a parent, a guardian, to anyone but her. She knows, before she hands the phone to her father, before she watches his face collapse, and then his knees— She knows that her sister is dead.

Remembers the sound her heart made when it failed inside her chest. She remembers, and then she turns in Sabine’s arms, and looks up into her eyes, and drives the jagged piece of slate between her ribs. Into her heart. Sabine doesn’t scream.

“You told me if I killed her, I’d come back to life,” says Alice. “I know,” says Lottie softly. “It didn’t work.” “I know,” she echoes.

Alice looks at Lottie, then, resentment flaring through her, but Lottie just stares back, with those backlit brown eyes, and a look that says it’s her fault for believing, a look that says she should have known better. And maybe Alice did. Maybe she always knew, deep down, it was a lie. That some roads will always be one-way. But Lottie lied.

“You lied to me,” says Alice, and this time Lottie sighs. “I didn’t really. I said you’d get your life back. Now you will.” “This isn’t my life,” she mutters. “It’s a life,” counters Lottie. As if they’re bickering over semantics. As if a life is a life is a life—