“Now go,” she whispered, unlocking it with her keys. Sunlight burst through the door. I stepped through, blinded by the influx of light. “I don’t understand—” In a gesture foreign to us both, Mademoiselle De Lafontaine pulled me close and hugged me tight. Skin and bones, this aging woman, yet I felt safety in her embrace. “A lifetime ago, I loved a girl in an acrobatics troupe who begged me to join her. I rejected her and have regretted it every day since. Find Carmilla.”
tearibg up
