For a long moment, Margaret examined me with eyes like fireflies. She held one hand in front of her face and moved ghostly fingers one at a time, then held her hand to her chin. “How?” she asked after a moment. I blinked, ironically shaken by the other woman’s composure.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “You just… showed up here. I must have done something but–” she waved her hand at me, dismissing the answer I had given.

  “No, how did I die?” she clarified. I choked a bit, but centered myself.

  “Your… your dad did it, I think. When you stood up to him. I’m not sure. But, well, I saw your grave, and it isn’t new,” I answered awkwardly. It felt surreal talking to her at all, and I wasn’t sure exactly how to phrase an answer like that. But she seemed largely unaffected. Thoughtful, but not nearly as horrified as I’d have been if I heard one of my parents had killed me. I was reacting more to her existence at all than she was, in fact. All she seemed to emote was… frustration. Her hands flexed and released while she thought, like she was trying to hold onto something which kept slipping away.

  “You brought me here, is that right?” she finally asked. I honestly wasn’t sure. I certainly hadn’t done it consciously. If I had, well, she’s not the woman I would have wanted to talk to. But she was there. I was either the only person who could see her, or whatever happened to the girls was limiting their perception even more than I thought. The former seemed more likely. As the teal sparks she was composed of flickered across my vision, I recognized my aura in them. Whether it was a spell I had cast unconsciously or a spell by whatever mage my aura had mixed with, I was at least partially responsible. That thought felt like a bruise I couldn’t find. I was not a woman with a high opinion of herself. It took a great deal for me to truly hate anyone else. It was rare for me to meet anyone I didn’t think was, at least, better than me. But, while I did understand and empathize with Margaret, I hated her. If my aura was going to create a ghost, I didn’t want it to be her.

  But she was right. In one way or another, I had brought her there. “I– I think so,” I agreed. Her face hardened and she opened her mouth to say something. The look in her eyes made me flinch, reminiscent of the glaring phantom I already carried with me wherever I went. But before she spoke, she paused. Reacting to my defensive posture as I subconsciously raised my arms in self defense, she sighed, not releasing any actual air but making her resignation clear.

  “I wanted to ask why I couldn’t remember more. Why I feel like such… patchwork. But I suppose I have no right to demand that answer, do I?” she asked. There was a familiar edge to her voice, and one I recognized immediately. A constant companion of my own voice since I’d realized I had condemned my sister to death over a lie. It was guilt.

  ‘Why she can’t remember more,’ I thought, rolling the concept around in my mind like a child choosing a skipping stone. “W–What do you remember?” I pushed. If she could tell me that, I thought I could figure out… well, something. How I had created, her. If I had. Why I had done it. Anything at all. She leaned against the girl’s closed door, her nonexistent body still stopping at wood as she crossed her arms.

  “Mostly?” she asked, although her tone made it clear it wasn’t an actual question. “Just the last three days. Over and over again, but all at once. It’s hard to make sense of. I assume that was you too?” My heart began to speed as my mind raced through the implications of that answer. She remembered the loop. But… that didn’t make sense. She had behaved the same way every single time, unless I changed something first. She must have seen me a dozen times at least. Every time she… killed me. Yet she’d never come to find me after everything reset. I had to ask.

  “Um, kind of,” I answered awkwardly. There was a strange feeling mixing with my distaste for the woman in front of me. Something I couldn’t put my finger on at first. “Not just me. There has to be someone else. I don’t know how it started—or how any mage could possibly have the aura to maintain it—but yes. I helped create it. Do you… have you always remembered the repeating days?” She eyed me carefully, her gaze tracing my body like a man stranded on ice, looking for a safe place to step.

  “No,” she responded after a moment. “Like I said. It’s like it all happened at once. I can’t parse one version of a day from another. They are all mostly the same, but whenever you showed up it…” she winced and even in her ghostly eyes I could read her guilt like I was looking in a mirror. When she looked at me, she saw a thousand broken bones and screaming deaths. When I looked at her I saw the same. The woman who had killed me. The woman who had done it painfully. I could never forget that pain. And yet, talking to her didn’t just have the flavor of pain and anger. There was something else. A relief I couldn’t understand. I thought for a moment it was a selfish relief. Like she hadn’t actually stolen her second chance from me. Like I could let go of an empty hope. But as I considered what she might actually be, that rested in my mind like mismatching socks. I could wear it if I needed to, but I knew it wasn’t right. “I’m–”she started, cutting herself off before standing up straight again and adjusting her shirt. She looked me directly in my eyes and I resisted the urge to immediately look down. “I am sorry. I thought I was– I thought–” she stopped herself from making her excuse twice, and I waited as she clenched her fists. “I’m sorry,” she finally finished, opting out of the explanation.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I thought of the girls. Of the danger. Of the fires they had lived through, and of Junia desperate to hold her little sister while I had to deny her. I thought of Harrison. I thought of Hadly. I thought of happy couples killing each other. Marcus murdering Livia. A child, killing his parents. A mother desperately holding her son off so her parents could live. ‘I’m sorry’ wasn’t enough. It made me angry that she’d even offer an apology. I wanted to scream at her. To grab her by the hair and to shove her face in what she’d done like a too-angry dog owner. For the briefest moment, I thought that was why I had created her. And I was growing more certain that I had. I even had a decent idea of how. But before I could reprimand her, I remembered my sister. ‘I’m sorry.’ That was all I would have for her, too. If I ever found her. I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to keep my excuses to myself as Margaret had, either. And that strange relief was still there, as I spoke to her. And before I could condemn her like a much younger Mars would have, I realized where it came from.

  “You believe me,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway.

  “Of course I do. I saw all of it myself. I only exist as… whatever I am because of you. What would I think you were lying about?” She was genuinely baffled by the question. The idea I would be lying about my magic wasn’t just foreign to her, it was laughable. Absurd. Harrison wouldn’t have believed in the loop. Livia didn’t, even with the evidence dancing before her eyes. No one I had grown up with and called my friend had ever believed my magic was good for anything at all. But here was a woman I loathed. A woman who hurt me. A woman who shared every ounce of guilt and shame I’d ever owned. And she believed me without a second thought. It should have been obvious she would. She had all these memories at once. She was made of my aura. Even so. When you wear dismissal and weary sighs from everyone you meet, they start to feel like your skin. Like they are part of you and not an outfit chosen by strangers. And being believed—even by that woman—was a relief the sun after rain.

  I may have hated her, but I needed her belief. And if I, whose sins couldn’t be undone and whose innocent victims still remembered their wounds… if I was going to take a shot at redemption—she deserved a chance too. So instead of screaming, I answered her question. I pictured the spell I had used to slip a few minutes backward, through the day. The spell that gave me a small second chance. “When I touch the spell, the one controlling the loop,” I said, “It’s like pulling on a frayed rope. There is only one rope—one reality—but there are fibers. Broken and leading nowhere. They don’t exist in a real sense. They feel like… like memories. Pictures hanging on to the rope without being a part of it. Those are the loops that pass, I think. I can’t pick them apart. I can’t really tell which is which. But I can feel them. I know what they are. And you. I think I must have pulled a bit of you from each of them. That’s why you feel like patchwork. In a way, you are. And that’s where you must be from, because…” I trailed off, glancing toward the graveyard again. “Because here, in the world that exists… you’ve been dead for a long time. I saw your grave. Right where your mother’s used to stand.”

  It was a surprisingly confident explanation, even with the times I tripped and trailed. It sounded like the Mars of a few years before. Educated and in love with her magic. I wondered if it was Margaret specifically who inspired me to speak like that, or if it was the way I had been changing since coming to Beddenmor. I suspect it was both. A woman on my level, and a level that wasn’t quite so low. Margaret looked toward the graveyard as well.

  “Can I see it?” she asked. I paused. The images of the neglected graveyard flashed through my head. Of her abandoned headstone. If she really was like me, that would hurt more than anything. Not just to see the graveyard she put her life into maintaining, but to find her own grave abandoned. A grave with no visitors was the nightmare I saw when I thought of my future. And it would be a nightmare to her as well. I looked at her, and she saw this in my eyes. But she nodded anyway. “Yeah,” she agreed. “You’re right.” I let her words hang in the air for a heavy moment, but eventually nodded. I was relieved on her behalf that she decided against it.

  “Do you want to help me?” I asked, trying to change the subject. She tilted her head in confusion, so I elaborated. “To end the quiet once and for all.” She crossed her arms again and fixed me with an empty stare.

  “Well, I suppose I don’t have much else to do. But, can you answer one last question for me first?” she pushed. It was my turn to tilt my head. I nodded and she took another deep breath. “I understand why you are worried about taking me to the graveyard. I can see the hurt it carries in every move you make. But, If my grave now sits where my mother’s did before… well. Where is hers?”