You're crying, which is stupid, but you can't help it. There are shadows dancing on the walls and you keep expecting one to peel away and hold you, but it's not happening, because you said it, right? Go away. Go away.
Go away doesn't mean don't come back. Right?
The door creaks open.
"He's gone, hasn't he?"
Things in this house stopped frightening you a few days ago, around the time you stared into your own dead eyes, so your expression doesn't change when you glance up at another maid. She must have died a long time ago— her hair is pinned in old-style curls, and she's actually wearing garters. It's a little too much skin for you to deal with in a ghost so you look away again.
She walks straight up to you, bends down in front of the bed you're collapsed on. "Violet?"
Her eyes are brilliantly blue, the color of the sky you can see stretching outside the window of this house that you'll never leave. "How do you know..." you begin, and stop. The shape of her face, the shine of her red hair, knit themselves together in your mind. You push yourself up, reach out a hand before snapping it back. "Moira?"
For the smallest second her eyes widen in surprise, turning her face more human and less unearthly beautiful. Then it smooths itself out again and that tiny confusion might as well have been a ripple of your imagination. "Yes. Are you alright?"
You're not stupid and you can place her tone: wheedling, sultry. Your stomach wants to turn remembering your Moira, with her carved out wrinkles and blinded eye, but if there's one thing you've learned over the past few hours it's that you have to take whatever you can get. Opening your mouth to speak, you have to clear your throat three times before you can. Moira smiles. Doesn't move. "Why do you look like... this?"
Her eyes hook you, pull you in. "You see what you want to see."
Before you know what to make of anything her fine-boned hands are on your knees, sliding, separating. It's like a picture in one of those puzzle books that Dad had in his office when you were little— look at it straight on, it was an old crone, but slant your eyes a little and suddenly it was only a young woman wearing a feathered hat. You remember flipping the picture over and over again, sure that if someone could draw it two ways then there must also be a third and a fourth and a fifth, an infinite number of women trapped in a few strokes of ink.
Moira's lips are warm, and she tastes like old perfume. "Shh," she whispers, although you haven't made a sound. "Let me help you, Violet."
You would think that it's nothing like Tate, but thinking of him at all sets your insides ringing, so it's only different. Different the way she presses you back onto the bed, crouching over you like a lioness. Different when she slides your hand into hers, so intimate that you breathe a sigh of relief when she only raises it to the buttons of her uniform. You falter for a moment, your head swimming with the Moira you know, but you push it away and yank at it. The fabric gives and she shrugs it off, practiced, easy, the kind of casually seductive you could only work to achieve.
"Have you ever been with a woman, Violet?"
She keeps repeating your name; it sounds prettier from her mouth. Sophisticated, beautiful. You shake your head, and she smirks, then kisses you so hard that you hardly notice her tugging at your dress until it's over your head. Sunshine streams through your window, the worst tease, but it lights her hair the color of blood.
"You need this," she whispers, suddenly between your legs, and everything goes dazed and foggy as she bares you for herself. It's oblivion that you need, you think, and Moira seems happy enough to get you there. She might as well have been watching you during the night, taking notes on everything you like, that's how easily she works you, until your whole body is pulled tight as a violin string.
"Please," you gasp, aware for the first time that ghosts can sweat. When you look down, Moira smiles again, dragging her tongue slow and wet across you. It's all you need and you cry out once before your chest goes empty and breathless, back arching so hard you can feel your thighs pressing against hers. You remember reading that, in French, orgasm is le petit mort— little death.
Painfully ironic has always been your style.