Her ghost's voice interrupted her reverie. "You're only pretending that you loved him, you know," Spencer said.
"And I'm only pretending you're talking to me. So both you and my love are figments of my imagination. What difference does it make?" Elizabeth stared at a tiny crystal shaped like a teardrop, faceted to radiate light when spun in a flurry of colors and shapes, stilled now into a fraction of its potential beauty. She did not look to see if Spencer were visible. That was the road into madness.
"You're just angry that he rejected you. That's why you're trying to pretend you love him. Because that way it makes him wrong to have rejected you."
She tried to pretend she could not hear Spencer's voice. Tried, but failed, and had to answer. "I'm not angry. I'm sad."
"That's a lie."
"If you'd said it, it would be. All the women you told you loved them, when you only wanted them. Right?"
"You're right about me, sweetheart. That doesn't make me wrong about you."
She wouldn't admit it to an imaginary friend, but he did make her doubt. She closed her eyes, looking inward at a Bryon-shaped emptiness within her. No, she hadn't thought she loved him when she Embraced him. She'd been too in love with Gregory then for anyone else to have a passing chance. But she'd thought she could make him love her, and she'd needed that. She remembered how much his first attempts to pull away had hurt and angered her, how that feeling had burned inside and made her wonder at herself. How more than good it had felt when she'd been able to draw him back into her sphere of control temporarily, how hungrily she'd attached to him then.
No two loves were ever the same, were they? None of hers had been. Were any of them really love? If any were, how could she know which? She had the right to choose the names of her own emotions. If she said this feeling was love, not anger, not jealousy, love: then it was so. "No. That isn't what makes you wrong about me. And you're not completely wrong. I am angry. But I am more sad. And I loved Bryon." At some point, I loved him, she added silently. Not when I Embraced him, and maybe not anymore, but I did love.
Finally she looked away from the crystals. Spencer was nowhere to be seen. Simultaneously relieved and disappointed, Elizabeth retreated into her room to prepare herself for the dawn's arrival.