“No, Doctor,” Grace said, rising despite the black swell that threatened her vision. “I can stand perfectly fine.”

“Excellent.” He reached into his valise for a flask, the smell of alcohol overtaking the lesser scent of roses in the room as he splashed his shirtfront with it before taking a pull. He ran his fingers through his hair, yanking the red locks in all directions. “And now, Grace, if you would please poke me in both eyes.”

“I’m sorry?”

“No need to apologize, you haven’t done it yet,” he said as he snapped his kit shut. “Now come here and have a go at me. If you need me to antagonize you a bit first, I can certainly do so.”

Grace thought of Mrs. Clay. “I don’t believe that will be necessary,” she said, stepping toward him as he matter-of-factly held his own lids open.

“No gouging. I simply need you to—CHRIST!” He wheeled away from her, hands up to his face. “Well done, well done,” he muttered, still covering his eyes with one hand as he leaned against the table. “I’ll be asking you to do worse things than that shortly, so it certainly bodes well that you’re willing.”

Grace rubbed her hands against her skirts to rid the feeling of his eyes from the tips of her fingers. “Are we ready, then?”

“I believe so.” Thornhollow pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do I look quite disreputable?”

Grace looked him over, from his red-rimmed eyes to his disheveled hair. “Quite.”

“Very well. You’ve no doubt made a study of my patients as they exited this room. The better you can make yourself like them in the coming minutes, the easier a time we’ll have of it.”

Grace nodded, stamping down the rise of apprehension in her stomach.

“Think of the door of your own cell shutting,” he said, when he saw the tremor of her hands. “Put your thoughts and feelings away for the moment and bar them in.”

“I’m long familiar with shutting out the world, Doctor,” Grace said. It was not her cell she thought of, though, which had ironically offered its own type of protection, but the sound of familiar footsteps in the middle of the night, followed by her doorknob turning.

The click she heard in her mind was as audible as if it were in the room with her, and Grace let her emotions leave her in a rush, all cares exiting with her exhalation, not to return until she allowed them. Even her outer appearance changed, though she hardly knew it, and the doctor watched, fascinated, as her eyes glazed over, her muscles became torpid. She slouched as if her soul had left her body, leaving behind only the warm flesh that appeared as lifeless as a bag of water.

“Very . . . good,” he managed to say, but she did not respond. “Reed,” he called as he opened the door to the surgery, and the assistant appeared from the darkness, his gaze flicking to Grace’s bloodied bandages and back to the doctor’s face without flinching.

“You’re set, then?” Reed asked.

“Good man,” Thornhollow said. “Falsteed’s brought you up to speed?”

“I’m to make a ruckus and bring Heedson straightaway,” Reed said, as if reciting his lessons.

“Come along, then, Grace,” Thornhollow called. “Let’s see if Heedson is as pliable as you pretend to be.”

Grace followed Reed and the doctor down the dark hall, allowing the safe detachment to envelope her as she emerged among the cells. Even Falsteed’s murmur at the sight of her bandages slid off her consciousness like rain on a windowpane. She was a receptacle only, storing facts and impressions to sift through at a later date.

“Go to it, then,” Thornhollow said to Reed, who sprinted for the stairs.

“Heedson! Dr. Heedson!” he bellowed, his voice echoing back to them as he ascended. “Thornhollow’s cut one too many!”

His cries faded. Thornhollow examined the bloodied cuffs of his sleeves as he casually unrolled them. Grace watched blankly, her brain sopping up details like a sponge but rejecting all reaction.

“It’s on you, girl,” Falsteed said gently, his voice rolling from the dark. “The ruse is his, but you’re the player. And the punished, for that matter, if Heedson smells the plot.”

“He won’t,” Thornhollow said. “And she’s the last person you need to remind of the risks we run tonight.”

“THORNHOLLOW!” Heedson’s bellow filled the basement. He erupted from the stairwell, dressing gown flapping around him like badly clipped wings. “What have you done?” he demanded, his cheeks red with the unaccustomed exertion.

Reed followed behind Heedson. “I said it was so. You believe me now, Doctor?”

“Dear God,” Heedson cried at the sight of Grace, blank and staring. He approached her warily, as if she were a wild animal that might erupt into life and injure him when he let his guard down. But she only stood, shoulders slumped, eyes riveted to a point on the ground.

When his searching hands touched her face, she slipped deeper into her mind, to a place no touch could follow. Though she refused to feel it, she could draw every line of Heedson’s palm if she were asked to. The tiniest gradations of the rock she’d affixed her gaze to were forever stamped on her memory. The smell of drunkenness that wafted from Thornhollow as he stumbled toward her imprinted itself thoroughly on her mind.

“Hands off the patient,” Thornhollow slurred, awkwardly knocking Heedson’s hands away.

Heedson gripped Thornhollow’s shoulders as if he would shake him to sobriety. “I did not order this girl to go under your knife, sir,” he said, biting off each word. “I said the girl in the cellar and the two men that I would send. That was all.”

Thornhollow wiped his nose on his sleeve and rocked back on his heels. “You said girls.”

Reed held his lantern close to Grace, but she didn’t react to the heat. “Ordered or not, it’s a thing done now, Dr. Heedson. And no undoing it.”

Heedson turned pale in the lamplight, cold beads of sweat standing out on his forehead in the damp. His fingers slipped under her bandage, and Grace held her breath for one instant as he lifted it. His own exhalation in her face when he saw her matching incisions was rank with defeat. “That’s the case, is it? You can’t . . . fix her in some way?”

Thornhollow chuckled as he swayed on his feet. “I guess I could scrape the bits of her brain that’s on the table into a pile and shove ’em back in.”

Falsteed’s voice interrupted from the shadows. “Even you’re enough of a doctor to know that won’t do much good, Heedson. The brain’s damaged and there’s nothing left of that girl other than what you see before you. What’s another lifeless patient to you, anyhow?”

“She’s not just anyone,” Heedson said, neatly tucking Grace’s bandages back as if healing her wounds could undo the surgery. “This girl is Nathaniel Mae’s daughter.”

“Nathaniel Mae the senator?” Reed asked, true surprise ringing in his voice.

“The same,” Heedson said, nodding. “She’s here because of her former delicate condition, under my direct care until she was able to return home. How do I explain this?”

“Tell ’im you’ve got a surgeon that’s overly fond of brandy and doesn’t understand plurals, for all I care.” Thornhollow slapped him on the back. “The road is long, gentlemen, and I need to be on it. I’ll send you a bill, old fellow,” he said as he disappeared into the dark hall to collect his valise.

“Thornhollow!” Heedson yelled after him. “You can’t leave me in this position!”

“Nonetheless, I am leaving,” Thornhollow said as he emerged from the shadows, bag in hand. “The girl is your problem. Ohio needs me, and I must go.”

“Ohio,” Heedson said, his beady eyes shooting back and forth as he thought. “Reed,” he said quickly. “The girl hasn’t spoken since she came here, correct?”

“Not a word, sir. I’d give her some bread and she’d eat it just fine, but never a thank-you or request for something more did I hear.”

“Indeed,” Thornhollow said. “I’m not sure I’d have needed to use the ether on the girl; she was as compliant as a lamb. I did, though. A blade has a way of bringing one to wakefulness.”