It was easy to shut the doors of her mind on the faces of the past. Grace had done so without hesitation and thrown away the key. But Alice’s voice slipped through the keyhole, echoing into her dreams and bringing with it the image of her little sister’s face, still full with the baby fat of youth and wide, innocent eyes.

“Grace.” Even her name sounded sweeter in those high, childish tones. “Grace, you haven’t eaten your strawberries,” Alice said, her small pink lips stained with the redness of her own dessert.

In her dream, Grace lifted her eyes from the pattern of the lace covering on the dining room table, her stomach turning in revulsion at the red fruit in front of her. “I can’t,” she said weakly, her fingertips barely strong enough to push the china away from her as the nausea swept her body.

“Mother,” Alice said, her thin blond brows creased with worry. “Why does Grace not eat her breakfast anymore?”

“Grace is not feeling well,” their mother said, a permanent line in between her brows darkening as she rose to stand beside her oldest daughter. “Perhaps you had best go to your tutor alone this morning, Alice. Grace and I need to talk.”

“We did talk.” Grace seethed, her words tasting like the vomit she tried so hard to keep down. “I told you and told you and YOU WILL NOT LISTEN.” The rage she’d held on to in reality burst forth in her dream, and Alice’s small face collapsed in tears as Grace grabbed her fork and drove it through her mother’s hand. Mother’s blood flowed and her hand turned to a man’s, the silver tines of the fork exposing bone and gristle while Heedson yowled in pain, and Alice’s cheeks hollowed out, the ends of her lovely hair splitting while she shoved handfuls of it into her mouth in an imitation of Cracked Pat.

“You wouldn’t listen,” Grace cried out, sitting up in her bed and trying to stop the words before they seeped through the walls and betrayed her to her neighbors.

Though she knew she could share parts of her story if she chose, her slate was small and no words were big enough to encompass her past. Grace wiped at her mouth, almost wanting to spit to rid the aftertaste of the nightmare and the memories that had rushed at her unbidden. It seemed safer to lock it away and leave everything behind along with her last name in the murky darkness of a Boston asylum.

And it would be so easy if not for Alice, whose sweet face had greeted her every morning and whose tiny fingers had once wound through Grace’s own. The very fingers that might that moment be pressed to red-rimmed eyes as she mourned for a sister dead at the hands of whatever lies her parents had fed her to cover the trail of the ones before.

Grace flung back her covers, all sleep stolen at the thought of Alice mourning for a death that hadn’t happened. Lies had covered her home for so long that Grace had accepted them as a matter of course, as ever-present as the smell of drink on Mother’s breath and strange perfume on Father’s coat. She’d been born and bred on them, and now she’d turned the tables, using all the tricks and trumperies she’d learned by watching to deliver herself from their web.

But her escape meant a shield was removed from her little sister. Alice had been born too late to foster anything other than resentment for a ruined figure from their mother and grumblings about another wedding to pay for from their father, but those words had never found her delicate ears. Grace hovered near her always, drawing the angry glares herself, and suggesting outdoor activities when the barely restrained arguments seeped through closed doors.

Grace reached through the decorative iron grille on her widow to trace her fingertips along the glass, now cool with the night air. She wondered if Alice sat at her own window, or if Falsteed thought of her behind his bars.

“Miss Madeleine Baxter,” Grace said softly to herself, remembering the false name Falsteed had told her to write to Reed under. A smile formed as a mockingbird sang on the lawn, echoing the gibberish of the inmates he’d encountered that day.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Miss Madeleine Baxter has a little sister,” she said.

Falsteed—

I hardly know what to call you. Mister? Doctor? Friend? Fiend?

Dr. Thornhollow has told me of your past, but how can I find fault with your deeds when without them our paths would never have crossed? If you are mad then I owe my life to a madman, and he is no less dear to me for his actions. Truly evil people do exist, this I know, but I do not count you among them. Instead, I choose to see you as a good person who has done bad things, and who among us cannot be dubbed so?

Somehow you smelled out the dark origins of my incarceration. Perhaps you also smelled mixed with my own scent a lighter one. So much time was spent holding this one close to me that I would not be surprised to learn that her smell clung to my skin, even in the darkness. As we are, after all, one flesh.

She is my sister, a small, lovely creature who I shielded daily from the secrets in our shared home. That the pall of our parents’ lies should descend upon her now, I can hardly bear. I know what it is to live in that house. Even before the worst, life there was bearable only because I had her to coddle and protect. She must have some comfort, for she is surrounded by anger and deception. I recognize the danger in correspondence, but fear more the results should I not take some action.

Though she sheds her childhood now, once there was an imaginary friend she held dear, who she claimed would meet her in the gardens and leave small presents on a certain rock. That I was the bearer of these, you no doubt realize, and I would be that again. A carefully worded letter from the same friend need not be associated with me. If Reed would endeavor to be the bearer, I can tell him of a hole in the fence surrounding the house, long hidden by ivy. If ever I find myself in a position to repay both you and Reed, it will be done tenfold.

Of my new life I will say little and of Thornhollow even less. You know the deal that was struck in order to facilitate my escape, and I fear you disapprove. What then would you think if I were to tell you that I have already proven myself not only useful but also a keen student of this dark enterprise into the criminal mind? I would say that the work is distasteful, but only because that is what you want to hear. In truth I find myself looking forward to the next opportunity to sharpen my skills and must remind myself that in order for that to happen, someone must die. If it was darkness you feared I would turn to while in his employ, fear not. The darkness has long lived inside me, sown if not by my nature then by nurture.

Grace’s pen faltered as she lingered over the closing. How was she to end a letter written in the sunshine to a man who would receive it in darkness with the death of another still on his breath? She settled for a simple, Always, and left off signing it altogether.

Even though she was confident that Reed would spirit the letter to Falsteed and it would be destroyed soon after, Grace did not put her name to it. The enclosed letter needed to be written with even greater care, worded so vaguely that curious adults would spot only child’s play.

Dearest Alice—

I hope this letter has found you well. You may think it odd to receive a letter from someone you thought no longer existed, but I assure you that imaginary friends never cease to be, even when we have outlived our usefulness. Much like real people, we look for the right time to make ourselves known.

If you would like to leave a message here for me, the fairies will spirit it away during the night. But remember—fairies can only come when good girls are asleep, so do not watch for them. They shall not come if you do.