“Amateurs,” Nell said, sucking in and releasing smoke through her nose.

The cigarette made the round again, Nell coaching the other two as the moon rose higher and their laughter grew louder. Grace allowed herself to be lulled, to follow their voices and stories to a place where she didn’t fear the arrival of her father. Lost in each other’s words, they didn’t even hear the party breaking up until the first carriages were brought around to the front, wheels crunching in the gravel.

“Already?” Elizabeth asked, rising from her chair to watch the guests depart.

“Ye’ve got no sense of time,” Nell said, pointing at the moon. “It’s two in the mornin’ at least. Or ’ave ye never seen the sky this late?”

“Does it matter?” Elizabeth said, at the railing. “Here they go.”

“Aye,” Nell said as she and Grace joined their friend. “And the rich stagger ’ome just the same as the poor.”

They emptied out slowly, women leaning on men and vice versa, drivers helping everyone into their carriages. Grace stood watching solemnly. Her father had been under her feet for hours and her friends had drawn her thoughts elsewhere. Now that he was leaving she felt a perverse need to see him, to revel in the knowledge that he had truly been so near and she’d been unaffected. The bricks had not crumbled; the air was not poisoned. She could continue to be Grace of the asylum on the hill and let Grace Mae truly be a ghost.

She went to the railing with triumph in her step, leaning into Elizabeth as they watched the revelers leave. Her father’s booming voice sailed through the night air to her, the laughter he used in public so different from the low chuckle she’d heard in the dark. He emerged from under the portico, his shadow stretching as if it would engulf everything below her, leaving Grace in her turret surrounded by his darkness. His heavy step seemed to reverberate, the rhythm of her nightmares carried through the bricks to shake the boards beneath her feet. Her knees quivered and she dropped slightly, clinging to the rail but forcing her eyes on him as he turned to speak to the superintendent, his hand emerging from his coat sleeve as they shook. His teeth flashed, bright white against the pink of his lips, and Grace’s stomach revolted at the sight, clenching down on her paltry supper as she bent over, gagging.

“Grace.” Elizabeth gripped her arm. “Grace, what’s wrong?”

Grace didn’t respond, eyes still focused on her father as he climbed into a carriage and was lost from sight.

“The smoke get to yer stomach?” Nell asked.

Grace shook her head, eyes glistening with unshed tears. Next to her, Elizabeth’s face went pale, her own knees buckling, and the two went down together.

“Yer a fine pair,” Nell said, slumping to the ground with them. “One cigarette ’tween the two of ye, and yer both the color o’ the sea.”

Grace wrapped an arm around Elizabeth, her own strength returning. She squeezed her friend, who smiled delicately, though her face was still ashen.

“I’m all right,” Elizabeth said weakly. “It’s the cold getting the best of me. I lost my breath there for a minute.”

“Yer fine to climb down?” Nell asked, holding the light in one hand, the trapdoor propped open on her knee.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said, rising to her feet. “Can we leave the chairs, though? Maybe we’ll come up again another time?”

“Oh, aye. It’s gone so well. Grace is pukin’ an’ yer faintin’. Let’s do it again tomorrow.”

The three crept down to their hall with the light extinguished, hands on one another’s shoulders as Nell led the way in the dark. Moonlight streamed in through the high windows at the end of the hall, lighting their faces as they stopped at Grace’s door.

“Good night, Grace,” Elizabeth said, her hand on Grace’s shoulder still. “Feel better.”

“Aye, feel better.” Nell suddenly pulled her into a hug, crushing Grace to her. “I love ye, I’ll tell ye that. Like a sister. Even though me own ’aven’t much use fer me. Yer my real fam’ly, the both of you.” She pulled Lizzie in with her other arm. “Yer the best two women in the world, mad as hatters. And I’d take ye both over the lot of ’em that was ’ere tonight, money and all.”

“I love you too, Nell,” Lizzie said, tears flowing silvery streaks in the moonlight.

Grace could only move her head up and down as she leaned into both of them, tears streaming over her cheeks and down her closed throat.

The faces came back that night, the proximity of her father drawing them up from her subconscious. Even before his sins drew him to the ultimate depravity, he’d destroyed those around Grace, her young memory registering every occurrence though she’d not understand until later. Her nanny, the young sweet face that had become thin and wan almost overnight, the bruises around her throat not quite covered by a raised collar. The replacement, a girl with a simper, had lasted only three months before Mother sent her away with cash and a growing waistline.

The servants had always bustled away from him, exchanging glances with one another that Grace had been unable to interpret, but he hadn’t limited himself to easy prey. Some of the faces Grace was forced to look upon as she lay in her room had styled hair, ears that dripped jewelry as their mouths tried to form a smile though the lipstick was smeared. Her father’s lust recognized no boundaries as his power grew, and Grace’s memory rattled off names from her childhood along with the faces she’d forced herself to forget.

His face waited for last, filling her mind, though she dug her palms into her eye sockets to block the vision. He was impeccable, dark mustache trimmed daily, hat slightly cocked over one eye as he surveyed those around him, the smile never touching his eyes.

“Stop,” Grace said, her lips moving against her wrists as she railed at her own mind. “Please, stop.”

But the words brought another vision, one that she’d banished for fear of becoming truly mad. She heard his voice as it had been hours before, rolling confidently through the blackness of the night to fill her ears, but in her memory it was only her name he said, over and over again.

“No more!” Grace gasped, forcing her hands out of her eyes and to her scars, where the smooth skin brought solace, the only safeguard in place to keep him from ever seeing her again.

“I’m dead,” she reminded herself, breath coming more easily as she steered her brain elsewhere, to the hollows and planes of Thornhollow’s face as he cut her in Boston. “He believes me dead. Thank you, oh, thank you,” she said, her voice trailing off into sleep, though her mind lingered on Thornhollow’s face a little longer.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Ned’s screams were wordless as he stormed into the entrance hall with the morning light, his terror filling the atrium and roaring up the stairs. Thornhollow reached him first, taking the ax from his hands and trying to discern what had happened. Patients lined the staircases and staff poured from their rooms as Ned led the doctor out the front door.

Grace was pulling on her shift when she saw the figures streaming toward the pond, the sane outrunning the mad by only a few steps. She flew outside, her bare feet numbed in the first few moments as she tore down to the lakeside behind the others. Thornhollow tried to stop her as she broke through the crowd, grabbing her roughly around the waist.

“Grace, Grace, wait,” he said into her ear. “You don’t need to see this.”

She shrieked and wrested out of his grip, cold terror pushing up through her belly as she forced her way to the front to see a perfectly chopped hole in the lake’s ice, and Nell’s black braid lying beside it.

Grief made her truly mad. It took two male attendants to force her inside the padded cell, Thornhollow bellowing at them to be careful as she fell in a pile on the soft floor. She was screaming, hadn’t stopped since she saw Nell’s braid, carefully cut off and laid on her self-fashioned tombstone, as she’d threatened so long ago. Grace’s voice ripped, wordless, through her mouth, and she clawed at the leather padding.