All her rage burned through her fingertips as she tore away. She thought of her father, taking a meal in the only place she had ever known safety. His name, used in ignorance on the innocent lips of her friends, pouring bile over her soul with every pronunciation. And Nell. Poor Nell with the pox eating her beautiful face, the damnation brought upon her by the lust of another. Anka Baran and Mellie Jacobs, lying deceptively peaceful as their killer pawed their bodies. And Grace, unable to stop any of it.

There were no words for the language she was speaking and so Grace only screamed, tearing into the walls, kicking and biting at the leather until it split, spilling horsehair and feathers into the air. Her flailing sent them ever higher, her sanity stretching thin as she gave vent to all that was within.

She ripped and tore and screamed until the thin tissue of her throat was as shredded as the walls of her cell, her eyes swollen and throbbing with no tears left to shed. Grace collapsed, the last feathers drifting down to land on her dry, cracked lips, her exhalations too small to disrupt them again. Strength gone, she could only lie quivering, her emotions spent and body exhausted.

The rectangular viewing screen slid open with a metallic screech.

“Grace.” Thornhollow’s voice was low and calm, the same tone she’d heard him use with the most difficult of patients. “Grace, I’m coming in to get you.”

She couldn’t object. Her exhaustion ran so deep she could not raise a finger. The door opened and he scooped her into his arms, her hands and feet trailing as if she were dead as he carried her down the hall to his office, where Janey waited. He set her in a chair by the fireplace, and Janey sponged her face clean, cool water erasing hot tear tracks.

“I know, Grace,” Janey said, her own face puffy. “It’s a hard thing to reconcile yourself to, but Nell went out her way. She wasn’t going to let that boy’s sickness have the last word.”

“Yes,” Thornhollow added, settling into the chair next to Grace’s. “Nell said the mercury made her feel worse than the disease. She’d stopped taking the treatment weeks ago, and I thought it was best to let her determine her own course of action.”

Grace looked at him coldly, no words necessary for the thought in her eyes.

“It was the right choice,” Janey said, pulling feathers and horsehair from Grace’s clothes. “The pox would spread anyway, Grace. All the mercury could do was slow the spread, and Nell hadn’t felt well in months.”

Grace shifted her stare to Janey, who met it without flinching.

“Yes, I knew she stopped taking the mercury baths,” Janey said. “What’s the use of treating you like people if we don’t let you make your own decisions?”

Grace closed her eyes, the truth of Janey’s words striking home. She nodded, forgiveness in her eyes when she opened them again. She put a finger next to her ear and raised an eyebrow.

“Elizabeth is taking things rather well, which, I have to say, I’m surprised,” Thornhollow said. “The girl is made of sterner stuff than I imagined.”

“It’s true,” Janey said, running her fingers through Grace’s hair to tame it. “When I went to her room to tell her the news she was sitting quiet by the window, watching the crowd. I think she knew without me saying what had happened, for she was crying all silent and proper, sitting there looking down on the lake.”

Janey’s voice hitched as fresh tears fell and she pulled Grace’s hair up out of her face, tying it back with a ribbon. “There,” she said, wiping her face quickly. “And now I’ve got to go and see to the other women. Nell’s gone out the way she’d want; has the whole place in an uproar.”

“Grace,” Thornhollow said after Janey shut the office door behind her. “I’m very sorry about Nell. I want you to know that I didn’t have any idea she would . . .”

Grace shook her head, absolving him. Nell had staged her own triumph and left the audience wishing she were still with them. Grace put her hand on her throat and looked at the doctor.

“No, I don’t doubt you’ll have it back, but it will be a few days at least,” Thornhollow said, glad to have the subject changed. “You’ve done some damage to yourself.”

She rose on unsteady legs, pushing away his assistance as she walked to the blackboard. She flipped their notes on the doll killer to the back, bringing the fresh side to face her. Chalk in hand, she wrote her question.

AM I MAD?

“No,” Thornhollow answered from his chair. “You’ve had an extremely taxing few days. Your tormentor was under your roof, your close friend took her own life, and you’ve been denied the use of your voice by a lie that must hang over you for as long as you remain here. Emotions were tearing you apart and they came out the only way they could. Grief is by nature the most violent of them all. The ancients tore their hair and rent their clothing to express it. Now we keep the dead body in our homes, shaking people’s hands as they pass by to view it and trying to stop ourselves from crying because it’s not socially acceptable. Tell me—which of these mourning practices is least sane?”

Grace’s mouth turned up slightly, grateful for his words. But there was no feeling alongside it; all of her convictions had flown out of her in the padded room. She could not avenge the dead, or protect her sister, or even stop her own mind from reliving her horrors. Her fingers trailed upon the chalk letters she’d made, leaving a white film on her fingertips.

“You are not mad, Grace,” Thornhollow said, watching her movements. “I assure you.”

She found the chalk and wrote again, the only thing she knew.

THEN I AM NOTHING.

“For God’s sake, man! Do you not think I know a suicide when I see one?” Thornhollow’s voice brought Grace from his office, where she’d been dozing by the fire. George and Davey stood in the atrium, holding their wet hats in their hands.

“It’s not my place to say what you know or don’t know,” George said. “I was told to come ask a few questions about a girl that’s gone missing up here at the madhouse. And from what I heard, there’s a screaming fella running around with an ax mixed into this story as well. That don’t sound much like a suicide to me, though I’m just a policeman, not a doctor.”

“I thought it was you,” Davey said, going to Grace as she stepped into the hall. “When I heard there was a girl gone, I . . .”

Grace stared at him as his sentence evaporated, his words hitting nothing. The concern she’d seen in his eyes before, the tiny attentions that he’d bestowed upon her meant nothing now. They could only be absorbed by her blankness.

“You’d best step away from her,” Thornhollow said, intervening between the two smoothly and taking Grace by the hand. “The girl in question was a good friend of hers, and Grace has had . . . a spell.”

Davey looked at her again, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Gentlemen,” Thornhollow said. “I can assure you that Nell committed suicide.”

“How so?” George pushed. “And where’s the man with the ax being held?”

“He is held nowhere,” the doctor answered. “He is a docile resident of the asylum who merely found the instrument Nell used to chop through the ice in order to throw herself into the lake. Now if you would please go.”

“I don’t believe we will,” George said. “I’d like to see this Nell girl’s room and talk with the ax man myself. And if you want to keep having access to all our crime scenes, I suggest you let us into yours.”

Thornhollow heaved a sigh, his grip tight on Grace’s wrist. “I will be with you every step of the way.”

George mocked a bow. “But of course. I wouldn’t dream of trying to solve a crime without your assistance, Doctor.”

They climbed the steps together, Davey pausing to allow Grace to pass in front of him on the landing. She walked by without acknowledging him, leading the men to Nell’s room among the whispers of the girls who gathered in the hall. Thornhollow let go of her arm when they entered the room.