“As you can see, Nell has laid out all of her personal belongings very carefully,” he said, indicating her desk. “She didn’t own much but what she had is here—hair ribbons placed with precision alongside one another, what clothes she had freshly laundered and folded.”

Grace slipped away mentally; the room where her good friend had quietly prepared for her death became simply another room. The ribbons that she’d seen adorning Nell’s black curls transformed into evidence easily, her emotional attachment to them vacuumed away by the cold, clinical evaluative stance she had used so often by Thornhollow’s side. Her breath came more easily, her pain sinking into the coldness that grew inside her.

Thornhollow walked the men through Nell’s room, but they insisted on seeing Ned, whose face still bore signs of tear tracks. The musty smell of the stable enveloped them as Ned talked, his hands telling the story as well as his mouth, but Grace heard little and felt less. Thornhollow was more than capable of convincing the police that Ned was innocent, and she let her mind drift to a place where facts held sway and emotion meant nothing. A place where she could never be hurt again.

She ignored the knock when it came, well aware of who it would be in the middle of the night. Janey cracked the door and slid inside Grace’s room. “Grace,” she hissed. “The doctor needs you.”

Grace rolled onto her side, presenting her back to Janey. “Grace.” The nurse’s hands shook her. “The doctor said to tell you that . . .” She paused, the oddness of the words catching on her tongue. “He said to tell you that he’s found another doll.”

A spark of interest ignited in her belly, but what good would come of looking at another dead girl, eyes wide with questions Grace could not answer? She shoved Janey’s hands aside and shook her head, burrowing deeper into the pillow.

“All right,” Janey said with a sigh. “I’ll tell him you’re not coming. I said before that I’d take your part if I felt it was too much. But I can’t help but think it might do you some good. You’re not one for talking, but I always see a purpose in you, Grace. I haven’t seen a trace of anything in you at all these past few days.”

Janey left, but Grace remained motionless in her bed. In the days since Nell’s death, the bleak winter had wrapped itself around the asylum, seeming to fill even Grace’s head. Everything inside of her was gray, all of her actions meaningless. Letters written to Alice were taken by the wind; long conjectures with Thornhollow produced nothing more concrete than chalk on slate. She was a madwoman in truth, with no direction and no hope.

There was a timid scratching at her door. Grace ignored it but the door creaked open slightly and Elizabeth appeared, long braids hanging out from under a sleeping cap. She crept inside, crawling into bed with Grace without being invited. The girl’s hand wound into Grace’s unbound hair and she nestled in beside her.

“String said you needed me,” she said, tucking the comforter around both of them. Grace slipped off to sleep, lulled by Elizabeth’s hands moving through her hair.

“It was a mistake,” Thornhollow informed her the next day in his office.

“In your opinion,” Grace said. “I didn’t want to look at a dead girl.”

He strolled around her as she sat, deep in thought. “How are you feeling, Grace? Lonely? Hollow?”

“Useless,” she said, eyes not meeting his own.

He slapped his hands together. “Exactly what I’m trying to remedy. Your eyes could’ve gleaned much last night, Grace.”

“As could your own. More than mine.”

“I learned things, yes,” he said. “But you know yourself the million tiny details that assault you in these situations, any one of them holding the key to our killer. What if that one thing avoids me but you catch it?”

“I don’t know, Doctor,” Grace said, head in her hands, fingers finding her scars.

“I do know,” he said. “You complement me, Grace. I work better with you by my side. My mind can be sharply focused while you capture the larger canvas.”

Grace worked at her scars, the soft skin numb to the touch but pleasant to the fingertips. “I wasn’t only mourning for Nell when they locked me away, Doctor. These girls we see, their helplessness is so evident. The ether strips them more completely than he does. They don’t even fight. All they can do is lie there, and be posed and pawed as he pleases.”

“I understand,” Thornhollow said. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since . . .” He trailed off, searching for the right words. “I met your father.”

“Yes,” she said, her throat threatening to close still farther. “I saw him, from the turret.”

“He’s an arrogant ass,” Thornhollow said, slamming his hand down on the chair arm. “I’d have disliked him even if I’d never met you.”

“Was it difficult?”

“The entire thing was difficult,” Thornhollow said, drawn back into his own sufferings. “There were people who needed to be met and talked to, a ridiculous amount of food to eat. And there were—”

“Women?” Grace asked, thinking of the lady in blue.

“A few,” he said. “Though they were less of a problem than usual. Your father is a magnetic man.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“It’s easy to see that he’s accustomed to getting his way.”

“Father doesn’t lose. Ever.”

Thornhollow cleared his throat. “Grace, I can’t help but wonder if you see yourself in these helpless girls. Our inability to catch their killer combined with the arrival of your father has intensified the connection.”

“No.” Grace shook her head, voice aching with use. “You’ve drawn too many lines, looked too deeply when it’s really quite simple.”

“How so?”

“I don’t see myself, Dr. Thornhollow. I see Anka. I see Mellie. I see exactly who they are and what’s been done to them. It’s what I can’t see that I couldn’t face last night—the man who had them to their last breath and at his mercy until their darkness fell.”

She went to the blackboard, spinning their notes to the front. “I can’t see him, Doctor. And neither can you. Both our minds have touched every detail, turned it to see if we’ve missed something, and then examined it again. And yet we’ve found nothing, come no nearer than we were the night we saw the crowd forming around Anka. I can’t bear it.”

“Then perhaps I’m wrong,” Thornhollow said. “Taking you out last night would’ve done nothing to gratify your need to avenge them.”

“But you said you learned things?”

“And I did.” Thornhollow rose to join her at the board. “The girl had been dead for some time, her body only discovered when a farmer went to cut a Christmas tree for his family. She was frozen solid and had been laid out at the coroner’s to thaw when I saw her last night. It was definitely our man—arms laid across the chest, ankles crossed, eyes open.”

“Why would he kill again now?” Grace asked, drawn in despite herself. “It’s been months.”

“And why out in the country this time?” Thornhollow shot a question back. “The first two girls were in town, which carries much more risk and implies that he’s comfortable in that environment and therefore a city dweller. Except now we get a girl out in the woods, and it makes me wonder if your earlier thought about him being a country doctor might be right.”

“When was she killed?” Grace asked, standing back to look at the board. “If we can establish a timeline, it could answer any number of things.”

“Wouldn’t a timeline be lovely?” Thornhollow said, his gaze roaming over their notes. “But no, sadly, last night’s victim won’t help in that respect. As I said, frozen solid. She was a kitchen girl in one of the larger country estates, unhappy in her position. She’d been talking of returning home, so no one thought anything of it when she went missing. With the temperatures we’ve been having she could’ve died weeks ago, or within the last two days. It’s impossible to tell.” He slapped his leg. “And with her discovery in the middle of nowhere under a foot of snow, it makes me wonder if there’s a whole bevy of corpses out there, just waiting for the spring thaw to announce that they’ve died.”