Across the wagon, the Storyteller continues to knit. “So they made a child out of clockwork parts.”

I have blood on the tips of my fingers and under my fingernails.

“And when it was older, it killed them.”

The pain in my fingers feels exquisitely sharp, like tiny needles, and I see the droplets of blood form perfect spheres that plummet toward the wood floor of the wagon. But they do not hit. Instead, I hear rain on the top of a tent. I am no longer in the wagon. I am in the tattered red carnival tent. Rain seeps through the holes in the fabric so that it seems as if the tent itself is crying.

The rain slides down the paint on the face of the clown who contorts himself in the center of the tent. He is alone, and his dance is beautiful, a slow ballet that crosses over the floor of wood shavings. There is no music except the rain.

“Choose a card,” a voice says behind me. It is the Magician, and when I turn, I see he stands at a table of red velvet. Cards spin in the air around him as if they were birds. The cards float, twist, and then land in his open hand.

Four fall to the table, facedown.

One card flips over without the Magician touching it.

It’s the image of a sword in a disembodied hand. “The Ace of Swords,” the Magician says. Another card turns over on its own. “The Wheel of Fortune.” A third card flips, showing a man in a robe with a chalice, a sword, and flowers on a table before him. “The Magician.” And then the final card. It is blank.

I look up at the Magician for him to explain, but he is gone, and so is the tent around me.

I am outside, and the stars are spread close and thick in the sky, so many little pieces of brightness that I suddenly understand the word “stardust” because it looks like the blackness has been dusted with specks of light.

I smell burned caramel and popcorn, and I hear the ring and clatter of carnival games. The prizes hang above the booths—delicate clockwork birds in golden cages, masks made of curved horns, a flute that plays by itself. And I realize that I am perched like the prizes, high above the ground.

From here, I can see the carousel. Its horses are wooden mermaids and winged cats, and its riders are as strange and magical as the mounts—men, women, and children who have wings of their own or clawed hands or faces streaked with feathers. I watch the carousel for a long time, until the mounts detach from their golden poles and ride across the carnival grounds, rising and falling as if they were still connected to the mechanism. The riders are laughing with delight as they are carried into darkness. I stare after them into the darkness—and then realize I am looking into a darkened audience.

I am within the tent again, on the stage. Streaks of moonlight filter through slits and holes in the fabric. The stage is ringed with candles. They shed their light upward, twisting the Magician’s face into grotesque shadows, which he has highlighted with makeup.

“You are the blank card, of course,” he says.

Behind him is a silver mirror as tall as he is. It’s warped, and the curves elongate his reflection so that he stretches into a skeletal figure. His hat narrows into a slit.

I walk toward the mirror and stop in front of it. It is metal, not glass, and the candle flames flicker in it. I look into it, and a girl with brown hair and antlers looks back at me. I raise my hand toward the girl’s face. She raises her hand. I stop. She stops.

It’s me. She’s me.

But I have green eyes, I think.

And then I am pushed into the mirror.

I melt into the silver. It swirls around me, and coolness sweeps through me. In an instant, it’s over. I emerge from the mirror into a meadow. I am beside a lake that glitters in the sun. A wagon waits for me. On its steps is the Storyteller, knitting a red ribbon.

Eve sucked in air, and her eyes popped open. Harsh white light filled her vision and flooded her mind as if it wanted to sear away every thought. Her eyes watered as she tried to see shapes in the whiteness. She couldn’t move her arms or legs. She felt straps bite into her skin as she strained. She was lying flat on her back. She smelled antiseptic, and the smell triggered a memory—tubes in her veins, pain flowering over her skin, eyes burning. She heard a steady beep, shrill and insistent.

Hospital, she thought.

She remembered in a rush: The tubes. The pain. The voices. The dreams. The way her muscles had seemed to stretch until they snapped, the way her skin had felt peeled from her body like the skin of an apple, the way her blood had seemed to burn through her veins as if it were gasoline that had been lit on fire.

Last time, they had taken her old body and reshaped it into this new body, this stranger’s body. She had woken with only emptiness inside.

No! Eve thought.

She couldn’t lose herself again.

She tried to flail, but the straps held her down. She arched her back, and alarms began to wail. She heard footsteps race toward the hospital room.

Out! she thought. Out through the windows. Out into the world. Out. Away. Far away and never come back. Never be found. Never be unsafe. Never be lost. Never be broken again. She strained to the side and threw her magic at the hospital bed bars, the straps that held her, and at the windows with the drawn shades.

All the windows in the room shattered at once.

Darkness claimed her again.

I am sitting in the wagon, and the Storyteller’s arm is around me. “Shh, shh,” she tells me. “Hush.” She strokes my hair. “It won’t hurt. Not one bit.”

The Storyteller smells of Vaseline and greasepaint. Her cheeks have been painted with red circles, and a clown’s smile stretches over her real lips. The paint has cracked where her skin is wrinkled. I lean against her and let her comfort me, a child in a mother’s arms.

I think perhaps I sleep.

When I wake, she is gone.

The Magician squats in front of me. He doesn’t wear his felt hat or his cape or stage makeup, and without them, he seems costumed—as if the ordinary pants and shirt of an ordinary man were a disguise.

I shrink away, and feel the wood slats of the wagon at my back. Behind him, the scarves from his magic act are strung on a line of silk ribbon, as if they were laundry drying. Between each jewel-colored scarf is the wing of a dove, pinned to the ribbon. On the wagon wall, he has skulls as well, bird skulls and mice and snakes. He’s painted them in bright carnival colors. The boxes are stacked in a corner, all empty. I know I am looking everywhere but at him, and I know it will not matter in the end.

He smiles at me.

“Come now,” he says. His voice is soft, soothing, even beautiful. “Whisper sweet nothings to me.”

I cannot run.

He leans close. His lips are nearly touching mine.

I scream, and he steals my breath.

Eve placed a book on the shelf.

She stared at her hands, at the book, at the shelf.

She wasn’t in the hospital. She wasn’t strapped down. She wasn’t in a wagon or a box or a carnival tent. Eve pushed the book into its slot and looked down. She stood on a step stool. A book cart was next to her. It was half-full of books.

She didn’t want to turn around. She didn’t know what she’d see, what had changed, what she’d forgotten this time. Softly, she called, “Zach?”

He might not be here. She might have lost him; he might be only a memory. Or maybe he was never real at all. Maybe none of this was. Maybe she was still strapped to the hospital bed, and this library, this city, this world was only a vision. She’d never left the hospital, and Malcolm, Aunt Nicki, Aidan, and Zach were all a trick of her mind. Or she was trapped in a box on a string in a wagon, and even the hospital was false. Or she was Victoria’s sister—the antlered girl, as the mirror had shown—and she was dead.