“Malcolm believed the memories and instincts were buried in there, inside you,” Aunt Nicki said. “We simply needed to help you become someone who could access them. And we succeeded!”

“Yes.” Lou contemplated me as if I were a sculpture he’d carved. “Yes, we did. We’re all proud of you.” From Lou, this was an extraordinary statement. I stared at him with my marble eyes. Maybe … maybe I had misjudged him.

The agents parted, creating a path through the crowd, and Malcolm marched toward one of the silver mirrors, carrying the briefcase. He looked back once, directly at me, and raised his hand in a wave. Aidan vanished from his side as Malcolm melted into the mirror—I wasn’t certain if Aidan had gone through the mirror or not. I felt a breath of wind on the back of my neck.

“You have done well.” Lou smiled, an unnatural expression on his face. I hadn’t thought his mouth could form any shape but a scowl. I remembered I’d seen him smile exactly once, when he’d handed me the magic box. He put his hand on my shoulder, as if to be friendly. “Our apologies,” Lou said. “But we can’t risk losing you now.”

I looked behind me to see Aidan holding an open box, the one that had once held the Storyteller. “See you at the trial, Green Eyes,” Aidan said. Lou shoved me toward him, and Aidan touched me with the box.

I was trapped inside.

On the day of the trial, Malcolm escorted me into the courtroom. He was flanked by two agents, plus another six behind us. Their guns were drawn—two tranquilizer guns, two tasers, and two loaded rifles. Malcolm had said the guns were merely a precaution.

All the guns were pointed at me, and I heard whispers and gasps and the words “doll” and “puppet” as people craned for their first look at me.

The courtroom was on the first floor of the agency. There was a solid-wood jury box, as well as mahogany benches for the audience, plus the judge’s podium with a witness stand beside it. Lit by iron chandeliers, the warm wood made the room look oddly cozy.

The room was filled with strangers. As I passed by the bailiffs, I recognized three faces in the audience: Aidan, Victoria, and Topher. Aidan wore an elaborate and exotic suit that made him look even more handsome. He had an entourage around him of men and women in uniform, which made his offer to me seem all the more real. These were the people from his government, the ones who wanted me to work for them, who wanted to use me as their weapon. Near them, Victoria was dressed in a floor-length gown, and her hair was arranged in dreadlocks that imitated snakes. They slithered over her shoulders as she watched me walk down the long aisle from the door to the front of the courtroom. Beside her, Topher was also in formal dress, a uniform-like suit with an orange sun on his chest. A man next to him carried a flag with the same symbol. None of them gave any hint that they knew me, but Topher looked at Aidan, who shook his head almost imperceptibly. I didn’t know what the exchange meant.

Zach was also in the audience. He had agents on either side of him. I couldn’t see well enough over the heads of the audience to tell whether or not he was bound. He was as far from me as possible, near an emergency exit door.

At the front, the jury box was full of men and women, not all human, in gray and black suits. The judge was a man with a neatly trimmed beard.

The witness stand was empty, waiting for me.

The Magician was in silver shackles at the front of the courtroom. He wore an orange jumpsuit. Without his tattered suit and hat, he looked wrong. I wanted to place a hat on his head, just so he’d look like he should. This way, he looked like an ordinary man, and that only made me feel more unnatural with my cloth skin, yarn hair, and marble eyes.

As I passed by him, I felt his eyes on me. Malcolm led me to the witness stand and then stepped back. I climbed the steps alone. It was only three steps, but my cotton feet felt heavy. I looked at the judge. His skin was tinged green, and the flaps of gills were visible beneath the wiry curls of his beard. The gills were closed. His expression was unreadable.

I looked at Malcolm. He held his expression still, and I knew that meant there were thoughts and emotions held in check underneath, though I didn’t know what they were. Outside the courtroom, in the moments before my entrance, Lou had lectured me about the importance of remembering everything. Remember what you heard. Remember what you saw. Remember where you were. Malcolm had only said one thing: “Remember who you have become.”

He didn’t speak now. He nodded to the judge, and then he left me at the witness stand and took a seat in the audience in a row of marshals. I noticed that Aunt Nicki wasn’t there. But the courtroom was packed with people. As I looked over them, I felt shivers crawl over my cloth skin. I didn’t know them, but I recognized bits of them. That man, he had the same eyes as the boy with tattoos. The woman with the tears streaking her cheeks had the same face as the girl with silvery hair. I saw a little boy with diamonds in his dreadlocks. Another woman, older, had antlers that budded from her gray curls. She sat between Victoria and a man with snakelike skin. These were their families, the families of the dead. I wondered what they saw when they looked at me, a living doll in a dress of jewels and feathers.

I couldn’t look at them anymore. Looking up at the iron chandeliers, I wished I were elsewhere. I wished Zach and I had run away from the marshals, found a mirror, and kept running. But it was too late for running now.

The judge was speaking. “… the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

I met the Magician’s eyes with my green marble eyes.

Then I laid my cloth hand on a book and said, “I swear.”

A lawyer rose. “Let’s start at the beginning …”

The beginning. What was the beginning? Was it when the Storyteller made me? Was it when I was first filled with magic? Was it when I began to hear, began to see, began to talk, began to think, began to feel? Or was it when I left the wagon and left the carnival behind? Was it when Malcolm found me? Was it when the doctors gave me a new body? Or when I walked into the house on Hall Avenue, believing I was an ordinary girl? Or when I kissed Zach and defied the marshals? Or was it when I was a bird in the wallpaper, suddenly realizing that I could choose what I did, said, felt, or thought? Or later, when I chose not to be what the Magician meant for me to be and decided to be real instead?

I testified for three days, with breaks for the judge and jury to eat, pee, and sleep. I didn’t need to do any of these things. On the breaks, I simply waited in a room beside the courtroom until it was time for the questions to begin again. Sometimes I repeated things; sometimes I backtracked. A woman with a shirt buttoned to her neck typed every word I said. She had four arms. She typed quickly and never looked at me. I didn’t stop talking.

I told them every moment that I could remember. Every word spoken. Every sound heard. Everything I felt. As I talked, I remembered more and more until the memories were waves inside me, pounding at my skin, wanting to burst out. I let them—and out tumbled more memories, memories that weren’t even mine. The freshest were the memories of the Storyteller.

It was the Storyteller who had figured out how to drain magic from someone’s last dying breath. It was she who had crafted a doll that could hold that magic—it faded inside a human, but it stayed within her special doll. It was the Magician who had discovered how to siphon the magic from the doll into himself to use as he pleased. And it was he who had adapted the boxes into traps.

Together, they had joined the carnival and handpicked their victims—they targeted the young, the strong, and the unique magic users in each world. Together, the Magician and the Storyteller lured or trapped or chased them through forests or towns or fields and brought them to the wagon. Together, they drew the chalk symbols on the floor. Together, they killed.