At first they’d been devastated by guilt, and they had tried to find another way. But nothing else worked. And so, they’d learned to kill without remorse, and they’d learned that teenagers had the strongest magic.

I was with them for every death. Standing on the witness stand with the eyes of the families of the dead on me, I remembered them all.

I told them about how the Storyteller had recognized that I was becoming aware, how at first she’d fostered it but then she’d feared it. A doll who knew their secrets, who couldn’t be controlled, who was filled with bits and pieces of the magic and the memories and the knowledge of the people who had died … They’d built into me the magical equivalent of a failsafe—a trigger that caused me to lose consciousness whenever I used magic—but that only made them safe from my magic. They weren’t safe from my knowledge. I knew what they’d done, and I was beginning to think and, worse, to feel. The Storyteller resolved to make new dolls, replacements that wouldn’t have so much magic inside them and would never come alive. But she’d also loved me. She’d created me. I was hers and his, their sort-of child. So she’d set me free, hoping I’d never return, hoping to replace me with new, weaker dolls.

I was lost for a long time after that, going from world to world in a blur, until Malcolm found me. He’d been investigating this case for some time already and was looking for someone, or something, like me who could lead him to the killer. He saw me use magic that matched those of the victims, and he realized what I was—a receptacle for stolen power. He brought me here, initiated the surgeries, taught me how to function in a world beyond the carnival …

One of the lawyers interrupted me and submitted into evidence a series of recordings: videos of when I’d first arrived at the agency, of the surgeries, of the training. With the judge’s permission, he projected them onto a screen at the front of the courtroom.

Standing on the witness stand, I watched myself, stiff and halting, a doll who drifted in and out of rationality. On the screen, I saw Malcolm guide me into his office, where I sat in a leather chair, motionless and unblinking. I heard Aunt Nicki’s voice, thin through the speakers—she must have been holding the video camera. She called me Pinocchio, pronounced me a freaky thing, and told Malcolm if he wanted a pet, cats were much more appealing. But he knelt before me, looked into my green marble eyes and talked to me. Even then, he treated me as if I were a person.

He was with me as I was wheeled into the first of the surgeries. I reached out my hand to hold his, and I turned my cloth face to look at him with green-glass marble eyes, trusting him. The camera focused on our hands, my misshapen cloth fingers in his strong human ones.

Projected on the screen, the surgeries were a ghastly amalgam of medicine and magic. Veins were threaded inside me, skin was grafted onto me, and human eyes were transplanted onto my half-cloth, half-tattered-skin face—brown eyes in place of green glass. I forced myself to watch—each image causing memories to rise inside me, like bile rising in my throat.

Later, there was another video of me in Malcolm’s office. This time, I looked human but was still very doll-like in my movements, lurching through the office like a strangely detailed windup toy. He had to teach me how to eat, to pee, to sleep. As a doll, I’d done none of that.

Watching the videos, I remembered all of it. My memories, this time.

After it ended, I talked again. I told them everything from meeting Zach and working in the library to having lunch in the pizza parlor with Aidan, Topher, and Victoria. I omitted only their offer and their accusations against the agency, and the lawyer did not ask.

At last, I told Lou and the judge and the jury and the families of the dead about my return to the carnival with Zach and what happened in the wagon with him and Aidan. I didn’t spare a single detail, including the Storyteller’s death and my role in the Magician’s plans.

When at last I ran out of words, I stopped talking. I pressed my thread lips together and thought I might never talk again. I felt drained of all words. I sagged against the witness stand, my cotton body limp.

The Magician spoke then, for the first time. “They will kill you, you know.” His voice was conversational and his words were only for me, as if he weren’t bound and shackled in front of a crowd full of families that wanted to see him flayed alive for all that I’d said he’d done. “I am the only one who never would. I would never destroy you. I am the father you never had, and together we are magic!”

“You are not authorized to speak,” the judge said. He signaled to the bailiffs, and they advanced on the Magician. But he had said all that he wanted to say. He spoke the truth. I knew he would never kill me, and I knew that my own words had condemned me as much as they’d condemned him. I knew what I saw and what I did and what I didn’t do: I didn’t save any of them.

I wondered how they’d kill me—if they’d use magic, if they’d poison my food, if they’d shoot me. I wondered if, when the time came, Aidan, Victoria, and Topher would try to save me, or if what they’d heard had changed their minds. I wondered if I wanted to be saved, if I deserved to be saved.

I wished I could return to the carnival without the Magician. It was home, after all. I’d have liked to travel with the carnival from world to world, see the places from my memories but without the overlay of death and pain, touch an audience without taking from them. I remembered there were beautiful places out there beyond the silver mirror. I’d like to see them again, explore the multiverse.

As I was escorted from the witness stand, I wished I’d had a chance to say good-bye to Zach. Flanked by Malcolm and Aunt Nicki, he watched me as I was led out of the courtroom by armed bailiffs. I met his human eyes with my marble eyes. His were wet, tears staining his cheeks. He’d cried for me.

I was taken to a box.

It didn’t look like a box on the outside any more than the wagon did. It was a nice room on the second floor of the agency, the kind of room that I’d imagine would be in a hotel, except there were no windows. The bed had my quilt from the house on Hall Avenue, as well as the stuffed monkey.

The monkey was a gift from Malcolm—I had remembered that during my testimony, just as I’d remembered the times he’d patiently explained and reexplained where I was and what my name was, the time he’d introduced me to pizza, the time he’d shown me a supermarket, the time he and Aunt Nicki had demonstrated how to dance to the radio. I picked up the monkey and sat on the bed, as the guards who’d escorted me shut the door and locked it. Malcolm and Aunt Nicki had taught me how to be human.

My new room had a dresser with my clothes in the drawers. There was no mirror or anything that could be made sharp. A stack of books, all from the library, were beside the bed.

I wondered if there was any trace of me left in the house on Hall Avenue.

I wondered if there would be any trace of me anywhere in this world. Maybe in the records of the trial. The woman with many arms had typed my every word, plus there had been a video camera recording. And I knew Malcolm, Aunt Nicki, and Zach would remember me. I’d exist in their memories. Maybe that was enough. It didn’t feel like enough.

Hours passed.

One day, two, three.

I spent time sitting on the bed, the stuffed monkey in my arms. I read the library books and imagined that Zach had chosen them for me. I knew without anyone telling me that this was the closest I’d get to him. After what I’d told the jury about how powerful we were together, I doubted Lou would allow us anywhere near each other. I wondered if I’d see Zach again before I died. When I tired of reading, I stared up at the ceiling. There were no cracks in the plaster for me to count, only fluorescent lights in a row, but I counted anyway.