A chill works down my spine. I shake my head, wanting to dismiss the story as bullshit. “You’re lying. I saw Adele from the window.”
He gulps. “She’s dead.”
My throat closes up. “You’re wrong.”
“She died years ago. Her corpse is in the room that was always locked since you arrived. The key’s in my pocket. Check for yourself.”
Dread roils in my gut. I should pick up my bag and leave before Rochester returns from his honeymoon with Blanche, but I’m paralyzed by curiosity. I saw what I saw—a little blonde girl with pretty ringlets—and so did Mrs. Fairfax. The woman didn’t disappear for no reason. She went to the mainland for Adele’s treatment.
But what if the man I’m holding captive is telling the truth, and I really am the next in a line of victims? Rochester is capable of poisoning for money. He may as well kill for cheap labour. Or sport. Ignoring my betterjudgement, I reach into the pocket of his pants and extract a metal key.
“Down the hall,” he says, his voice breathy. “Last door at the end.”
Gathering my courage, I back toward the door, still clutching the knife. The floorboards groan under my feet as though warning me not to trust this unkempt man. Leveling him with a glower, I snarl, “If this is a trick, or if you’re lying?—”
“It’s the truth.”
With a nod, I hurry down the hallway, which seems to stretch even longer than before. My bare feet slap against marble cold enough to make me shiver. Every instinct screams that there’s no dead girl behind the door at the end. The man calling himself Rowland Rochester just needs me out of the way so he can escape.
I reach the door, already breathing hard. Why am I even investigating? Because if there’s a chance Rochester has hurt that girl… My throat tightens. I’m sure she’s on the mainland with Mrs. Fairfax, but I’m consumed by morbid curiosity.
I knock once. “Adele?”
Silence presses against my eardrums like cotton wool.
“Adele?”
No answer, which means the room is empty or whoever’s in there isn’t alive. But I don’t smell a corpse.
I slide the key into the lock and turn, cringing at the scrape of metal against metal. Part of me thinks this is a trap. The rest of me can’t forget how Adele never waved back.
When I push open the door, its hinges shriek, and out rushes a gust of stale air. My insides roil. I gag on the mingled scents of plaster, chemicals, and something cloying.Inside is a child’s bedroom with pastel pink walls, complete with an oversized dollhouse. Family pictures fill most of the walls, and on the far left stands a four-poster bed concealing stuffed animals among large cushions. And everything’s covered in a layer of dust.
In the corner on the right, sheathed in shadows, sits a little blonde girl in a high-backed chair with her hands folded in her lap. Light streams in through the net curtains, illuminating her white dress with its lace trim, and the blue ribbons in her ringlet curls.
“Adele?” I whisper, my insides roiling.
She doesn’t turn when I call her name, doesn’t move when I step over the threshold. Silence chokes the atmosphere, save for my own ragged breath.
My pulse pounds so hard its vibrations reach my toenails. Maybe she’s a mannequin or an oversized doll, but she’s far too lifelike. I creep forward, stretching out my trembling fingers. Floorboards creak underfoot, making every fine hair on the back of my head stand on end.
I finally reach Adele, and memories assault me all at once. Brother Matthew dragging me on his hunting expeditions. The way he laughed when he caught an animal in a trap. How he’d force me to watch him flay his kills. And the preserved animal heads, their skins stretched on wax carcasses.
It lands with sickening clarity. Some bastard taxidermied a child. He stuffed her, dressed her, styled her curls. Replaced her eyes with glass. And then sat her in the corner like she’s in a time out.
This isn’t typhus fever.
It isn’t even quarantine.
Adele is dead.
THIRTY-ONE
I race back to my room, my steps powered by rage. My pulse hammers in my ears like a drum roll, and every inch of my body is covered in sweat. What the fuck. What the actual fuck?
All this time, I’ve been waving at a little girl’s taxidermied corpse.
By now, I expect Rowland to have disappeared into the shadows, leaving behind an empty bed strewn with ropes, but I find him still tied to the bedposts. His head snaps up and he gazes across the room at me, his black eyes glittering with apprehension. The bindings cut red welts into his wrists where he’s been testing his bonds, and his shirt rides up to reveal defined abs.
