Page 7

“I’m sure,” he says under his breath, long fingers encircling her elbow, pulling her closer. “This is Gertrude, my sister. Millie was her daughter.”

The woman approaches them, her steps unsteady, her eyes wild. She looks nothing like tall, blond Finn with his bright-blue eyes. Her face is all rough edges and deep-cut wrinkles. She’s dressed in a black cotton dress with a high lace collar. Her hair is brown but with wide threads of white. “Thank you for coming,” Gertrude says, her voice breaking. “Millie . . . Millie’s in her bedroom. I dressed her up a tad.” A tear leaks from the corner of her eye and runs down her pale cheek.

The bitter taste of opium rises in Jo’s throat. An odd sense of foreboding creeps in: If she takes another step inside this house, if she doesn’t leave immediately, her old life as she knows it will come to an end, and a new life will begin. Jo ignores it all and turns to Gertrude. “Dressed her up?”

“She didn’t look good,” Gertrude says. “And I want Millie to look good. It’s . . . it was important to her to look good. Do you understand?” Gertrude wipes her eyes again. “I need her to look pretty. She was such a pretty girl. Can you do that?”

“Gertie,” Finn says softly. “Jo’ll do what she can.”

Jo understands the woman, her agony, and her desire to do something nice for her dead daughter. To make her last act of kindness count. But she doesn’t say anything, because the right words won’t come. On a few occasions, grieving mothers asked Jo to take pictures of their dead children. They wanted a female photographer because they thought only a woman could understand their agony. Jo had to endure. None of it was easy—the endless pain of the parents, the flower-covered caskets, small stockinged feet, stiffness of bones, expressionless pale faces of the dead.

Every one of those sessions brings up memories she doesn’t want to relive.

Jo stares at Finn’s sister and tries not to think about her own loss, her own pain. The sorrow takes up so much space in her she sometimes doesn’t know if she can go on. Live another day. Take another breath. But she knows you cannot hide from your own thoughts. At least, not for long.

The silence stretches long and uneasy until Jo finally says, “I’m sorry for your loss.” But it’s too late. The awkwardness swings heavy in the air—like a pendulum—and nothing and no one can fix it.

Gertrude looks at Finn, seeking affirmation Jo can make her Millie look pretty. Or maybe wanting him to confirm he didn’t bring a madwoman into her house.

“She’ll do her best,” Finn repeats calmly. “I’ve seen what she can do. I’ve seen her work. She’s good.” He must’ve looked at the photos Jo set in the window to showcase her studio. Most of the photographic prints are not hers but August’s, who never had to photograph the dead. Who loved landscapes and wild bergamot. Who never had to listen to the whispers.

Gertrude nods at the door down the hallway. “She’s there. My Millie.”

The terror buzzes in Jo’s veins as she follows Finn and Gertie to the girl’s bedroom. Her knees shake a little as she takes each step, floorboards creaking under her weight. The three men part as they make their way through the hallway, and Jo steals a glance in the direction one of the men was waving a minute ago. A door, leading to a weakly lit room, is half open, and there, on the floor, is a young man. He’s wearing clothes similar to Finn’s—a wool suit with a striped shirt underneath. He looks deathly white, his eyes closed, a gag in his mouth. At first, Jo thinks the man is dead, but then, with a muffled moan, he convulses violently. Jo drops her gaze to the floor, to the pair of black shiny shoes neatly placed by his side.

Jo gasps.

Thin, rectangular patches of skin are peeled away from the man’s feet.

“Molting,” one of the men says, stepping closer to Jo.

“What?” she whispers weakly.

“A snake shedding its skin,” the second man adds indifferently. “It’ll teach him not to run. No one leaves the Snakes.”

She senses the monster before she hears him. “Finn, take her away,” Ira says. She doesn’t dare look at him, doesn’t dare move. “Let’s not waste any more time.”

The silence that follows is absolute, except for the man’s horrible grunts of pain and Jo’s loud breathing. She’s gasping for air like an animal being choked by a rope.

Finn takes Jo’s hand and pulls her away from the men. “Don’t ask any questions. Just take Millie’s pictures, all right?” His eyes search her face calmly, as if the scene that they both just witnessed had no effect on him. “Jo, do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” she croaks. A decent person would run to the door. A brave person would march to the closest police precinct. She’s neither. No one leaves the Snakes. It was a warning. If she wants to survive the night, she must do what she was hired to do.

Gertrude waits for them at the end of the hallway. As they approach, she measures Jo carefully, most likely trying to determine if Jo can be allowed to enter. “Here’s Millie,” she says. Something must’ve convinced her Jo’s trustworthy enough, because she pushes the door open.

The door whines, the sound loud and startling, almost human, and Millie’s bedroom comes into sight. It is large and clean, the floors freshly mopped. All the windows are open, but even as the breeze sweeps through the room, Jo catches the unmistakable heavy waft of death. Of rot. And candle wax. A few candles are flickering on the mantelpiece by the wall. A wide and tall bed takes up most of the space. The dead girl, pale as bone, clothed in a white dress, is sitting upright, propped by a mountain of pillows. Her dark braids fall over her shoulders. A dozen white roses lie in her lap.

Jo stands inside the door, not certain she can take another step. Finn crosses the room and positions himself by Millie’s side, says something, and his sister replies, and both of them look at Jo, but she cannot understand their words. Nothing makes sense. Her own thoughts rattle through her mind, refusing to line up.

What she sees cannot be true. Cannot be real.

“Jo.” Finn gives her a sharp look. “Are you all right?” Each word is heavy, like a rock falling into a well.

She’s definitely not all right. She knows death. Intimately, at that. She knows what it does to people. The intensity of the pain, the agony. But what this is—this girl on the bed with the roses in her lap—she cannot explain.

“Finn,” Jo rasps. It is a struggle to push a sound out of her throat. To string her thoughts together. Blackness, thick and suffocating, presses upon her. She cannot catch a breath. The room expands; the walls shift. Jo’s mind feels like a separate living thing that leaves her body and floats over to the bed. Her reality, her world splits in two: here and not here, real and not.

There is a buzz in her head. A fly trapped inside her, throwing itself against her scattered thoughts, pushing them together, stringing them into one continuous image.