“You drove this astonishingly hot underwear model from south Texas. You wanted to lick his abs.”

“I wanted to lick his abs.”

“You’re such an ass**le,” Stella muttered as she climbed out of the cab.

“I get my kicks where I can.”

As we waited for the traffic to stop and the light to change, Jamie took the opportunity to throw up into a garbage can.

“Ugh, gross,” a high-heeled, miniskirted girl squealed as she walked by.

Head still bent, Jamie raised his middle finger at her, then spat into the garbage can and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

“Ugh. Gross,” he said. “I’m never going to get used to that.”

“You’re not supposed to get used to it,” Stella said. “You’re supposed to not do it.”

Jamie’s aunt’s house turned out to be a brownstone on a relatively quiet tree-lined street. We walked up the front steps, and he peered in through the glass door. It was dark.

“How are we supposed to get in, again?” Stella asked.

“My cousin once told me a story about breaking in post-curfew using a spare key from under a fake rock or some such. Maybe . . .”

Jamie hopped back down the steps and ducked behind a small gate in front of the garden apartment. There were some wilted plants there, and a package with the word “perishable” on the side of it, and—

“Fake rock!” Jamie said, bending down. “Score.” He held up the key, hopped back up the steps, and unlocked the front door. Stella and I followed him inside.

The house was gorgeous. The parlor still had most of its original details—an ornate plaster medallion in the center of the ceiling, carved woodwork between the parlor and the kitchen, and a massive fireplace with a mirror as the overmantel. Stella whistled.

“I know, right?” Jamie said. “Bedrooms and bathrooms are upstairs. Take whichever ones you want. There’s a package outside for my aunt. I’m gonna bring it in. Shall we convene in an hour for food plans?”

Stella nodded. I did too, even though I wasn’t hungry. I was already on my way up the stairs.

“How do you feel?” Stella asked. She was following behind me.

“A little better,” I lied. Then crinkled my nose. “You smell ripe.” I needed to get rid of her.

“Yeah, I feel gross,” she said. “I desperately need a shower.”

“I hate to say it,” I lied, “but you really do.”

We each claimed a bedroom, but just as I’d hoped, Stella did not pass go or collect two-hundred before she ducked into the bathroom, duffel bag in hand. When curls of steam began to filter out from the beneath the door, I set Noah’s bag on the bed in the room I’d chosen. I had his razor in my back pocket still, but I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted. What I needed.

After a minute or two my hand closed around a tightly rolled T-shirt I’d buried near the bottom of his things. I took it out and unrolled it, finding the scalpel I’d hidden there. That was what I needed.

My fingertips seemed to tingle as I held the metal up. I knew, objectively, that what I was about to do was crazy, but somehow my feet carried me toward the guest room door, and my fingers turned the lock so no one would be able to stop me. And then I lifted up my shirt and began to cut.

30

OH GOD, OH GOD. STELLA, get in here!”

My eyes fluttered open, just enough to see a blurred outline of Jamie leaning over me.

“What’s wrong?” Stella’s voice, from a distance away.

“It’s— Mara did something!”

He grabbed a towel, and I felt pressure on my stomach.

Did I get them out did I get them?

“Don’t you dare even try to talk, you idiot,” Jamie said to me. He propped my limp hands over my stomach, over the towel, then sprang up to get the door.

“What happened?” Stella said as she appeared in my frame of vision. “Oh. Oh my—”

“I wanted to use Noah’s laptop for something,” Jamie said, “and I knocked on the door to get it from her, but she didn’t answer. So I knocked again, louder, and still nothing. And I just had this bad feeling, so I used a needle from the sewing kit to pick the lock, and I opened the door, and she was like—”

“Oh, God,” Stella whispered.

“Like this.”

“Oh my God, Mara, what did you do?”

There’s something inside me, I tried to say.

“There’s nothing inside you, Mara.” Tears filled her eyes. “It’s in your mind. It’s in your mind.” More pressure on my stomach. My vision darkened.

“Call 911, Jamie.”

Get them out

“But what about—” Jamie said.

“I can’t tell how deep the cut is. She keeps moving her hands to cover it, but there’s a lot of blood and she’s pale and shaking.”

“Believe me,” I whispered.

“What did you— Oh my God.” Jamie’s eyes went wide.

“Don’t talk, Mara.” A hand on the back of my neck, cradling my head. “Jamie?” Stella asked.

“There’s something in the house,” he said, backing away.

“What? Jamie, I need you. She looks really . . .”

“It was just sitting by the door to the garden apartment,” he said. “It said ‘perishable’ on it, and so I opened it, but it was just this leather bag inside with a note.”

“What are you talking about?” Stella’s voice was shrill.

“I thought it was for my aunt, but the note said—the note said—”

“What?”

“ ‘Believe her.’ ”

Stella looked at me, then at Jamie. “What are you—”

“Someone knows we’re here. That note—that bag—it’s for us.”

“Did you look in it?”

“I thought it was for my aunt. I’m going to get it.”

“No, Jamie. I need you to stay—shit.”

Some of the weight lifted from my stomach. My eyelids fluttered, and I heard footsteps recede. Then they came back. Something thumped on the floor.

Get them out

“She keeps saying—she keeps saying that,” Jamie said.

“She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“The note, though. It says believe her, Stella. What does that mean?”

“I don’t know! I don’t f**king know. I’m just as lost as you.”

“What if—what if there is something inside her?” I heard something unclasp, and then, “Oh my God. Stella. Stella, look.”

“What—”

“It’s a bunch of—doctor shit. Gloves, thread, gauze, scalpels. Jesus, who left this?”

“Any drugs?” I felt pressure on my stomach again. Stella was trying to pry my hands away.

“No. Wait, maybe—yes.”

“Can you get another towel? She’s bleeding through this one.”

A few seconds passed before Jamie said, “Got them.”

“Switch with me so I can look in the bag?”

The pressure lifted on my stomach for a second, and I gasped.

“Press down hard,” Stella said.

“I am.”

“Harder.”

“Are you going to call 911?” Jamie asked.

Stella paused before answering. “We might not need to.”

“Meaning?”

“Let me see for a second.”

The pressure lifted. “She’s still bleeding but not as much, and it’s not superdeep. I could maybe close it on my own, but—”

“She’s saying that there’s something in there.”

There is there is

“Can you—can you hold her hands down so I can really look?” Stella asked.

There was pressure around my wrists, radiating through my arms and shoulders.

“Mara.” Jamie’s voice. “You’ve gotta let us look, okay?”

Jamie held me, pinned me down, as Stella prodded me with something sharp. My entire body winced.

“What—?”

“She’s right. She’s f**king right,” Stella said.

“How did she know?”

“How did she know?”

Another stab of pain. I screamed, I think, because one of them moved to cover my mouth with something.

“Mara, you have to be quiet. Jamie, what’s in the bag, drug-wise?”

“I can’t look while I’m holding her down.”

Stella’s shadow lifted, and I heard the sound of metal against metal as she rummaged. “I’m going to give her this so she stops moving.”

“No hospital?”

“She really didn’t cut that deep. I can do this, I think. Okay, Mara—Mara? Can you hear me?”

Yes

“I’m going to close your—uh, incision. It might feel like you can’t breathe, but you can breathe, okay? And you’re going to be fine.”

Get them out

“We will,” she said, and I felt the bite of a needle in my shoulder as she plunged a syringe into my arm.

31

BEFORE

London, England

THE FIRST THING I NOTICED when I woke was that our marriage bed was soaked with blood.

I lit a tallow candle, and the smoke and sulfur filled my nostrils as a tiny flicker of light showed me Charles, my husband. He was painted in shadow; the line of his back, exposed to the waist, was smooth and still. It did not rise and fall with his breath, because he was not breathing. He lay on his stomach, his head tilted to the side, a pool of blood puddled beneath his face. His eyes were open, but they did not see.

I heard nothing but the rush of blood in my ears, the harshness of my own ragged breath in the air. I threw off the blankets that covered him, and he did not move. I watched a bead of blood drip from his nose, and he did not wipe it away. I choked on a sob, covered his body back up, wound my fingers in my hair, and pulled it to try to wake myself. It did not work, because I was not sleeping.

But it did bring me back to myself enough so that I heard a new sound—the crack of something against the bedroom window. My head snapped up, but my eyes saw nothing.

With trembling fingers I reached for the brass candleholder by the bedside. A spill of hot tallow hit my fingers, and I flinched at the pain, then welcomed it. It shoved aside the horror for a moment, allowed me to think of something else. I crept numbly toward the window and peered out of it, the candle reflecting in the distorted glass.

The professor stood below Charles’s house—below our house—silhouetted by light from the gas lamp across the street. He raised one arm and pointed at me, accusing.

What a mad thing to think! A shrill giggle escaped from my throat, and my laughter blew the candle out. I had not seen the professor in six months, since I had become engaged, and his presence here, now, was as senseless to me as the events that had transpired.

Something small hit the window again. I tilted my head at the professor, and saw that he had been pointing not at me but at the east side of the house, to the entrance that led to the mews behind it. He wanted me to open the gate.

But the servants—oh, God, the servants. What would I tell them? How would I explain?

Pulling at my hair again, I tried to think. I could avoid the servants’ quarters if I took the main staircase, exited through the front door instead of the rear. The gate key was kept in the kitchen. If I was careful, and quiet, I could get it without disturbing anyone.

I nearly left the room in my dressing gown stained with my husband’s blood, but I stepped on the hem, drenching me in horror anew. I felt sick but dizzily managed to find a clean dressing gown and clumsily slipped it on. It had been so long since I had dressed myself, and I had nearly forgotten how.

I descended the main staircase in bare feet, my long, undone hair veiling my face, my gown billowing at my ankles. All thoughts of propriety were banished by the memory of my husband’s blood pooling beneath his face. Quivering with panic, I cringed at every creak of the floorboards, held my breath at every sound. My fingers trailed the wall to help me find my way in the dark.

Finally I reached the kitchen and the key, silently slipped out of the house’s side entrance, and unlocked the gate that led to the mews. The professor was waiting for me.

The coal-colored sky had swallowed all the stars but had bitten only a slice out of the moon, leaving just enough light to see him by. He stood there dressed in a black waistcoat with black shirtsleeves beneath. He led me quietly into the empty stables. Since Charles had begun courting me, he had been unable to keep horses here. They kept injuring themselves, kicking the stall doors in fear or fury to escape some unnamed fate, and had to be moved to a stable nearby.

Ghosts of cobwebs hung in corners of the quiet stalls, and a light breeze tossed leaves at the cobbled steps. They danced at the professor’s feet, and I shivered from the chill.

“We must leave tonight,” the professor said.

I opened my mouth, but the only words that came out were, “My husband—my husband—”

“Where is he?”

But I could say nothing else but those two words. I kept repeating them as if it would make him reappear.

The professor took me by the shoulders—I never remembered him touching me before. I recoiled as he said, “Your husband is dead.”

He knew. He knew.

“Your husband is dead,” he repeated. “You must leave this house, and London.”

I could not speak, so the professor continued, “The life you lived is no longer available to you. Everything you once had will vanish. You will be shunned, cast out. If you are not treated like a criminal, you will be facing destitution, poverty. A woman with no property, no husband, the curse of a husband’s death looming over her—”