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She gave me the strangest look, the sort that reminds adults that children are far wiser than we are. “But she’s with you.”

“Mathilde,” the stern nun said storming over, her eyes flashing as she looked between us, before scooping the girl away. “We do not speak with strangers.”

“But Sister Marie-Thérèse, she is not a stranger. It is Eva. She has come back to us—” The girl started, but was interrupted as the sister grabbed the poppet from the girl’s hand and dropped it into the dirt at my feet.

The girl’s expression fell as the elder nun, Sister Marie-Thérèse, held the child in her arms. She whispered something to the girl that placated her before calling the other children to follow her into the home. My heart raced in my chest. The young girl thought I was my mother. And what’s more, she believed the missing child—this Manon—was with her. But Mother was dead and I was most certain that Manon was not. I could scarcely breathe as von Keller’s words from earlier came back to mind. My mother had tried to escape before … but he never once mentioned that she had taken a child with her.

CHAPTER ELEVENAngels and Memories

“WHAT in the gods’ names was that about?” Ruan murmured from just over my shoulder, his gaze drifting to the children’s home.

I faced him, forgetting all about the little poppet on the ground. We stood alone in the priory green. His ungloved hand hovered in the space between us. Uncertain if he had the right to touch me whenever he wanted.

At last, he closed his fingers and thrust his hand into his pocket. “Did you find what you came for?”

I watched as the younger nun gathered the remaining children, shepherding them into the children’s home. Could my mother have taken the missing child? Could that be why the young sister kept stealing glimpses of me and Sister Marie-Thérèse looked as if I were the very devil herself? “Perhaps … I’m not sure.”

A cold, damp wind whipped between the buildings, sending a chill straight through me. There was much I needed to tell him, but this was most certainly not the place for any of it. We needed privacy. I started across the green without him, not bothering to see if Ruan followed along. “I didn’t know you could also perform parlor tricks,” I said, struggling to keep my voice light and not betray the chaos of emotion swirling within me. Two dead women. A missing child. And a third dead or missing patient. What did it all mean?

But as ever, Ruan remained a handful of steps behind. “Ruby … you’re doing it again.”

I spun back around to him. “Doing what?”

He raised his brows, inclining his head to me as if to insinuate I ought to know. “Pretending everything is normal when your thoughts are a riot.”

I ground my teeth together, tucking my own hands into my pockets as we continued across the green toward the shade of the priory church. “It is entirely unfair how you can hear my thoughts. I do not like it. Not one little bit.”

The edge of his mouth quirked up in a slow grin. “Is that so? Because I recall a few instances last month where you didn’t mind so much—”

I thumped him squarely in the center of his chest with the palm of my hand—but his teasing words snapped my mind away from self-pity to the business at hand and I was grateful for it. “Does the proximity of the children’s home and the hospital feel odd at all?”

Ruan raked a hand through his dark curls, looking back at the empty priory green. “I don’t know. It’s unconventional, to be sure but—” His eyes widened in surprise as he reached for me just as someone else grabbed me hard about the upper arm.

“My angel!” The voice was raspy and low. I turned around as the strange man’s roughened hands shot up taking my face and he ran his palms across my cheeks. The motion reminding me of a sculptor working in clay. “You’ve come back.”

He leaned in, pressing tearstained kisses to each of my cheeks, his breath smelling sweet. The silver bird-shaped pin glinted upon his pajamas. Another patient then, but I’d not seen him anywhere inside the hospital. I didn’t need Ruan’s clairvoyance to see he meant me no harm. I wrapped my arms around the fellow, patting his shoulder awkwardly. His body was rail thin. The bumps of his spine evident through his gray pajamas. His skin was cold and dry as if he’d been wandering outside for quite some time.

He inhaled sharply at my throat, drawing in the scent of me before stepping back, recoiling from my touch. “You are not she.” The man ran a trembling thumb over the scar that split my brow. “Not Eva…” he repeated, trying to convince himself of the truth.

The poor man. I took his hands, pulling them from my face and holding them firmly between my own. “No. I’m not. Eva was my mother … her real name was Niamh.”

He leaned close, whispering in my ear. “Niamh…” He tested the word. “Her name is Niamh.” Mother’s name possessed an otherworldly cadence on his tongue, as if he’d uttered it thousands of times before. His arms shot up and around me like a vise, squeezing the air from my lungs.

“Félix Thys!” Dr. von Keller came running across the green, his white coat flapping in the wind. Horror slashed across his face as he beheld us together. Félix’s hands dug through my own jacket into the soft skin at my back. A peculiar coldness pierced the fabric. I shivered.

A uniformed orderly joined von Keller, steps behind the doctor, his hands were red and raw from being recently scrubbed.

“Félix!” von Keller cried out again, reaching for the strange man. “You must let poor Miss Vaughn go. She is our guest here. She is a friend.”

Félix Thys … so this was the man they had spoken of in Dr. von Keller’s office. The fellow Mrs. Wauters mentioned as growing up with Father Étienne and her son Djhan. All three patients here. How very odd.

“Find her … Help her…” Félix murmured beneath his breath. His hands trembled as he took my palm in his, closing my fingers around the small poppet I’d forgotten in the dirt and drawing it to his chest. It was the very same doll Manon had left behind in the cemetery, the one the sister dropped on the priory green. Félix’s heartbeat was slow, an echo to my own.

Dr. von Keller watched the pair of us—thunder on his face.

“An angel for my angel…” Félix’s voice grew loud. Far louder than it had been when he first spoke to me.

“I promise. I will find her,” I whispered, not certain whether he meant Manon or my mother. Surely he knew she was dead. I glanced down at the little figure in my hand. It must mean something or else Félix wouldn’t have returned it to me. The girl would have never dropped it to begin with. The doll’s head was carved from some sort of wood. Elm perhaps? She wore a delicate dress made from salvaged scraps of fabric that had been meticulously embroidered with flowers of all sorts. The type of thing a child might have made to practice their stitches.