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More silence.

“I don’t mean you harm. I don’t mean anyone harm. But can you help me get out of here?”

More rustling of fabric. Manon must not have understood me, for she did not respond at all. At long last I found the switch, flicking it, and the overhead lamps surged on. I squeezed my eyes shut to protect them from the sudden onslaught of light.

When I opened them at last, the girl was gone. I’d heard her. She’d been here. Heart thundering in my veins, I searched the white-tiled room. A narrow hospital cot like those I’d used during the war sat along the back wall with a thin blanket folded upon it. A small window opened out to the priory green below. The slit only large enough for a child to get through. I hurried over, poking my head out, but saw no sign of her. A ledge went from here to the next window. It was certainly possible for the child to have moved along it, assuming she’d been here at all.

My head remained fuzzy from the chloroform, but even still I knew I had to get out of here. Turning around, my eyes widened as I took in the most horrifying mural I’d ever seen. Drawn in shades of black and gray upon the white wall. Creatures out of my darkest imaginings, demons. Flames. Bodies writhing in agony. It bore a stark resemblance to those Goya had painted in secret upon his own walls. Images never meant to see the light of day. Faces contorted and hastily scribbled out. Drawn and redrawn. I took another step forward, studying the art before realizing the face on the wall that kept being destroyed—the one the artist could not bear to leave—was my own.

I swore beneath my breath, reaching for my trouser pockets—empty. I’d left my lockpicks in my coat, which had been conveniently taken from me by my captors along with my revolver. Pulse racing, I lifted the small mattress on the cot, looking for anything useful to help me out of here. Nothing.

I raked my hand through my hair, cursing myself for the second time for not having brought Ruan to the cemetery with me, when my fingers snagged one of my hairpins.

I could have laughed. Thank you, Mrs. Wauters, for attempting to poison me. For if I’d stayed in the boardinghouse, I’d have likely prepared myself for bed properly, placing the pins on the dressing table rather than falling asleep behind the wheel of a motorcar.

I quickly found a second and began bending the first to a near ninety-degree angle and then working on the second. I’d first learned to pick locks with hairpins. It wasn’t ideal, but it ought to do the trick. I set to work on the modern lock with my makeshift tool. It did not take long before it finally gave, and the door swung open.

Without a coat or shoes, I crept silently down the empty hospital corridor. I had to get out of here. Get back to the automobile and find the gendarmerie. Voices came from somewhere ahead. With nowhere to hide, I pressed myself as flat as I could along the wall.

“They’ve taken Félix and Dr. von Keller on charges of murder. They’re saying von Keller was covering up for Félix’s crimes,” a woman said in French. I held my breath, unwilling to breathe lest I give myself away.

“I cannot believe it. Félix was strange, yes. But he was a gentle soul,” a second replied.

“Nonsense. He must have been dangerous, otherwise why would von Keller have kept him locked up all the time?” the first replied hotly. “I never liked the way he looked at me either—as if he could see straight through my skin.”

There was hesitation in the second’s voice as they moved farther down the intersecting corridor. “I still don’t believe it.”

“They think he did something with that missing American. That he killed her like he did her mother.” The first woman’s voice grew distant. My chest froze at their words. It couldn’t possibly be true. I’d seen her empty grave, full of dirt. If my mother was dead, she certainly wasn’t lying in her grave.

I remained stock-still, waiting on the women to leave. Von Keller and Félix might have been arrested, but they were not the ones who had kidnapped me and locked me into the isolation room. I tended to agree with the second voice, whoever she might be. Félix was not the murderous sort. But whatever response the first woman said I could no longer hear. They’d continued their conversation down the hallway and out of earshot. Was this what my kidnappers had planned? To have von Keller and Félix arrested and me conveniently out of the way? I gulped in a cold lungful of air and started down the corridor in the opposite way. I had to get out of here.

With von Keller arrested and Dr. Peterson dead, a listlessness had descended over the hospital with no one quite certain what to do. It made my escape far easier than it would have otherwise been. I hurried down the back stair, trying to find my way out of the mazelike facility. A task made even harder by the fact I’d only ever made it as far as the corridor that held von Keller’s office. The minutes felt like hours, but at last I reached the first floor and to a space I recognized. Von Keller’s office was just ahead, and from there I knew my way out.

The door to von Keller’s office was open and I peered inside. The room had been utterly wrecked since the last time I’d been here. The piles of books and papers that had been haphazardly stacked had toppled over. One of the leather chairs had been tipped, leaning against the bookshelf behind. Papers were scattered across the floor—the shovel for coal still in the belly of his stove where someone had been adding more just before being interrupted. The gendarmerie must have arrested him in here. By the sight of it, they must have quarreled. My stomach twisted. None of it sat well with me. I should continue on, make my escape, and yet I could not bring myself to do so.

I took a final glance down the corridor to make certain no one saw me, before slipping inside and closing the door. The iron handle of the shovel was red-hot in the belly of the stove. I ought to remove it, but I hadn’t anything thick enough to pull it without burning myself. Ignoring it for a moment, I moved around to the desk, sinking down in the chair, and began to look through the papers searching for something—anything to help me understand what was happening at Saint Oda’s. My hands flew over the pages. Clinic notes, patient records. Nothing to do with the murders here. But what had I expected? I started to slide the chair back, when my bare foot hit something warm. Warm and decidedly human.

Shoving my fist in my mouth to keep from making a sound, I slid the chair back and bent down to look beneath the desk. Heart hammering in my chest, I beheld Manon Marchand, the missing girl, curled up in the shadows. Her skinny arms wrapped around her knees. Her dark hair was in two neat plaits, with little blue ribbons tied at the end just as my mother had done with mine until I was too old for braids. The little girl made a peculiar sound in her chest—sensing my own distress. A constellation of freckles dusted the bridge of her nose. She reached up, touching my face with a childlike wonder.

“You’re safe. I have you, darling … no one is going to hurt you,” I murmured, sliding the chair backward and holding my hands out to her, not quite certain whether I was reassuring her or myself. Manon nodded, not taking her eyes from my face. She climbed out from beneath the desk and threw herself into my arms. The force of the child knocked the wind from me as I wrapped myself around her, holding her tight. I wasn’t used to children. She felt so small, so breakable. My heart stuttered in my chest. I’d found her. The child my mother had worked so hard to help, to keep hidden. This girl had been at the center of it all, and yet I still did not know why. And we certainly weren’t safe. Not yet.

What had my mother discovered and what was worth killing to hide?

The girl smelled of soap, with the faintest hint of the earth about her. My hand cradled the back of her head when the door cracked open and Manon stiffened in my arms.

Father Crawford, the old priest, stepped into the room. “There you are, God be praised!”

And then he locked the door.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREERule 1: Trust No One

IN a single motion I shot to my feet, tucking the little girl squarely behind me. I did not know what Father Crawford intended for us, but I certainly did not like the look on his face. The old priest tried to peer around me to see the girl. Manon wrapped her fingers around my hand, holding it tightly. I gave her a reassuring squeeze. One I certainly did not feel.

“What do you want from us?” I asked the priest, for I could not think of any good reason for the man to lock us in here as he had. He’d been kind. Helpful even, giving me bit after bit of information that led me to look at everyone in this hospital but him. I clenched my jaw.

His eyes, the ones I’d once thought kind, studied me with fervent fire. “I could not have hoped for a better outcome. I knew you would draw out the girl as your mother always did. Little Manon could not stay away from our lovely Eva, could you, child? I had hoped you would have the same effect upon her. The dear girl has been missing for weeks. They told me she’d died, but I knew she could not have. God would not allow such a thing.”

What the devil? The old priest took a step closer, hand outstretched as I inched closer to the closed window behind me.