“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m good at picking out patterns. It’s why I can learn dances so quickly. And lang—” she breaks off, not finishing that sentence.
My skin is burning. Every tattoo she named feels like it’s on fire.
I’m not used to being unnerved. Especially not by a girl who’s barely an adult. Not even a fucking adult, in the American sense of the word. She’s only nineteen. She can’t buy a beer or rent a car. She can barely vote!
“I’m sorry,” Nessa says again. “I didn’t realize they were a secret. That they were just for you.”
What the fuck is happening?
How does she know that? How did she know what they meant?
The last person who could guess the thoughts in my head was Anna. She was the only one who could ever do it.
Anna was clever. Good at remembering things. A lover of books.
No one has ever reminded me of her.
Nessa doesn’t, either. They don’t look alike or sound alike.
Except in this one thing . . .
To change the subject, I say abruptly, “Are you almost done with your ballet?”
“Yes,” Nessa says, still biting her lips nervously. “Well, halfway through anyway.”
“Is it a whole show?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever made one before?”
“Well . . .” she frowns. “I choreographed four dances for this ballet called Bliss. It was supposed to premiere . . . well, right now, I guess. But the director, his name’s Jackson Wright, he said my dances were shit. So he didn’t put my name in the program . . .” she sighs. “I know that sounds silly. It mattered to me at the time. It hurt my feelings. I kind of felt like he stole my work. But he might have been right. Now that I’m working on this other thing, I think what I did before was stupid. And not very good.”
“Good enough for him to use, though,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. “Parts of it, anyway.”
She wraps her thin arms around her legs, hugging her thighs against her chest. Her flexibility is unnerving. So is her fragility. No wonder so many people take advantage of her. Her family. This director. And me, of course.
Nothing about Nessa exudes strength.
She’s not intimidating.
But she is . . . intriguing.
She’s a piece of music that gets stuck in your head, repeating over and over.
The more you hear it, the more it lodges in your brain.
Most people become predictable, the longer you watch them.
Nessa Griffin is the opposite. I thought I knew exactly who she was—a sheltered little princess. A dancer living in a fantasy world.
But she’s much cleverer than I gave her credit for. She’s creative, perceptive.
And genuinely kind.
I learn that the next day, when I spy on her yet again. I see her slip back up to the attic, to retrieve this mysterious dress on which she’s so fixated.
It’s black and silver, definitely old-fashioned. Maybe from one of those Gilded Age costume balls, like the Vanderbilts used to throw. I didn’t know the dress existed. The attic is packed with boxes, more added by every family that lived in this house, and almost none ever removed.
I watch Nessa bring the dress back to her room. She airs it out, making sure it’s clean of every speck of dust.
Then she lays it out on the bed and waits.
When Klara comes in with the dinner tray, Nessa rushes over to her.
There’s no sound from the camera, but I can see the expressions on their faces clearly enough.
Klara shakes her head, not wanting to get in trouble.
Nessa assures her it’s alright, that I’ve given permission.
Still not believing, Klara touches the skirt of the dress. Then she hugs Nessa.
Out of all the things Nessa could have asked me for, she wanted that dress. But not for herself. She wanted to give it as a gift.
I should fire Klara. It’s obvious the two girls have grown close. It’s too risky for Nessa’s jailer to be her friend.
Still, as I watch them laughing and gently touching the dress, I don’t want to do it.
Maybe later. Not today.
18
Nessa
I’m losing track of how long I’ve been at Mikolaj’s house.
Days slip by so fast when you don’t have any schedule, or anything planned.
I have no idea what’s going on in the real world. I don’t have a TV, a phone, or a computer. World War Three could have started, and I’d have no idea.
I’m in a place without dates or times. It could be 1890 or 2020, or something in between.
You’d think that I’d be obsessing about my family constantly. At first, I was—I knew they’d be looking for me. Worried, terrified, thinking I was dead. I missed them. God, I missed them. I’d never gone that long without speaking to my mom, not to mention Riona, Callum, and Dad. Aida, too! We usually text twenty times a day, even if it’s just cat memes.
Now I feel like I’ve slipped into another world. They’re much farther away than the other side of the city.
I’m not dreaming about them at night anymore.
My dreams are much darker than that. I wake up in the morning flushed and sweating. Too embarrassed to even admit where my mind has wandered in the night . . .
In the day I think about the strangers living in this house with me. I wonder about Klara, what her life was like in Poland. What her family’s like. I wonder about the rest of the men in this house—why Andrei spends so much time roaming around the grounds, and whether Marcel has a crush on Klara, as I suspect he does.
The only person I don’t wonder about is Jonas, because I find him deeply creepy. I hate the way he watches me whenever we cross paths in the house. He’s worse than Mikolaj, because at least Mikolaj is genuine—he genuinely hates me. Jonas pretends to be friendly. He’s always smiling and trying to make conversation. His smiles are as fake as his cologne.
Today he corners me in the kitchen. I’m looking for Klara, but she’s not there.
“What do you need?” Jonas says, leaning up against the fridge so I can’t pass.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Come on.” He grins. “You must need something, or else why would you come in here? What is it? What’s your favorite treat? You want cookies? Milk?”
“I was just looking for Klara,” I tell him, trying to sneak by on his right side.
He straightens up, stepping in front of me to block my path.
“I know how to cook, too,” he says. “You know Klara’s my cousin? Anything she can do, I can do better . . .”
I try not to let my face show how disgusted I feel. Jonas always makes everything sound like sexual innuendo. Even if I don’t understand his meaning, I can tell he’s trying to provoke me.
“Let me pass, please,” I say quietly.
“To go where?” Jonas says, in a low voice. “Do you have some hiding spot I don’t know about?”
“Jonas,” someone barks from the doorway.
Jonas whips around even quicker than I do. We both recognize Mikolaj’s voice.
“Hey, boss,” Jonas says, trying to recover his casual tone.