Every picture showed a different girl’s image, cut from a newspaper. Sonya Castillo, Alice Porovsky, Katy Wilder, Dolly Trent, Lucia DeMarinis, Gunella Edmundson, Irena Novak. Each picture had been glued to a square of cardboard decorated with stars and lightning bolts, flowers clipped from catalogs, along with bunnies and kittens and baby chicks. Some of the girls had their eyes crossed out. One had a line of Xs drawn across her mouth, as though it had been sewn up.

All the girls had been kidnapped. Two had never been seen again. The rest had been murdered.

She set the last card down. Her hand trembled as the candles flickered, blue and red. She counted the cards, searching for her sister’s face among those of the dead or missing. But Abriana wasn’t there.

Her sister had been too old, she realized. None of the girls pictured here were more than six or seven. She looked at Henry.

“In your wallet—that picture of another girl, her name was Abriana. Why isn’t she here?”

His head moved quickly, the pinprick light in his eyes darting like fireflies in the darkness. “Not here, so queer,” he said, his hoarse voice rising anxiously. “Can’t save them all. So small…”

Her stomach flipped: he did know of her sister. Or did he? He might just have saved the article. Or he might have killed her.

She wanted to run, but it was too dark. She swallowed, a bad taste in her mouth. Don’t let him know you’re scared, she thought. Like with dogs, pretend you don’t care. And don’t look them in the eye.

Behind the row of candles, a larger piece of cardboard leaned against the wall. As she reached for it, she heard Henry behind her, breathing hard.

The cardboard was painted midnight blue and covered with gold-foil stars, like you got in school for good behavior. In the center was a photograph of Elsie Paroubek, the same one that had appeared everywhere the year she died. Her hair had been colored with orange crayon, her eyes dotted with midnight-blue paint. Her lips were bright red, and yellow lines squiggled from her hair and face. Pictures of the other girls surrounded her, a halo of children beneath words in yellow paint:

ANNIE ARONBURG

CHILD OF GREAT SOUL

PROTECT US ALL

“You did these,” Pin whispered. She looked at Henry, and he nodded.

She stared at the picture of Alice Porovsky. She would always be missing since Thursday. Pin’s heart beat hard, but she felt calm, so calm, as though her head had detached from her body and floated above it like a balloon, attached by a thread.

This is how those girls died, she realized. This is the man who killed them, and now he is going to kill me.