There were other drawings like that one—girls being strangled, girls on fire, girls tied up with string. She avoided looking at them, instead searched until she again found the picture of the dragon and the girl with rainbow wings. She stared at it, mesmerized by the dragon’s strange half smile, the way the girl’s arms appeared open to receive something from the sky. All the pictures seemed to tell a story that didn’t quite make sense, unless you maybe knew the man who’d drawn the pictures.

Yet just because it was a story didn’t mean it wasn’t true. It had only been two days since she’d met Henry. Everything had changed since then. She had become part of a story, a different story from her sister’s, which had been almost the only story she’d told herself for the last two years.

“Did you make them up?” she asked.

“It’s a story.”

“But it’s your story, so you made it up, right?”

Henry nodded, then smiled without looking at her, a small strange smile like the dragon’s. “I don’t have to make it up.”

She looked back down at the drawings, shuffled through them one last time, and handed the unwieldy stack back to Henry.

“I like them,” she said. “Most of them.”

She shook her head, dazed, and remembered why she was here. She’d thought she could trust Henry—but she’d seen those drawings of the girls being strangled or set on fire. She withdrew her shiv.

“Look at me,” she ordered.

Henry stared at the floor, his mouth a stubborn line.

“Look at me,” she repeated, holding up the knife so he could see it. If he attacked her, she’d stab him and run away. Everyone knew he was crazy. “I want you to swear to me you didn’t hurt those girls.”

He snorted angrily. “I did no such thing.”

“What about Abriana Onofria?”

“Don’t know her.”

“You’re lying.” She tightened her fingers around the blade’s handle. “You had her picture, I saw it. Look at me.” His head twitched, but he still didn’t raise it. “The Italian girl, Abriana, she was in the papers two years ago. She followed an organ-grinder and disappeared. She was my sister.”

“The girl.” His hands opened and closed. “Your sister. Which one?”

“You know which one! You had her picture in your wallet. Did you hurt her? She was my sister.”

He lifted his head, so slowly it didn’t seem he moved at all. Then he was staring straight at her, his face twisted like a rag.

“I swear,” he whispered. “By the Gemini. By Elsie Paroubek. I never knew her.”

“Did you—”

“No.” For a full second their gazes held. His head jerked violently, as though the effort of looking was too much, and he turned away.