So far, I had not encountered any masked figure but the crimson-clad one that had brought me here. But there were more of them lurking about. Sometimes I’d hear whispering and once, a strange laugh. Doors would slam, too. Also, the masquerades had surrounded me that night I’d found myself on his side of the house, and Erik had fought them all off. Only now he was wearing the mask of the most frightening of them.

That night, it had also been Erik who’d possessed the lights-for-eyes that Charlie had told me were Zedok’s. I should have made the connection then. Because they were the same eyes of the figure who’d brought me here.

Over the past few days, I’d had plenty of time to contemplate the other clues that had surfaced in my mind. The red-masked figure referring to himself and Erik as “us,” and poor Charlie’s encounter with the figure that hadn’t resembled the Zedok she had known. Had I paid more attention, had I looked even just a little harder, maybe I would have come to the answer sooner.

That Erik was both figures and somehow, I was beginning to suspect, all figures . . .

How that was possible, there was no way to know. Not without asking. But facing him in his current state was not something I was prepared to do. Which was why I’d stayed in this room as much as possible, behind a locked door that I didn’t really believe would stay locked if he didn’t want it to.

His power scared me. His appearance scared me. What scared me even more, though, was the prospect that, in speaking to my captor, I would not find a trace of the boy I had come to know. Or maybe I was afraid that I would.

Daylight might have given me some bravery, but dawn never came, and it was the thought that I might never again see the sun that nearly broke me. Mostly because it also promised that I’d likely never again see my small and thoroughly shattered family. Or Lucas.

And reaching them again, getting back on my side of the house, was, at the very least, a goal. And as long as I had a goal, then I could still keep myself mentally okay.

Okay enough . . .

Until today, optimism had been easier to hold on to because I hadn’t seen him again. Zedok.

After catching sight of him through a window earlier, a crimson smear in the snow, I now couldn’t be sure of how much longer he’d leave me alone.

After just a moment of my staring, he’d turned to look back at me, making it clear he’d known the whole time I’d been watching him.

Maybe his appearance today had even been a signal. A warning that my adjustment period was about to end.

And now had arrived the part of the day I’d come to dread. This hour when my stomach complained loudly and painfully enough that its voice drowned out the questions, the doubts, the fears, and the rage. This hour when my choices ran out.