So far, each night I’d spent here had ended with my hunger driving me from the frilly, pink-adorned girl’s room. Drawn by the intoxicating smells that began to fill the mansion at this hour, I’d crept downstairs and into the empty dining room to find the table crammed with platters packed with freshly cut fruit, meat, cheeses, and bread. On a separate table lay a spread of coffee, tea, and delicate cakes.

Even though I always found a feast awaiting me—more than I could ever eat on my own—no other figure ever joined me.

Whenever I returned to my room, though, I always found that anything I’d moved had, in my absence, been returned to its original state. Any food I’d brought up with me also vanished when my back was turned. These changes happened too quickly to be caused by him or one of the masks, though. It was almost as if the house was somehow resetting itself. Rebooting like a computer.

Preparing to leave my room again, even knowing he might be waiting for me this time, I stood in front of my door, steeling myself, and reached for the doorknob.

But the muffled yell—that of a man—caused my fingers to retract.

Only silence followed, which was what prompted me to take hold of the knob again.

Slowly, I opened the door and slid out of Myriam’s room, stepping as lightly as I could as I ventured all the way to the banister.

“Stephanie!”

I jolted at the low thump that followed the sound of my name, my head snapping in the direction from which the muffled racket had come.

That voice. Though it struck me as somehow familiar, it wasn’t one that I could place. But the far-off way it had come through the walls told me that it hadn’t emanated from this side of the house.

I gripped the banister, prepared to shout back. But I stopped myself.

Think. What if this was a trap?

“Stephanie Armand!”

The sound of my full name incinerated my reservations.

“I’m here!” I shouted. “Help me! I’m here!”

My heart jumped into a breakneck gallop. With quaking hands, I pulled myself along the banister, all the way to the stairs, where I waited for the man to shout again, to tell me what to do.

“Stepha—grrh!”

“Oh God,” I whispered at the sound of my name being cut off by—

“No!” I screamed as I barreled down the stairs. “Run! Whoever you are, run! Get away!”

The voice—the man’s. It had come from the same place I stood now in the foyer.

Someone was in the house. Someone who not only knew who I was but understood that I was trapped here.

But the stranger had been ambushed, and now there was only horrible silence.

Of course, it must have been him. On the other side. Attacking the man who had come to save me and who I was powerless to rescue in return.

Rushing through the parlor doors that had once served as a gateway between realms, I found myself again in Erik’s parlor, where the black clock on the mantel ticked endlessly away.