And Erik. What would I do when I saw him? And I would see him, because I had already. That slice of moving darkness visible through the cracked basement door.

My gut twisted with the thought of meeting him eye-to-eye. Face-to-mask.

Sitting up, I pushed off from the bed and rushed to my closet, pulling down the camera I’d taken to Stephanie’s house that day I’d first entered Moldavia. Flipping through photos, I slowed when I got to the ones I’d snapped after opening Charlie’s door to that empty hallway. The hallway I’d perceived as empty.

I’d already viewed these pictures once and found nothing.

Hands shaking, I clicked forward.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

And then.

Midway up the flash-darkened backdrop of the hall, near Stephanie’s room, a blurry, disembodied, and transparent face. Set right at a man’s height.

Except, as I studied the photo harder, scrutinizing the blue-white negative-like image, I realized I hadn’t captured a face.

I’d captured a mask.

SIXTY-ONE

Stephanie

Say that you will you marry me.

The force—the whole notion—of his words caused an atom bomb to detonate in my gut.

I didn’t get it.

I didn’t get him.

Nor this pair of bug-faced, serpent-tongued gossips. The ones who called each other Spite and Envy.

No wonder they were so insufferable.

Ever since the previous evening’s disastrous conversation with Erik, the two masked figures had followed me everywhere. If I shut the door in their faces, I would turn to find them inside the room with me, seated on the settee like they’d been there the whole time. Not only that, but they’d glance up at me from behind their fans as if I was somehow interrupting them.

I’d already tried telling them to shut it when their constant bickering, along with the nagging presence of Erik’s sheet music on Myriam’s dresser, had made sleep impossible.

Eventually, they did pipe down. Despite my utter exhaustion, though, I’d still gotten zero rest that night. This time, however, it hadn’t been because I was afraid.

If my dip in the lake had accomplished one good thing, it had been the significant diminishing of my overall fear of this place. And, perhaps, him.

Zedok had fished me out of that lake, after all. Saved my life. Made me an offer of marriage.

Not exactly the behavior of someone planning to murder me in the night.

Now, seated in Myriam’s canopied bed, I ignored the sheet music that remained permanently on her vanity, the white papers waiting, obstinate and unrelenting, convinced that I wouldn’t be able to resist them indefinitely.

Firm in my resolve that I would not indulge Erik’s demands—any of them—I’d refrained from so much as looking at the papers. Which only led me to study the flawlessly wrapped bandages encasing my sliced and burning, frostbitten hands. And, for the first time, I found myself believing that Erik and Zedok were the same.

Last night, hadn’t he exhibited some of that tenderness he’d shown in that dream in the conservatory? There’d been cruelty and coldness, too, though.