Not only was I to be haunted by the fragments of my own splintered soul along with all the memories of this house, but I was also to be mocked by this pristine instrument that, though it shone with lacquered blackness, would produce for me no more music than its ruined twin. Miraculously, the piano, my piano—the version I considered to be the true version—still occupied the same space on the Armands’ side of the home.

Despite whatever meaning it held for the Armands, though, the instrument would most certainly not be suffered to remain much longer. Another cause for concern, since the last man who had entered this house with the intention of removing my piano had left the premises . . . rather worse for wear.

A similar fate awaited the Armands. How well I knew it was only a matter of time.

If only Stephanie were not so . . .

“Headstrong,” I mumbled, my voice muffled by my mask as I swung into a turn, retracing the steps I would momentarily turn to retrace again. “Contrary.”

What else could I say of her?

“That she is coarser than bramble,” came my dry reply—and almost through a laugh. “Forthright,” I added. “Yet obstinate and hard-nosed. Intelligence and beauty to spare, yes, but absolutely no refinement. What would my parents have said of her? I cannot even imagine. Myriam, on the other hand, would have been nothing short of entranced, I have no doubt.”

What was I doing speaking out loud this way to no one? Though I sometimes conversed with my masks, those loosened shards of myself that paraded about me, through the house and over the grounds—ghosts of my own soul—I seldom uttered aloud my thoughts. Why do so when, too often, I had my masks to do that for me?

Was I merely pronouncing for my own benefit my opinions of Stephanie as I settled upon them?

“Not quite,” came a caustic voice to my left—a voice I knew well. One that could hardly be counted as a voice at all.

I froze at once. My gaze trained on the piano, I dared not look.

Though it was not uncommon for me to be joined at any moment by one of my masks, it was quite unusual for him to appear so suddenly and without some heralding.

And what was it that had lured him from his normal dwelling place of the cellar?

Had Mr. Armand’s recent excursion there agitated him as I had feared it would?

“You truly cannot guess what has beckoned me from below?” asked the mask, answering my thoughts, which were as much his as they were mine.

My masks. These personified slivers of my soul. One or indeed twenty of them could be found—at any given time—milling about the magnificent mansion or its snow-covered grounds. Unlike me, however, the masks remained confined to this parallel, suspended-in-time version of the house. Thankfully for the Armands, my masks could not pass between both versions as I could. Also unlike me, the masks possessed no corporeal form under their masquerade garb.