“Who could it be?”

Alicia stopped for a moment and hesitated. “You go ahead to the garage. I’ll come in a minute.”

“Are you sure?”

“Take the umbrella, at least . . .”

Vargas watched her walk away in the rain, limping slightly, until she faded into the mist, one more shadow in the garden.

10

She found herself walking along a path of pale stone. Lines of moss nestled in the cracks between carved slabs that looked, Alicia thought, like tombstones stolen from a graveyard. The path wound through the willows, their branches oozing raindrops and grazing her skin as she passed, like arms trying to hold her back. Beyond the trees she glimpsed the structure of what at first she had mistaken for a conservatory but, closer up, looked more like a neoclassical pavilion. The miniature railway tracks that followed the perimeter of the estate ran along the front of the pavilion, with a platform, like a little station, by its main entrance. Alicia stepped over the rails and walked up the steps to the front door, which was ajar. Her hip throbbed, a sharp stabbing pain that made her think of barbed wire wrapped around her bones. She paused for a moment to catch her breath, then pushed the door inward. It gave way with a faint groan.

Her first thought was that she was in a ballroom that had been abandoned for years. A trail of footprints marked the dust covering the diamond-patterned wooden floor. From the ceiling hung two lamps with crystal droplets, like frost flowers.

“Hello?” she called.

The echo of her voice traveled through the room, but there was no reply. The footprints trailed off into the gloom. A little farther away she made out a dark wooden display cabinet covering an entire wall, divided into small pigeonholes like funeral niches. Alicia took a few steps forward, following the trail on the floor, but stopped when she realized that she was being watched. Glass eyes emerged from the shadows, framed by an ivory face that smiled with an expression of malice and defiance. The doll had red hair and wore a black silk outfit.

Alicia walked on a couple of meters and then noticed that the doll wasn’t alone. Each of those compartments housed a small being dressed in finery—over a hundred figures, all of them smiling, all of them looking without blinking. They were the size of tiny children, and even in the gloom she could appreciate their meticulous, exquisite finish, from the shining nails to the small white teeth peeping behind glossy lips to the pupils within each iris.

“Who are you?” The voice came from the back of the room, where a figure was seated on a chair in the corner.

“I’m Alicia. Alicia Gris. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The figure stood up and approached her very slowly. It emerged from the shadows into the dim light filtering in through the entrance, and Alicia recognized the face of the girl in the set of photographs she’d seen in Valls’s office. “You’ve got a lovely collection of dolls,” she said.