Her lips pinched white. “He won’t come looking for you. Not in here.” She leaned in close, shadows leaping over her face. “No one else will go looking, neither. That’s why they call it the lost tower. Folks pay extra to have someone lost up here. Up where no one will remember they lived. These are the disappeared of Hurstwell.”

The “D” file. The one in Thornhill’s desk, with a separate little key. That’s what it stood for—disappeared.

That would be me now. The notes of the place climbed to a heady pitch, frantic and dramatic, flying senselessly about.

“Not even Thornhill can bear to be in here. There’s just a man to bring the food, and he won’t listen to a word from you. He’s heard it all. ‘I’m the niece of the queen. I’m the daughter of the prime minister. I’m a celebrated artist.’ But soon you won’t have much to say. Drugged-up quiet like the rest of ’em, just waitin’ their ride to the hill out yonder.”

I shivered at the memory of tombstones, the crooked markers jutting out of an overgrown hill.

I grabbed her arm. “You say I’m to help.” I was grasping at dust. “How can I do that from in here?”

“She needs you. That’s who you’ll help. Won’t eat a thing. I done what I can for her, but she needs someone to talk sense into her.” Duffy paused before a metal door near the top and fumbled with the keys. She turned and looked at me as she shoved one in the lock, and the door groaned open. “And since you’ve come back . . . Well, go on then. In with you.”

I hesitated at the mouth of shadows, and she gave me a push, sending me stumbling ahead of her into the dark and shutting the door behind us both. I blinked and looked about, seeing a figure sprawled on the straw against the far wall, light from the barred window falling across the patient’s skirt.

Everything else fell away in an instant, the chaotic notes of the day beginning to form a straight melody line. “Bridget!” I dropped to my knees and clung to the dear woman with one arm, hardly able to help myself, stretching the shackles so I could hold her. The thinness of her frame was alarming. I touched her face with one hand, pushed back hair tangled with straw, and studied her features in the stale room. “What have they done to you? What’s happened?”

Nurse Duffy spoke from behind me. “Saved her, that’s what I’ve done. Dr. Thornhill had plans to lock her up in the catacombs down below Hurstwell after surgery. He’s afraid she’ll be violent.”

I turned on my heel. “What surgery?”