“You’ll help with bath day for the long-stay patients—that’s Tuesdays—and you’ll want to wear your oldest uniform for that. It can be messy, especially for the ones who don’t want to go in.”

“Only once a week?”

She threw me a bitter look. “You’re free to bathe the wretches on your own time, if you can find any.”

As we wound through the humid laundry space, now empty of workers, and out into the fenced courtyard beyond, I barely heard Nurse Duffy’s explanation of how things were run, how to manage the patients, until she pointed out the tower ahead, with the words, “It’s forbidden.” My eyes snapped to the tall, slender structure with a worn slate roof in the receding light. Bare vines climbed nearly to the top, intent on strangling the thing. “What’s in there?”

She frowned up at it. “Can’t say. Never been up there. I value my hide.”

“You mean, it’s something dangerous?”

“There’s danger up there, or danger in getting caught. Don’t care to find out which.”

I did. Intensely so.

“They threaten us within an inch of death for going up there. They call it the lost tower. Don’t sound too promising to me.”

I swallowed a lump rising in my throat, looking up at the windows near the top. The sound of clanking, metal on metal, drifted down from somewhere in that old tower. “How terrible.”

She shrugged. “Better than being attacked by whatever’s up there.”

When we’d finished our tour of the place and I’d helped her clean up in the infirmary, she showed me the three floors of the women’s wing separated from the main building by thick iron gates. This was what she called “the wards” and told me my duties tonight would be here.

“It’s where they sleep, and it’s kept locked up tight at night. Gates are shut, locks are secured. That way we don’t need staff on watch all night over the whole building. Just the wards, patrolled by the new ones—like you.”

“How delightful.”

“We all take our turn at it. The new ones just get more. The rest of us get to sleep in our shared quarters in the attic, take a shift once a week or so. You’ll start with every other night.”

“So what am I to do on my turn?”

She shrugged. “Help them bed down, sit in a chair somewhere to watch the corridors, and try not to fall asleep. Another nurse will relieve you at four, and you’ll sleep until seven. You’ll have to walk the corridors three times a night, all three floors.”

“Why are there so many floors?”