“Now why would a princess like you need to leave Nebraska and come this far to this particular place?” he asks. “Town too small for you? Or is there something else? Something you’re running away from?”

His eyes shine like he’s in the grip of a fever as he leans in closer. “Daffodil. Have you been a bad girl?”

My heart shatters.

Why is he looking at me like that?

What does he know? How does he know it? How could he possibly—

“It is a strange thing to do. Taking this job, a girl your age, all summer. Strikes me it might get kind of lonely.” He pretend-ponders that. “Yeah, I bet it would. Wouldn’t it? All alone in this creaky old house. I bet you’re just dying of loneliness.”

He steps forward and now, like a reflex, I step away. “I think you are a bad girl. Like the rest of us. I think that’s why you ended up here. You’re punishing yourself, Daffodil. Clear as day. But you don’t have to anymore.”

“Why not?” I choke out the words.

“Because that’s our job.” His smile stretches to surreal proportions—a grin so large his mouth stretches from ear to ear, splitting his face in two. Suddenly, everything in the room is out of proportion. Moving somehow. Billowing.

“Poor little Daffodil. It was all supposed to be so different. You were one of the pretty ones. You were headed to your pretty life at your pretty little college.” He simmers underneath it. “You were supposed to take that pretty little face and those pretty little blue eyes and those fine words and find yourself a nice wimpy boy from a rich family and live in a house just like this, but in a nicer place, someplace fancy. But it’s not pretty to leave the people you love behind. To abandon them.”

“That is the last thing I would ever do,” I answer.

“That’s exactly what you did do, little girl. It was selfish! You are selfish. You play so nice but, ultimately, you’re just like everyone else. A cutthroat. You know what it makes me think? Maybe you shouldn’t have that pretty little face—the one that looks like daydreams. Maybe you should come with a warning. A face like a warning, ugly as you are inside.”

This stops me.

He sees my reaction, laughs.

And now the lock keeping me in place springs open. I lunge toward the phone line in the professor’s study.

I pick up the receiver.

No dial tone.

Mike is slow. He sidles up, leaning his head into the study . . .

He smiles. “Now, you didn’t really think that was gonna work, did you?”

I put the phone down slowly. Trying to buy time, trying to remember where I put my cell. I could grab it and run into the night.

“Oh, kiddo. Don’t even try.” He lifts up his hand and dangles my cell, my case, decorated with watermelon slices, and he waves it with glee.