Page 10 of Cracked Doll

And then his voice, low and unbothered, as though we're mid-conversation rather than starting one:

"You left your bedroom window cracked open last night. Let the rain smell in." A pause, and I can hear the smile in it even without seeing his face. "Gave me a rather lovely view of you, curled up reading on the rug."

The receiver nearly slips from my hand. I gasp before I can stop myself — that voice, unmistakable, the same one from the shop yesterday — and I slam the phone back onto its cradle so hard the bell inside gives one last startled ring.

My heart is a fist against my ribs. I turn, meaning to check the street, meaning to see if he's still out there somewhere —

And he's already at the door. Standing just outside the glass, one hand resting against the frame, watching me through the pane like he's been there the whole time.

I scream — I can't help it, it tears out of me before I've decided anything at all — and I run, stumbling back through the stairwell door, up into the house, into the living room where my father lies exactly where I left him.

"Papa." I grab his shoulder, shaking him hard enough to rattle the bottle off his leg. "Papa, wake up — please, there's a man outside, he's — Papa, please—"

He doesn't stir. Not a flicker. “Papa— a man is watching me— wake up, please —”

When he finally does move, it's only to slide bonelessly off the sofa entirely, landing in a heap on the floor with a low, contented grunt, as though the rug were exactly where he meant to end up all along.

I'm reaching for him again, some useless instinct still hoping to shake sense into a man who has none left to give, when I hear it.

The bell.

Down in the shop. Ringing once, clear and small, the sound of someone stepping through the front door.

I go completely still.

He's inside.

I shake my father one more time — hard, desperate, his head lolling uselessly against the cushion — and then I hear it. Footsteps. Unhurried. Climbing the stairs from the shop, precise and even, the exact rhythm I heard outside my door last night.

I don't wait to find out if they're coming for the living room.

I'm up and moving before I've fully decided to, out into the hall, down toward my own room, the door slamming and locking behind me with hands that barely cooperate. My window. I need my window.

My dress — the ivory bodice gone soft and creased from sleep, sleeves the color of clotted cream, a deep emerald velvet overlay laced from waist to collar in black cord, the fabric dark as a held breath. My boots are already on, black leather, laced to the ankle. It'll have to do.

There's an old drainpipe running down the back of the building, iron gone rust-dark with age, half-strangled in ivy that's climbed it for longer than I've been alive. I've used it before, on nights when the stairs felt too loud, too close to my father's door. I grab my veil from the sill on instinct — sheer black, weighted at the hem — and settle it over my face before I even open the window, because whatever waits for me down there, I refuse to meet it eye to eye.

I climb down carefully, one foot finding the old iron bracket, then the next, the ivy slick with dew under my palms, my skirts bunched awkwardly in one fist the whole way. Through the mesh of the veil the world is soft and grey, blurred at the edges, and I'm nearly to the ground, nearly free, my boot reaching for the last stretch of wall —

Hands close around my waist.

I shriek, my grip tearing loose from the ivy, and then I'm being lifted, turned, my back slammed against the cold brick hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.

"Careful," he murmurs, close enough that I feel the word more than hear it. "Wouldn't want you cracking that pretty skull open before I've had the chance to."

I keep my eyes down, fixed on the black knot of his tie, refusing — refusing — to look higher.

"Let go of me," I gasp, and shove uselessly against his chest, his shoulders, anything I can reach. When that fails, I grab the hand pinning me and sink my teeth into it, hard, tasting copper.

He doesn't flinch. Doesn't pull away. A low chuckle rumbles out of him instead, delighted, entirely too pleased with himself.

"There she is." His breath stirs the veil at my ear as he leans in, voice dropping to something private, almost tender. "I do like a bit of fight in my things, Ophelia."

The sound of my own name in his mouth sends ice down my spine.

It's barely gone six. The street is empty in the way only a British seaside town at dawn can be — a single gull overhead, the tide still working the harbor somewhere below, no one close enough to hear me if I scream. I try anyway.

"Help—" My voice cracks. "Someone, please, help me—"