Page 14 of Cracked Doll

He walks me backward until my knees hit the edge of the bed, and lowers me down beneath him, the blade never once leaving my skin, his weight settling over me like something inevitable.

"Ophelia?" Amara's voice, muffled through the door, closer now. A soft knock. "You alright in there? Can I come in?"

"If you don't say exactly what I tell you," he murmurs, so quiet only I could possibly hear it, "I will open your throat right here, and I will let her find you like that." His eyes hold mine — or try to. I keep my gaze fixed just past his shoulder, at the crack of ceiling plaster above the bed, refusing to give him that.

"Look at me," he says.

I don't.

"Ophelia?" Amara again, the door handle turning slightly. "I'm coming in—"

"Tell her," he says, low and even, "that you thought you saw a ghost."

My voice comes out in pieces. "I — I thought I saw a ghost."

A pause on the other side of the door, and then, delighted rather than alarmed: "Ha! Told you this place was haunted. Is it still there?"

"No," I whisper, at his silent instruction, the knife a cold line of certainty against my pulse.

"Brilliant. Shout if it comes back — but don't scream, yeah? Wouldn't want to scare it off before I get a look." A beat. "Better hurry and get dressed, though. We're going to be late."

Her footsteps recede down the hall.

The knife lifts away from my throat, slow, deliberate, and he settles his weight more fully against me, one hand coming up to trace along my jaw. "Look at me," he says again, softer now. "Such beautiful eyes, and you won't even give me a glance."

Then, he smells me. I swear I hear it so well. “Christ, you smell so good.”

I don't answer. I don't look. But God help me, every other sense in my body has gone wide open, unbearably awake — I can smell him, cedar and something warmer underneath, something that makes absolutely no sense to notice at a moment like this. Everywhere he touches feels like a burn and a shiver at once, my skin rising in gooseflesh even as heat pools low and traitorous in my stomach. No man has ever been this close to me. No man has ever so much as held my hand. I'd assumed, somewhere along the way, that I simply didn't feel this — that whatever wanting was supposed to feel like, my body had quietly opted out of it years ago, alongside everything else it had given up.

Apparently I was wrong.

The flat of the blade drags, feather-light, along the exposed line of my collarbone, down toward the hollow of my throat, and he watches it move like he's cataloguing every inch it touches.

"You are," he says, "without question, the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on." His voice drops lower, rougher, edged with something dark enough to make my breath catch. "I walked into your bathroom last night and peeled the cloth off your medicine cabinet mirror. Didn't leave a mark on the glass, don't worry — I only wanted to stand exactly where you refuse to stand. Stare into that empty little space you're too much of a coward to claim for yourself."

I freeze beneath him.

"You cover every mirror in that wretched house with bedsheets and paper," he goes on, quiet, almost tender, "because you're terrified of what's waiting to stare back. But you don't need glass, darling." His thumb sweeps once along my cheek. "You have me. I see every single inch of you. And I love, quite desperately, everything I see."

He knows. My mouth opens, some question trying to form — how, how could you possibly know, no one knows, not even Papa, who never cared enough to look — and nothing comes out. My father was content to leave the mirrors covered because he never wanted to see what he'd become reflected back at him. This man went looking. On purpose. Just to stand where I wouldn't.

He rises off me slowly, tucking the knife away somewhere inside his coat as though it were never anything more than a pocketknife for whittling, and straightens his cuffs like a man leaving after nothing more than a pleasant visit.

"When you come to The Midnight Menagerie tonight," he says, "wear the necklace. It'll find me faster than you could on your own." A pause at the door, his eyes finding mine one last time even as I refuse to lift my own. "I'll see you tonight, little doll."

And then he's gone, out through my own bedroom door as though he has every right in the world to use it.

I sit on the edge of my bed for a long, silent while after, hugging my knees, my whole body still humming with something I don't have a name for — fear, mostly. Mostly fear.

Do I still go?

I don't want to. Every instinct screams at me to lock every door in this house and never leave it again. But Amara is down the hall, waiting, excited, and some part of me — small, stubborn, tired of disappearing — doesn't want to be the reason tonight falls apart for her too. Besides. I won't be alone. I'll be with her the entire time.

I dress carefully: black, off the shoulder, the neckline dipping low across my collarbones, sleeves gathered soft at the elbow before falling to points at my wrists. My boots lace high, black leather with a small curved heel, the kind a grandmother would have called sensible and everyone else would call striking. I drape the black veil loose across my shoulders rather than my face, just in case, folded and ready should I need it.

Before I leave the room, I touch two fingers to my own throat, my collarbone, and shiver at the memory of cold steel resting exactly there.

Amara gasps the moment she sees me in the sitting room, phone forgotten in her lap. "Okay, wow. You clean up terrifyingly well." She hops to her feet, grinning. "Carnival's not far — we can walk it, easy, and grab a ride back if our feet give out."