Page 7 of Cracked Doll

He doesn't speak. He moves along the shelves unhurried, one hand trailing along the edge of a display case, and I keep my eyes down, cataloguing invoices I've already finished cataloguing twice, aware of him the way you're aware of weather about to turn.

Long minutes pass before he finally approaches the counter. He sets something down — the music box, the same dark lacquered ballerina piece the veiled woman handled not four hours before, though I could have sworn I'd shelved it back exactly where it belonged.

"Just this," he says. His voice is low, unhurried, faintly amused in a way I can't account for.

I ring it up without lifting my eyes past his sleeve. "Ten pounds."

He pays in exact coin, no more, no less, as though he already knew the price before he asked. I wrap the box in brown paper, tie the string, my fingers faster and clumsier than they should be, and slide it back across the counter.

That's when I see it. In his other hand, half-hidden by his coat sleeve — a camera, old-fashioned, leather-bodied, the kind you wind rather than switch on.

My heart slams once, hard, against my ribs.

He says nothing else. Takes the parcel. Leaves.

The bell rings behind him, and I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding, my shoulders dropping an inch, my hands finally unclenching from the edge of the counter.

And then I hear it.

Music. Faint, tinny, unmistakable — a slow, waltzing melody drifting from somewhere behind me.

I turn. The shelf where the music box sat is not, in fact, empty. A second one, identical, dark lacquer and faded gilt, sits exactly where the first had been — closed, and playing, though nothing should be turning its mechanism at all.

I cross to it slowly, my pulse a drum in my ears. I know this box. I know its trick — the little oval mirror set into the underside of the lid, the one that pops free the moment the lid lifts. I've handled a dozen just like it over the years, and I know precisely how to hold one so the mirror faces away from me, toward my own shoulder, safe.

I do that now, turning the small brass lever at its base, over and over, waiting for the mechanism to wind down.

It doesn't. Instead, on the final turn, the lid springs open with a small, sharp ding — the closing note of the melody — and I flinch back so hard I nearly drop it.

Inside, nestled where a dancing figurine should be, there's a rose.

Black. Fresh. Petals so dark they look wet, though the box has been shut for who knows how long. Black roses aren't rare in a town like this — every gift shop on the harbor sells them dyed and dried for the tourists — but not fresh. Not blooming, this deep into autumn, tucked inside a music box that was empty an hour ago.

I reach in and lift it free, turning it once between my fingers, and that's when I see the mirror.

The little oval glass, angled just so inside the open lid — and reflected in it, standing directly behind me, close enough that I should have felt his breath on my neck, is the man from the counter. Watching me. Through the glass.

The scream tears out of me before I've even fully understood what I've seen. The box falls from my hands, clattering to the floorboards, the rose skidding somewhere beneath the shelf.

I spin around, heart in my throat, hands raised —

There's no one there.

By the time I climb the stairs that night, I've changed out of my working clothes — the black Victorian dress I'd worn all day, high-collared, buttons to the throat, the kind of thing that makes me feel armored even when I know perfectly well it isn't — and into my nightdress, though sleep feels like something that's happening to someone else tonight, not to me.

I sit at the edge of my bed with the poster spread across my knees, the black rose resting beside it on the coverlet, and I stare at both of them like they might rearrange themselves into something that makes sense if I look long enough.

Six women. A man with a camera. A mirror I never should have looked into.

I'm still staring when the door opens.

I startle so badly I nearly knock the rose to the floor — I sweep the poster and the flower both behind my back in one motion, heart hammering, before I even register who it is.

My father. Sober-eyed, at least for now, standing awkward in the doorway like a man who's forgotten how his own house is arranged.

"Ophelia." He says my name carefully, the way you test ice before you put your full weight on it. "How are you?"

"Fine," I say, which isn't true, but is easier than the alternative.