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Jo stands still. Listens to the dead girl’s desires that in death cannot be expressed any other way but through the ghostly whispers.

“I will,” Jo murmurs under her breath.

Grace gives her a short, stunned look and walks over to the head of the bed. “Oh, Sally.” She falls to her knees and pulls gently on the white necktie, exposing an ugly, swollen bruise around Sally’s neck. Grace gasps and falls back on her rear, hands slamming into the ground. “What happened to her? Who did this?”

“Hung herself last night. Silly, silly girl,” Madame Ada says from the door. Jo forgot she was still there. Ada wipes the corner of her eyes with a sleeve of her frock. “We found her in the morning.” Ada steps back from the door as if she doesn’t want to come into the room. “Should I leave you here, then?”

“Yes.” Jo sets her camera on the bed. Flexes her fingers. “We’ll let you know when we’re done.”

Madame Ada nods and closes the door softly. Grace shuffles away from the bed and sits on the floor in the corner. Her lips are almost white as she whispers something under her breath.

The air shifts again. Thickens. There is a loud and oily squeaking sound from above the bed, and when Jo looks up, she bites down on her knuckles to suppress a scream. A taut rope is dangling from the chandelier above the bed. A girl is swinging from a noose, beneath her the overturned chair she’d used. The girl on the rope looks more solid, more real, than anything else in the room.

The hair on the back of Jo’s neck stands up. She should be used to the ghosts by now. But they still terrify her. The girl in the noose slowly lifts her head—her broken neck creaking—and turns, looking down at Jo with a sorrowful smile.

Tell Grace I’m sorry.

“Jesus,” Grace croaks and points at Sally, whose body is lying on the bed. “Did you hear that?” Jo is relieved Grace didn’t see Sally swinging beneath the ceiling. “Or is it all in my head?” Grace is so pale, Jo can see a blue vein pulsating rapidly at her temple.

“What did you hear?”

“Sally’s voice. She said Tell Grace I’m sorry. Did you hear it too?”

“Let’s open the shutters,” Jo says, ignoring Grace’s questions. “Get up. We need more light to make this work. We need some air.”

Grace casts the shutters wide, and when the daylight, too bright, too alive, bursts into the room, Grace clutches her stomach as if she might be sick. “Do we need all this light? It doesn’t feel right.”

“We need all the light we can get,” Jo says and looks through the camera lens at Sally. The dead girl opens her eyes and winks. “Grace.” Jo takes a step back. Lowers her camera. “What color were her eyes?”

“Gray. Why?”

Jo hands the camera to Grace. “You want to take the first shot?”

Grace takes the camera, her hands trembling. “I don’t think I can.” She pushes the Kodak back to Jo.

“You said you were friends.”

Grace nods. “We grew up in the same neighborhood. Her house was just down the street from ours. When her parents died, she was left alone. No money. No house. She stayed with us until Ira put her here.”

“Ira put her here? In this awful place?” Jo’s voice breaks. A silent shadow moves across the room, closer to the window. “Couldn’t someone—a relative?—help her find a decent job? A factory job? A department store?” She rubs her arms, chasing the prickly goose bumps away, and picks up the camera. “Something, anything that’s not here.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.” Grace’s voice is so low, Jo can barely hear her.

Jo sighs. “Okay, let’s work.”

An hour later, when Jo decides they’ve done enough, she walks to the window and pushes it open. A fresh, chill-bitten air is a blessing. She looks out at the street to make sure the world as she knows it—with no ghosts and no dead girls in brothels—is still there. And yes, it is still there. A few feet below, a hansom pulls over by Ada’s front door, and three men disembark. Somewhere in the distance, the hum of a cable car rings through the space. A woman’s voice shrieks down the street. Someone roars in laughter. Jo inhales the sharpness of the twilight air and turns around, facing the room.

Grace is sitting on the bed, face in her hands. A terrible sadness squeezes Jo’s heart. She walks over to Grace and sits by her side.

“You were really close, weren’t you?”

“We tried to leave this godforsaken city. We just needed more time.” Grace looks up at Jo, and her warm breath washes over Jo’s skin. “Why would she do it? Why would she leave me like this?” She closes her eyes.

“Did anyone in your family know about your plans to leave?” Jo asks in a quiet voice of pure rage.

“Millie knew.” Grace’s eyes are dark in the dim light. “I told her. She was so happy for us. Said she’d come with us.” She looks out the window, into a place only she can see, and Jo suspects there is only blackness there. “And now both of them are dead.”

“It can’t be a coincidence,” Jo says slowly, thoughts spinning.