“It’s a grim place to be trapped for eternity, but if you can come and go as you please . . . I had it all to myself to explore. In the first year I left home, I must have gone back and forth a hundred times. It was a place of secrets, and so I started sewing secrets into my designs. People loved it. It made me even more famous. There is so much to see there. Mostly horrors, but glimpses of beauty too.”

“Then something went wrong,” Vivi said.

“About a year ago, someone noticed me coming and going. Someone who’d been waiting for me for a long time.”

“Papa,” I said.

“Yes. Gabe Hollow tracked me like an animal. Watched me. Followed me. He must have seen me bring Agnes back with blood and runes. Is she . . . ?”

“No,” I said. “She didn’t make it.”

Grey pressed her lips together and sniffled. “I tried to make amends for what I did to those girls. I found Agnes, this living child trapped in a dead place, and I brought her home. That has to count for something, right?”

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure it counted for anything at all. What if Grey had stumbled upon Agnes instead of the Hollow sisters? Would she have been so benevolent then?

“Gabe laid traps for me,” Grey continued. “He almost caught me the first time. I got away, but he’d hurt me. He had enough of my blood to come through the doors himself. I didn’t realize he’d be able to track me down, but he did. He found me in Paris. I got away again, caught a flight to London. I didn’t want to involve you if I didn’t have to. I didn’t want him to come after you too, but I needed to leave you a message. I needed to know you’d come looking for me if I disappeared.”

“You broke into our house and hid the key in your old room.”

Grey nodded. “Gabe and some other dead thing ambushed me not long after, in my apartment. I got one of them. Cut his throat. If you kill them on this side of the veil, they go still. Gabe overpowered me, though. He hid the body in my ceiling and dragged me back to the Halfway. I waited. For days and days he kept me. I started to think, maybe, that you wouldn’t find me, that I would die there, all alone, that I would become part of the place I had sacrificed so much to escape. I fought. I got free. But I was weak. I was lost and wandering. And then I heard your voice. I felt your heart beating in my chest. We’re linked by what we did, by the lives we sacrificed. Linked by blood and death and magic. I found my way back to the door that led to my kitchen. Here. You helped lead me home.”

We were sisters. We felt each other’s pain. We caused each other’s pain. We knew the smell of each other’s morning breath. We made each other cry. We made each other laugh. We got angry, pinched, kicked, screamed at each other. We kissed, on the forehead, nose on nose, butterfly eyelashes swept against cheeks. We wore each other’s clothes. We stole from each other, treasured objects hidden under pillows. We defended each other. We lied to each other. We pretended to be older people, other people. We played dress up. We spied on each other. We possessed each other like shiny things. We loved each other with potent, fervent fury. Animal fury. Monstrous fury.

My sisters. My blood. My skin. What a gruesome bond we shared.

“So Papa . . . knew what we were?” Vivi asked.

Grey’s expression went dark. “Not your father. Not really. But yes. He knew. From the very first moment he saw us after we came back, I think he knew. It took Cate longer to believe, but she came to understand as well, after a time.”

“Wait—Cate knows?” I asked. “How is that possible?”

“Because I told her,” Grey said. “The night she threw me out. When I came home drunk, I snapped. I was angry. She was so controlling. I told her that I skinned her children and killed her husband, and if she didn’t leave me alone, I’d skin her too.”

“You . . . killed him?” Vivi said, still putting together the pieces that had fallen into place for me in the Halfway. “You killed Papa?”

“Like I said: I promised you I would always keep you safe, Vivi. Gabe Hollow was a threat. You know that. Papa was losing his mind. You remember the morning he put us in the car. He would have driven us off a cliff and murdered us all if I hadn’t stepped in. So I . . . made a suggestion to him. I was only just starting to understand the power we had over other people. I didn’t want to kill him. I didn’t even mean to kill him.”

I didn’t want this, his note had said. Not a suicide note, after all: a last-ditch SOS to his wife.

“He wasn’t losing his mind, though,” Vivi said. “He was right and you punished him for it.”

“I loved him,” I said.

“You barely knew him,” Grey said. “Besides, tell me you weren’t afraid of him. Tell me you didn’t breathe a sigh of relief when we found him hanging. Tell me you truly believe he wouldn’t have killed you eventually.”

“We deserve to die,” I whispered.

“Wait,” Vivi said. “Why would Cate keep us if she knows that we’re not her children?”

Grey shrugged. “Who knows? My guess is that having something that resembles your children is better than having no children at all. Grief does strange things to people.”

I looked my sister in the eyes and searched there for any sign of remorse for what she had done to Cate and Gabe Hollow, but I found none. I stood and made for the door.

“Iris, wait,” Grey said as she snatched my arm.

“No. Don’t touch me. Listen to me. I don’t want to see you anymore. I don’t want you in my life.”

“I got you out,” Grey said fiercely. “I gave you the life I promised you I would give you. I have no regrets. I want you to know that. I would do everything I did again, one hundred times over. When you are ready to talk to me, I will be waiting for you, because I am your sister.