Chapter 6 · I Took the Pen Out of Her Hand

His hand stayed on my hip like it had been bolted there.

"You're bleeding on my floor," Owen said.

Not yelling. Worse. Flat, like he was reading it off a shipping manifest.

I jammed my forearm between his ribs and stepped back. The cheap cotton of my shirt hung open where the button used to be. The pad underneath had gone from white to a shiny, black-red smear, and the stitches—my crooked, ugly stitches, pulled through my own skin at four in the morning in front of a cracked mirror—were right out in the cold air where everyone could count them.

"Then move," I said. "I'll bleed somewhere else."

"You'll bleed in the street, and the papers will say Hale Manor tossed a woman out in the rain." His hand dropped, but his gaze didn't. "Stand still."

"I've stood still all damn day."

The staff had melted against the baseboards. Six housemaids in gray, staring at me like I was a grease fire that had figured out how to speak. Up on the second-floor landing, the brass safety gate clicked.

Willa.

Her chin rested on the railing, tiny fingers curled through the spindles. Her eyes dropped to her father's hand—