found her delicate ears. Grace hovered near her always, drawing the angry glares herself, and suggesting outdoor activities when the barely restrained arguments seeped through closed doors.
Grace reached through the decorative iron grille on her widow to trace her fingertips along the glass, now cool with the night air. She wondered if Alice sat at her own window, or if Falsteed thought of her behind his bars.
“Miss Madeleine Baxter,” Grace said softly to herself, remembering the false name Falsteed had told her to write to Reed under. A smile formed as a mockingbird sang on the lawn, echoing the gibberish of the inmates he’d encountered that day.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Miss Madeleine Baxter has a little sister,” she said.
Falsteed—
I hardly know what to call you. Mister? Doctor? Friend? Fiend?
Dr. Thornhollow has told me of your past, but how can I find fault with your deeds when without them our paths would never have crossed? If you are mad then I owe my life to a madman, and he is no less dear to me for his actions. Truly evil people do exist, this I know, but I do not count you among them. Instead, I choose to see you as a good person who has done bad things, and who among us cannot be dubbed so?
Somehow you smelled out the dark origins of my incarceration. Perhaps you also smelled mixed with my own scent a lighter one. So much time was spent holding this one close to me that I would not be surprised to learn that her smell clung to my skin, even in the darkness. As we are, after all, one flesh.
She is my sister, a small, lovely creature who I shielded daily from the secrets in our shared home. That the pall of our parents’ lies should descend upon her now, I can hardly bear. I know what it is to live in that house. Even before the worst, life there was bearable only because I had her to coddle and protect. She must have some comfort, for she is surrounded by anger and deception. I recognize the danger in correspondence, but fear more the results should I not take some action.
Though she sheds her childhood now, once there was an imaginary friend she held dear, who she claimed would meet her in the gardens and leave small presents on a certain rock. That I was the bearer of these, you no doubt realize, and I would be that again. A carefully worded letter from the same friend need not be associated with me. If Reed would endeavor to be the bearer, I can tell him of a hole in the fence surrounding the house, long hidden by ivy. If ever I find myself in a position to repay both you and Reed, it will be done tenfold.
Of my new life I will say little and of Thornhollow even less. You know the deal that was struck in order to facilitate my escape, and I fear you disapprove. What then would you think if I were to tell you that I have already proven myself not only useful but also a keen student of this dark enterprise into the criminal mind? I would say that the work is distasteful, but only because that is what you want to hear. In truth I find myself looking forward to the next opportunity to sharpen my skills and must remind myself that in order for that to happen, someone must die. If it was darkness you feared I would turn to while in his employ, fear not. The darkness has long lived inside me, sown if not by my nature then by nurture.
Grace’s pen faltered as she lingered over the closing. How was she to end a letter written in the sunshine to a man who would receive it in darkness with the death of another still on his breath? She settled for a simple, Always, and left off signing it altogether.
Even though she was confident that Reed would spirit the letter to Falsteed and it would be destroyed soon after, Grace did not put her name to it. The enclosed letter needed to be written with even greater care, worded so vaguely that curious adults would spot only child’s play.
Dearest Alice—
I hope this letter has found you well. You may think it odd to receive a letter from someone you thought no longer existed, but I assure you that imaginary friends never cease to be, even when we