fingers. She screamed again, pulling frantically against the ropes, and the agony roared. She was going to die of this pain, eaten alive and conscious to the end. She wept, head moving mindlessly back and forth as the teeth of some rough slouching beast chewed languorously up her wrists.
“Who is the woman, Eve?”
Lili, she thought. Did the beast already kill you? She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. Drops of sweat slid down her neck from her sodden hair.
“Who is the woman?”
Eve forced herself to open her eyes. She would look the beast in the face as it killed her. She looked down at her hands, expecting to see them clamped in a fanged maw, and then she shrieked. Her hands were not gone—they had changed somehow, the shattered fingers trying to regrow themselves. She had twice as many fingers, every one painted in blood and tipped not with a nail, but with an eye. All the eyes blinked at her in unison, accusing and blind.
The beast is me, she thought in utter agony. The beast is me. Did I kill Lili? Did I kill her?
“Who is the woman, Eve?”
Did I kill her?
Eve’s lips parted blindly, and the mad, pulsing world went dark. Waves and waves of blackness and pain, terror and teeth.
Time to wake up, pet.”
Light stabbed Eve’s eyes as she peeled them open, but nothing stabbed like the silver needle of René’s voice. She sat upright, a jolt of agony coursing through her hands. She was still roped to her chair, mouth dry as cotton and her skull splitting. René smiled, leaning against the window overlooking the street. He wore a gray morning suit, his hair was combed and oiled, and he had a teacup in hand. The light came through the window strong and bright. It was morning, though Eve couldn’t tell which morning, if a night or two nights or a month’s worth of nights had passed in that storm of pain and—
Teeth. Pulsing walls, evil eyes, teeth. Eve’s gaze flew wildly about the study, but it looked the same as it ever had. The green silk walls were not breathing, the peacock on the Tiffany lampshade stayed confined in glass, the lilies in their fluted vase were just flowers.
Lilies. Lili. Eve’s heart skittered, and she looked back at René. He smiled, taking a sip of steaming tea.
“I trust you are more comfortable.”
Eve looked down at her hands for the first time. They had been bandaged in clean cloth, bulky anonymous mitts that hid the horror underneath. She still wore her soiled clothes, but her face and hair had been sponged. René had expended some effort to make her presentable.
“Herr Rotselaer is bringing his men to arrest you,” René explained, glancing out the window to the street below. “They should be arriving—oh, perhaps in half an hour. I thought you should look at least a trifle tidy for your captors. Some of these young officers are still squeamish when it comes to hurting women. Even English spies.”
The relief crashed over Eve like an avalanche. The Fritzes are coming for me. She was not going to die here in this room. She was going to a German cell. Perhaps she would only come out of that cell to face a firing squad, but right now, it was enough that the cell would not have René in it. He had given up tormenting her. Given up.
I held out, she thought in a kind of numb wonder. I endured.
In her mind, Lili smiled. Perhaps she would see Lili in prison, and Violette. If they could stand together, they could face anything that came. Even a line of guns.
“Your friend,” René said as though reading her mind. “Give her a hello from me if you should see her in the adjoining cell. She sounds like a rather extraordinary woman, your Louise de Bettignies. I’m sorry never to have met her.”
He sipped his tea, standing there in the sunlight. Eve stared at him, the marks of a comb in his hair, the fresh shave of his jaw.
“You told me,” he said. “If you’re wondering.”
“I told you n-n—” she tried to say through numbed lips. “N-N—I told you n—” Nothing. Rien. Such a small word, and it would not come out. Her tongue had frozen fast.
“Louise de Bettignies, alias Alice Dubois, alias a dozen other names. You listed them all. The German Kommandant will be very happy to realize just who it is Herr Rotselaer has in custody. The head, in fact, of