fini. Elle dors? Oui, c’est bon. They weren’t far away, but it seemed a great distance to me, as if I were listening to a conversation from the bottom of a deep well.
My mind returned to what Justine had seen in the mountains two years before. I saw the tracks, the cave, the beast carrying the child. As the scene played through my mind, my blood went cold. The description of the creature was so similar to the photograph in the trophy room, so similar to Vita, that it could only mean there were others like her out there, alive somewhere in the mountains. The braid of long white hair in the trophy room seemed to back this up. And yet, I struggled to understand how it could be true.
It was then, as I stretched my legs, that I felt a draft of cool air brush over my feet. I had gone to sleep with my shoes tied tight. They had been soggy from the snow, so I had let them hang off the edge of the couch, hoping the fire would dry them. Now my feet were bare and exposed. The wide, flat bridge; the thick, meaty pink pads that protected the heel and ball; the second toe, with its long, hooked nail glinting in the firelight—everything that I had hoped to hide had been revealed.
I tried to sit upright, but a hard, tight tug cinched my body, holding me down. I couldn’t move more than a few centimeters in any direction. I struggled, trying to get out, but there was no give. Looking down, I found a row of bright-colored straps locked over my chest, my waist, my legs, even my ankles. Pierre and Justine had used their climbing ropes to belt me to the couch.
I looked around the room the best I could, trying to stay calm, but it was easier said than done. I was terrified. Thoughts of every horrific thing that could happen to me—murder and rape and torture—rushed through my mind. Instinctually, I revolted against the restraints, pushing against the straps, twisting and turning as I tried to break free.
The noise brought Pierre and Justine. Pierre held a hunting rifle in his hands, and Justine stayed behind him, her eyes wide with fascination. “There’s no need to be afraid,” Justine said.
“They’re too tight,” I said, panic making my voice strange. “I can’t breathe.”
“They have to be tight,” Pierre said. “Or you will run.”
With that, Pierre took Justine by the arm and led her out of the room. I stifled a sob, feeling my cheeks grow wet with tears of fear and frustration. I called after them, trying to convince them to let me go, begging them to tell me why they’d restrained me, promising them money if they would untie me. I could hear them talking in the kitchen, and while they spoke in French and I couldn’t understand a word they said, I clung to the hope that they would realize their mistake and free me. Soon, I would be back home, safe with Luca, telling him the story of my captivity as if it were nothing more than a dark fairy tale.
Twenty
I woke at the first light of day to the creeping sensation of fingers on my feet. I jerked back, a reaction that was pure animal instinct.
“There, there,” a male voice said. “No need to get upset. I’m just taking a look at your beautiful hallux.”
The owner of the voice sat on a chair at the end of the couch. He was an older man, perhaps sixty, with a trimmed white beard and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a ski jacket, unzipped to reveal a bow tie. A notebook, tape measure, and camera sat on the table nearby. Pierre and Justine hung back behind him.
I glanced toward the window. The snow had stopped falling at last, and bright light drifted through the shutters. Had this man come in a helicopter overnight? Had I really slept through helicopter noise? Maybe Pierre and Justine had given me something to make me sleep.
“Are you aware that twenty-five percent of the bones in the human body are located in the feet?” the man said. “One-quarter. Exactly twenty-six bones in each foot. Quite a feat of engineering, wouldn’t you say?” He laughed a high-pitched, childlike laugh at his facile pun. “But that is in the human foot. I can’t say what we’ll find when we X-ray your feet. Your feet are quite unusual. Not at all like