The needle slipped.

Nellie McBride felt the sting before she saw the blood, a bright bead welling up on the pad of her thumb, blooming against the pale cotton of the half-stitched dress in her lap. She sucked it without thinking, the copper taste sharp on her tongue, and that was when she heard it—a sound that didn't belong in the quiet of the hotel's private parlor.

A scream. Muffled, like a hand over a mouth, cut off almost before it began.

Her needle froze mid-air. The gas lamp hissed on the side table, its weak light pooling on the velvet settee where she sat, on the spool of thread, on the thimble still wedged on her thumb. The parlor was silent again. The clock on the mantel ticked. Somewhere beyond the walls, a carriage rattled past on the street.

But she'd heard it. She knew she'd heard it.

It's nothing, she told herself. Just the wind. Just the old pipes. Just your imagination, Nellie McBride, running off again like it always does.

She set the dress aside and stood, her boots silent on the thick carpet. The parlor was a beautiful room—all dark wood and brocade, the kind of room she'd never have set foot in if Mr. Holmes hadn't hired her to mend the curtains. She'd been here three days now, working her way through the hotel's fine fabrics, and every day she'd noticed the velvet drapes at the far end of the room. Heavy, floor-length, the color of dried blood. They covered a wall that didn't seem to need covering.

She crossed to them now, her heart beating a little too fast. The drapes were warm under her fingers, the velvet soft and thick. She parted them just enough to peer through.

Cold air hit her face. The smell hit her next—rust and old urine, damp stone, something else beneath it that she couldn't name but that made her stomach turn.

The room beyond was small, walled in rough stone. A single gas lamp burned low on a bracket, its weak light gleaming on polished metal. She saw the chair first—a heavy thing with leather straps hanging loose from the arms, the seat dark with age. Then the rack of tools beside it. She couldn't make out all of them, but she saw the glint of blades, the curve of something that looked like a hook, the long thin shape of a needle far larger than any she'd ever used.

And on the floor, a dark stain. Wide and old, soaked into the stone, spreading out from beneath the chair like a shadow that had learned to lie flat.

Nellie's breath clouded in the cold air. She should turn away. She should go back to her sewing, pretend she'd seen nothing, collect her wages and leave this place and never think about it again.

Instead, she stepped inside.

The stone was cold through the soles of her boots. The smell was stronger here, thick enough to taste, and she pressed her sleeve over her nose as she moved deeper into the room. The chair loomed to her left, the leather straps gleaming with use. She reached out and touched one—it was supple, well-oiled, worn smooth in the middle as if a body had strained against it many times.

Her hand trembled. She pulled it back.

The rack of tools stood against the far wall, arranged in precise order—largest to smallest, each in its own bracket. She counted them without meaning to. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Things she had no names for, things she didn't want names for. The gas lamp flickered, and the light caught the edge of a blade, and she saw that it was not entirely clean.

Something dark was dried into the steel near the handle.

Nellie's throat closed. She took a step back, then another, her eyes fixed on that stain on the floor, on the chair, on the tools arranged so carefully, so deliberately, as if for a ritual she didn't yet understand.

She heard the footstep behind her a half-second too late.

A hand clamped over her mouth, hard enough to grind her lips against her teeth. An arm banded across her chest, hauling her backward, and she was pressed against a body—a man's body, lean and strong, the wool of a suit coat rough against her back. She smelled cologne and soap and something else, something metallic, and she knew without seeing who it was.

"You shouldn't have come in here, Miss McBride."

Henry Holmes's voice was soft, almost gentle, the same honeyed tone he used when he complimented her stitching. His breath was warm against her ear. His hand stayed clamped over her mouth, and she could feel the calluses on his palm, the strength in his fingers, the absolute certainty of his grip.

She bit him.

Hard. Her teeth sank into the meat of his palm, and she tasted blood—his blood, hot and salt—and she heard him hiss, felt his grip falter for just a moment.

Then he laughed.

A low, pleased sound, like she'd done something clever. Like she'd passed a test she hadn't known she was taking.

"Oh, you've got teeth," he said, and his hand left her mouth, but only to slide down to her throat, fingers curling around her windpipe, not squeezing, just holding. Just reminding her that he could. "I do like that. It makes it more interesting."

Nellie's heart was a trapped bird in her chest. She tried to scream, but his grip on her throat tightened, and the sound came out as a strangled gasp. She clawed at his arm, her nails digging into his sleeve, but he didn't seem to notice. His other hand was already moving, hitching up her skirts, bunching the cotton fabric around her hips.

"Please," she managed, the word barely a whisper. "Please, Mr. Holmes—"

"Shh." His voice was still soft, still gentle, and that was the most terrible thing about it. "Shh, now. You came looking for something, didn't you? You parted my drapes and stepped into my private room. You touched my things." His fingers found the waistband of her drawers, and she felt the fabric give way, felt the cold air on her bare skin. "You wanted to know what happens here. I'm going to show you."

She thrashed. She kicked backward, felt her heel connect with his shin, heard him grunt—but he didn't let go. He shifted his weight, and she felt the buckle of his trousers click open against the stone floor, and then he was forcing her forward, bending her over the table, the cold wood pressing into her stomach.

The table was stained too. She could see it now, inches from her face—dark patches worn into the grain, some old and faded, some not so old. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn't block out the feel of his hands on her, the way he yanked her drawers down to her knees, the way he spread her legs with his knee.

"Look at you," he murmured, and she heard the smile in his voice. "All that fire, and here you are. Bent over my table like you were made for it."

She heard the sound of his trousers falling, the rustle of fabric, and then she felt him—the heat of him, the weight of him, pressing against her bare skin. She went rigid.

"Don't," she whispered. "Please, don't—"

He didn't answer. His hand found her throat again, pulling her up, arching her back, and she felt the head of his cock press against her, blunt and insistent, finding her wet despite everything, despite the fear and the cold and the smell of rust and old urine. Her body betrayed her, slick and ready, and she hated herself for it.

"You see?" His voice was right by her ear now, his breath hot on her neck. "You want this. You've wanted it since the first day you walked into my hotel, haven't you? All those little looks. All those little smiles."

"No," she sobbed. "No, I never—"

He pushed inside her.

One hard, smooth thrust that buried him to the hilt, and Nellie's world went white. She felt the stretch of him, the fullness, the way he filled her completely, and a sound escaped her—not a scream, not a sob, something in between, something she didn't recognize as her own voice.

"There," Henry said, and he sounded satisfied, almost lazy. "There we are."

He didn't move for a moment. Just stood there, buried inside her, his hand loose around her throat, his breath steady. She could feel his heartbeat through his cock, feel the pulse of him inside her, and she thought she might be sick.

Then he began to move.

Slow at first, a gentle rocking that made her teeth clench. He pulled out almost all the way, then pushed back in, deeper this time, and she felt the head of his cock press against something inside her that made her whole body jerk. He did it again, and again, finding that spot with a precision that felt practiced, that felt like he knew exactly what he was doing.

"That's it," he murmured. "That's it, Nellie. Take it."

She shook her head, her hair coming loose from its pins, falling in red waves around her face. "Please," she gasped. "Please stop—"

He laughed again, that same low, pleased sound, and his hand tightened on her throat—not enough to cut off her air, just enough to make her feel it. Just enough to remind her who was in control.

"You don't want me to stop," he said. "Your body knows what it wants, even if your mouth doesn't." He thrust deeper, harder, and she felt her hips rock forward to meet him, felt the betraying slickness of her own arousal coating his cock. "See? You're already dripping for me. Already clenching around me like you never want me to leave."

She wanted to deny it. She wanted to scream at him, to claw his face, to do anything but lie there and take it. But her body was not listening to her anymore. Her body was arching into him, her hips moving in rhythm with his, her cunt clenching around his cock with every thrust, and she could hear herself making sounds—small, broken sounds that were almost moans.

"That's it," he said again, and his voice was darker now, rougher. "That's it, sweetheart. Let me hear you."

His hand left her throat and found her hip, gripping hard enough to bruise, pulling her back onto him as he thrust forward. The table creaked beneath them. The gas lamp flickered, casting their shadows wild and distorted on the stone walls. She could smell herself on him, the musk of her arousal mixing with the smell of rust and old urine, and she thought she might drown in it.

He was fucking her now in earnest, hard and fast, the slap of skin against skin echoing off the cold stone. She felt the pressure building inside her, a coil of heat tightening in her belly, and she tried to fight it, tried to hold it back, but it was too strong. It was too much. His cock was too deep, his rhythm too relentless, and she felt herself teetering on the edge of something she didn't want to fall into.

"No," she gasped. "No, I can't—"

"You can," he said, and his hand found her throat again, squeezing just enough to make her see stars. "You will. You'll come on my cock, Nellie, and you'll thank me for it."

She came.

It tore through her like a wave, like a storm, her whole body convulsing around him, her cunt clenching and fluttering, and she heard herself cry out—a raw, broken sound that was almost a scream. He kept thrusting through it, kept driving into her, and she felt his rhythm falter, felt his grip tighten on her throat, felt him shudder against her.

"That's it," he groaned. "That's it, that's it—"

He pulled out at the last moment, and she felt his cock jerk against her back, felt the hot splash of his seed on her skin, painting her freckled shoulders, running down her spine. He came with a sound that was almost a sigh, his body going still against hers, his hand still loose around her throat.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

Then he stepped back, and she heard him tucking himself away, heard the rustle of his trousers, the click of his buckle. She stayed where she was, bent over the table, her cheek pressed against the cold stained wood, her drawers around her knees, his seed cooling on her back.

"You'll keep this to yourself," he said, and his voice was calm again, pleasant, as if he'd just discussed the weather. "You'll go back to your sewing, and you'll finish the curtains, and you'll never speak of this room to anyone. Do you understand?"

She didn't answer. She couldn't. Her throat was too raw, her body too spent, her mind too far gone to form words.

His hand left her mouth, trailing down to her throat as the first sound of her own ragged sob escaped.

She stayed bent over the table until the sound of his footsteps faded, until the gas lamp's hiss was the only thing left in the room. Then her knees gave out.

Nellie slid down the table's edge and landed hard on the stone floor, her palms scraping rough grit, her drawers still tangled around her ankles. The cold came up through her skirt like a hand. She could feel his seed drying on her back, tightening the skin between her shoulder blades, and she wanted to claw it off, wanted to scrub herself raw, but her arms wouldn't move. They hung at her sides like they belonged to someone else.

She didn't know how long she sat there. Long enough that her breath stopped shaking. Long enough that the lamp sputtered once and she thought, *it'll go out, and then I'll be in the dark with that chair and those tools and I'll never find my way back.*

That got her moving.

She pulled her drawers up with shaking hands, wincing as the cotton dragged across skin that felt scraped and hot. Her skirt fell back into place, wrinkled and damp where it had bunched against the table. She found one of her hairpins on the floor and pushed it back into the loose mess of her hair without looking at her reflection in the blade rack. She didn't want to see her own face.

The drapes parted easily from the inside. She stepped through them, and the parlor swallowed her whole—warm lamplight, the velvet settee, the half-stitched dress waiting in her chair like nothing had happened. The clock on the mantel said a quarter past four. She'd been in that room for less than twenty minutes. It felt like years. It felt like a whole other life had been folded into her and sealed shut.

Nellie sat down. She picked up her needle. Her hands were trembling so badly she couldn't thread it, so she set it down again and pressed both palms flat against her thighs until the shaking eased.

*Go home,* said a voice in her head. *Walk out that door and never come back.*

She almost did. She got as far as the parlor door, her hand on the brass knob, before the arithmetic caught up with her.

Six dollars a week. That was what Holmes paid for the curtains, more than she'd make in a month at the shop on Halsted Street. Six dollars was rent on the two rooms off Milwaukee Avenue that she and Hattie shared—the cold-water rooms with the window that stuck and the landlord who came knocking every first of the month with his hat in his hand and his eyes on the door. Six dollars was coal through the winter. Six dollars was Hattie's boots that had split at the seam last November and been patched twice since, and Hattie was sixteen, and Hattie was still growing, and Hattie did not know—would never know—what her sister had just done to keep her fed.

Nellie's hand fell off the knob.

She went back to the settee. She picked up the needle again. This time her fingers held steady enough to thread it, and she bent her head over the seam and worked, one tiny stitch at a time, the way her mother had taught her back in County Cork before the fever took her, before the crossing, before the years in Chicago had worn Nellie down to this—a woman who sat in a beautiful room and sewed curtains for the man who had just used her like a thing.

*You could tell someone.*

The thought arrived whole, and she turned it over like a coin.

Tell who? The police? She'd heard enough about the Chicago police to know what a poor Irish girl's word was worth against a man with a gold watch and a carriage and a name that got printed in the *Tribune* next to the word "philanthropist." She'd heard the stories—the girls who went to the station with bruises and came out with nothing, the ones who got laughed at, the ones who got asked what they'd been doing in a man's rooms in the first place. She could hear the sergeant's voice already. *And what were you doing in his private parlor, miss? Sewing curtains, was it? Alone with him?*

Her cheeks burned. She stabbed the needle through the fabric harder than she needed to.

Tell the other girls at the shop? They'd whisper. It would follow her. She'd be the one who'd been had by Henry Holmes, and every woman in the neighborhood would look at her sideways, and Hattie would hear it eventually, because Hattie heard everything, because the world was small and cruel and it did not protect girls like them.

Tell Father Doyle? He'd tell her to pray, and then he'd tell her to keep her mouth shut, because a scandal like that didn't just ruin the man—it ruined the woman twice over. She knew that much already. She'd known it since she was twelve.

Nellie pulled the thread through and knotted it off. The seam was neat. Her hands, at least, still knew how to do this.

*You could kill him.*

The thought came softer than the others, and that was what frightened her—how soft it came, how natural, like it had been waiting in some back room of her mind for years and had only now found the door. She imagined the needle in her hand, the long one from the rack, the one that was bigger than any she'd ever used. She imagined the chair with the leather straps, and Henry Holmes in it, and his cold grey eyes going wide.

She stitched faster. Her breath came short.

*You could burn the place down. You could go to the newspapers. You could find the families of the other girls—there must be other girls—and you could stand with them, and you could—*

She stopped. She set the needle down and stared at the half-finished hem and understood, with a clarity that felt like a stone settling in her chest, that she was going to do none of it.

She was going to sit here and finish the curtains and take her six dollars and walk home to Hattie and make supper and lie awake all night staring at the ceiling, and in the morning she would come back, because the money was the money and Hattie was Hattie and there was no version of this where Nellie McBride got to be brave without someone paying for it.

The parlor door opened.

She didn't jump. She'd trained herself out of jumping in the last ten minutes, the way you train yourself out of flinching when you know the blow is coming anyway. She kept her eyes on her stitching and let her hands move and listened.

"—and I assure you, madame, the suite faces the lake. Nothing but water and sky. You'll wake to the sunrise over the water every morning of your stay."

Holmes's voice. Honeyed, measured, warm as a hand on a shoulder. Nellie's stomach turned over.

She looked up.

He was crossing the lobby beyond the parlor's open door, one arm extended toward the staircase, his black suit immaculate, his hair slicked back, his mustache trimmed to the millimeter. There was nothing on his face that belonged to the room behind the drapes. Nothing at all. He looked like a man who had spent the afternoon doing accounts.

And he was not alone.

A woman came first—tall, straight-backed, dressed in a travelling costume of grey silk that must have cost more than Nellie's entire wardrobe, a small hat perched on dark hair, a leather valise in one gloved hand. She had a face that had been beautiful for a long time and would be beautiful for a long time yet, and she carried herself like a woman who had never once been laughed at by a police sergeant in her life.

"It is very kind of you to take us at such short notice, monsieur," the woman said. Her accent curled around the words like smoke. "The hotels nearer the Fair were all engaged. I had begun to despair."

"The pleasure is entirely mine, Madame Laurent. When I heard a lady of your reputation was in Chicago, I couldn't bear the thought of you lodging anywhere but here."

Madame Laurent smiled. It was a polite smile, a *society* smile, the kind of smile that had been practiced in front of mirrors in Paris. "You are too generous."

Behind her, half a step back, stood a girl.

She was eighteen, maybe nineteen—Nellie's own age, or near to it—and she had her mother's dark hair and her mother's straight back, but none of her mother's ease. She held her hands clasped in front of her and looked around the lobby with wide, careful eyes, taking in the gas lamps and the dark wood and the velvet, the way a girl from a small town looks at a big city for the first time. She was pretty. That was the first thing Nellie noticed, and it was the last thing she wanted to notice, because she knew exactly what pretty meant in this building.

"And this must be your daughter," Holmes said, and his voice did something Nellie had never heard it do before. It dropped half a note. It softened at the edges. It sounded, for all the world, like tenderness.

"My Colette," Madame Laurent said. "She has never been to America. She has been talking of nothing but the Fair since we left Le Havre."

"Then she shall have the best view of it in all Chicago," Holmes said, and he turned to the girl and smiled, and it was a beautiful smile, Nellie thought—God help her, it was beautiful—warm and open and full of light, and she watched the girl's cheeks go pink under it, watched her drop her eyes and then lift them again, drawn back like a moth to the flame.

"Thank you, monsieur," Colette said, in careful English. "The hotel is very grand."

"It is very grand," Holmes agreed. "And it is very safe. You'll find no safer house in the city, I promise you."

Nellie's needle went into her thumb.

She didn't make a sound. She looked down at the bright bead of blood welling up—the second time today, she thought, and the first time seemed like something that had happened to a different woman—and she pressed her thumb against the underside of the fabric so the blood wouldn't show on the seam, and she held it there, and she listened.

"I'll have your bags brought up," Holmes was saying. "Suite seven. It's the corner room, madame—the one with the private balcony. You'll want for nothing."

"You are most kind."

"Not at all. I only ask one thing in return."

Nellie's head came up. She couldn't help it.

Holmes had turned, just slightly, so that his profile caught the lamplight, and he was looking at the two women with an expression of gentle, almost boyish apology. "I ask that you dine with me tonight. Both of you. I've had my cook prepare something French—I hope she's done it justice—and I should hate to eat alone."

Madame Laurent laughed. A low, pleased sound. "Monsieur Holmes, you will make us quite spoiled."

"That is precisely my intention."

He offered his arm. Madame Laurent took it. Colette fell in behind them, and as she passed the parlor doorway, her eyes caught Nellie's for just a moment—curious, friendly, the eyes of a girl who had no idea what kind of house she had just walked into.

Nellie looked back at her and said nothing.

What was there to say? *Run.* *Run now, before he takes your bags up, before he pours you wine, before he asks your mother to step out for a moment and then closes the door behind her.* She could say all of it. She could stand up right now and cross the lobby and take the girl's hand and tell her everything, everything, and maybe—

And then what? Holmes would smile his beautiful smile and call her a hysteric. Madame Laurent would look at her the way a duchess looks at a scullery maid. The girl would be embarrassed for her. And Nellie would lose her six dollars, and there would be no coal in November, and Hattie would look at her with those big brown eyes and ask why they were eating bread and dripping again, and Nellie would have to lie, and the lie would be worse than the truth.

She watched the three of them climb the staircase. Holmes's hand rested on Madame Laurent's arm. Colette's skirt whispered against the risers. The gas lamps hissed. The clock on the mantel ticked.

Nellie looked down at her thumb. The blood had stopped. She wiped it on the underside of the curtain hem, where no one would ever see it, and she picked up her needle and went back to work.

She finished the seam. She finished the hem. She folded the curtain along its creases, the way she'd been taught, and she set it on the settee and smoothed it flat with both hands, and only then did she let herself look at the staircase again.

Empty. Quiet. Just a curve of dark wood rising into the shadow of the second floor.

Somewhere up there, a girl was unpacking her trunk and hanging up her dresses and looking out a window at the lake, and thinking what a wonderful adventure this was.

Nellie gathered up her sewing kit. She coiled the thread and tucked the needle into its felt case and put the thimble back on her thumb, where it belonged. Then she walked out the front door of the hotel, past the doorman, into the grey Chicago afternoon, and she did not look back, and she did not breathe properly again until she was three blocks away, and even then her breath came shallow, like she was saving it for something.

The wind off the lake smelled of iron and cold water. She turned her face into it and let it sting her eyes.

Tomorrow she would come back. She would take her six dollars and she would smile at Mrs. Halloran at the shop and she would walk home and she would kiss Hattie's forehead and she would say nothing, nothing, nothing at all.

But tonight—tonight, in the dark of their two cold rooms, with Hattie asleep in the next bed and the streetlamp throwing its long yellow arm across the ceiling—Nellie McBride would lie awake and count the ways a girl could kill a man, and she would not be able to stop.