Chapter 4

I held my breath.

The Master had said it to me once.

“The soul of the one whose body is taken does not die, but it cannot break free. Force the break, and the soul shatters and the person dies.”

Maxine wasn't dead yet.

Her soul had been woven, alive, into her own flesh.

For three years, she had been awake the whole time.

Watching someone else take her body, sleep with her husband, bear her children.

Three whole years.

I clenched the bone-listening thread until it cut into the pads of my fingers.

That voice went on.

Through the thread came the dry rasp of cloth on cloth.

Eleanor seemed to have walked to the mirror.

“Little Maxie, struggling again?”

There was a sick pleasure in her voice.

“Three years, and you still won't give up?”

A fingernail scraped down the mirror's surface, carried through the bone thread.

It stabbed at my eardrum.

“Look at yourself now.”

“Woven into your own flesh. Don't you look just like a silkworm stitched dead inside its cocoon?”

She laughed once.

“When the Master sealed me in that coffin for eighteen years, this was exactly how it felt.”

“You can see, you can hear.”

“You just can't move.”

“Eighteen years.”

“You've only borne three, and already you can't take it?”

As a child Maxine was afraid of the dark. At night she used to knock three times through the wall.

I'd knock back twice, to say: Big Sister's here.

But these three years, trapped in her own flesh, how many times had she knocked with no one to answer.

Trapped inside her own body, listening to this monster make a game of her suffering.

“Don't cry.”

Eleanor's voice went soft all at once, the way you'd soothe something that belonged to you.

“Once your big sister finishes the last few stitches for me, I won't need this skin of yours for a cocoon anymore.”

“Then you can go wherever you like.”

She paused.

“Oh. No.”

“By then you'll have dissolved away for good.”

“Three months left, at most.”

Three months.

If the silk-shroud crossing rite couldn't be undone, in three months Maxine's soul would scatter completely.

Not even a chance at rebirth.

I closed my eyes.

All I could see was Maxine at ten, tugging at my sleeve and calling me Big Sister.

“That reminds me.”

Eleanor's voice suddenly rose, barely bothering to hide the mockery now.

“Your big sister touched my wrist three times today.”

“What was that supposed to mean?”

My fingers tightened a fraction.

The other end of the thread went quiet for a few seconds.

Then Eleanor gave a low laugh.

The sound ran along the bone thread and bored straight into my ear.

“Looks like she's already started to suspect.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“This bone needle, I've waited three years for it.”

“She can't run.”

Down the bone thread came three clear knocks.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

The same rhythm, exactly, as when I'd touched her wrist that afternoon.

The black thread trembled faintly and delivered her words into my ear.

“Big Sister.”

“This sound familiar?”

I let go all at once.

The bone thread snapped taut in the air, then went slack and drooped.

She had met my probe.

She'd seen through the bone-listening thread I'd laid down long before this, too.

Everything she'd just said hadn't been for Maxine alone.

She'd said it on purpose, for me to hear.

I thought I was investigating her in secret.

In truth, from the moment I stepped into the Dickerson house, I'd walked into the cage she'd made ready for me.

I sat in the dark, looking at the bone-listening thread wound around my wrist.

Run?

Run now, and I could still live.

I found the bone needle inside my sleeve.

But the moment I left, Maxine would be dead for real.

Slowly, I wound the bone-listening thread back into its wooden box.

Three knocks came at the door.

In Maxine's voice, Eleanor spoke softly.

“Big Sister.”

“Heard enough?”