Jane pressed her ear to the door, searching for any signs of life. Silence greeted her, and Jane said silent thanks that Lynne hadn’t stayed around to listen to the show. She opened the door as carefully as she could, wincing at the tiny creak. In the quiet, and in her fear, the click sounded almost like a scream. But there was no hint of voices or footsteps, so she had to assume that most of the noise was just a product of her frayed nerves.

Jane made Charles walk ahead of her to give her as much room as possible to escape if they ran into someone. Fortunately, they made it to her room without incident. Once the door clicked shut behind them, she went straight for the closet, feeling more and more urgent every second. Her luck couldn’t hold out forever, and her room only had one exit; she had to hurry or she could get cornered. She whipped her navy Burberry trench over her tired-looking wedding dress and scooped up the compact little flight bag she had packed for her “honeymoon.” She glanced at Charles, who was standing fixedly in front of her bathroom mirror, apparently entranced by her moisturizer.

She thought about just sneaking out of the room, but her conscience got the best of her. “Charles,” she whispered, and his head swiveled around. “You remember what I said, about picking something as a present? You can take anything you want, and then go back to your room, okay? Because your mom might be angry if she sees you here.” She dug quickly through his mind for illustrative examples, showing him Lynne in a variety of unflattering snits.

He ambled over and, with a hopeful expression, held up a little stuffed dog a MoMA vendor had sent her. Jane nodded, her heart panging as he hugged it to his chest.

“Okay, fine. Now I’m going out and then you count to ten—do you understand? You count to ten and then come out and go back to your room.” She caught a glimpse of his mind’s interpretation of her instructions, which involved her tied to his bed again in just a thong. She began to rifle through his thoughts for something a little closer to her plan, but her focus was abruptly interrupted when he slapped her across the face. She reeled back. He stared at her with a reasonably pleasant expression on his slack face, all things considered, and she reminded herself that he wasn’t just misunderstood—he was also nuts. “Ten,” she reminded him firmly, rubbing her stinging cheek, and slid silently from the room.

The hallways remained mercifully deserted, but it felt like it took her a month to reach the staircase. She chose the service entrance rather than the main door, in case Gunther was awake at his post for once, but didn’t really breathe until she was on the street.

It was surreal: bright, peaceful, normal, and completely separate from the lunatic world just a few stories above it. The trees in the median, leaves just beginning to bud, waved gently in the breeze. I’m free, she thought, trying to make the news sink into her still-terrified brain. Her hands were shaking and she clenched them, trying to steady her heart. I can go anywhere I want now, and they’ll never—

“Jane,” a molten-gold voice murmured behind her, and she let out a tiny scream.

Malcolm.

She spun around, but the sidewalk was empty.

“Jane,” Malcolm’s unmistakable voice said again, and she whipped her head back and forth, trying to find him.

Just get in a cab and get the hell away! her brain shouted, but something was wrong. His voice sounded wrong. Her body hovered halfway between the stairs and the curb, between danger and freedom, waiting for her mind to click to a decision.

“I have to get to Jane,” Malcolm whispered, and she finally understood: she wasn’t hearing his voice. She was hearing his mind.

It doesn’t matter. Just get in a damn cab! But she hesitated again, glancing at the main door a few yards away. No one was coming yet, and she’d see them first if they did, wouldn’t she?

It’d be useful to know as much as I can before I go, she told the skeptical part of her brain, but the truth was that Malcolm’s “voice” sounded choked and desperate, and she just wanted to . . . check. On your grandmother’s murderer, the skeptical part reminded her, but she shushed it. As true as that statement was, so was the desperation and love she felt in his thoughts. She stood frozen, indecisive, then flattened herself against the gray stone of the mansion, pushing very quietly into Malcolm’s mind.

He was somewhere dark with stone walls—a basement? It was hard to get a clear picture of his surroundings through his eyes, though, because he had surrounded himself with mental images of Jane. Everywhere she looked, there she was, laughing, blushing, brushing on lip gloss, eating, showering, working. They were meeting, flirting, arguing, making love, and getting married, but fear infiltrated every image. She followed the thread of fear, and there she was again: bloodied, broken, tortured, and dead in hundreds of painful-looking ways. In most of the images, Lynne was there, gloating, and something nagged at Malcolm’s memory wherever his mother appeared. Jane couldn’t quite catch it the first few times that it flickered by, but the repetition felt significant.

She tapped her foot impatiently while, in the newest vision, Lynne snapped her neck and she fell to the ground. She waited for the flicker to pass by again, and this time she saw it coming. I chose wrong, he was thinking and, carefully so as not to alert him to her presence, she drifted toward that thought.

“No other member of this family requires so much handling, Malcolm. Can’t you try a little harder to remember your loyalties?”

“I don’t see why we can’t just—”

“Malcolm,” Lynne snapped, twirling a gleaming black pen between her long fingers. “You’re simply not qualified to make this sort of decision.”

“It’s murder,” he said, but his voice wavered, lacking conviction.

“It is,” she snarled softly, dropping the pen. “But do you remember what happened the last time you had the slightest bit of responsibility for our family’s welfare?” Malcolm flinched, and his mother leaned toward him, dark eyes glowing cruelly. “Don’t you realize that you are the reason why it has come to this at all? We only need this girl because you have never wanted to be responsible. So I’m making it easy for you: no hard choices, no moral dilemmas. All you have to do is exactly what you’re told. Enough of that and maybe you’ll come close to making up for what you did to my darling girl.”

Malcolm recoiled as if he’d been slapped, but Lynne’s hands had risen to cover her face, and her shoulders shuddered with what looked like sobs. He crossed the distance between them in two long steps and knelt by her feet, tears standing in his own eyes.

Then memories of Annette crashed in on him and Jane both: a little girl with a round face and a light-brown bob, in a pink bathing suit, shoveling sand into a bucket while the grown-ups hid from the sun’s glare in their shady house. Malcolm, thin at twelve but already growing tall, had wandered off down the beach, drawn by the sight of older boys playing soccer. Then there were frantic calls behind him that quickly became desperate wails, and he saw that the bucket and shovel were still on the sand, purposeless and ownerless.

“You’re right,” Malcolm whispered against Lynne’s trembling knees. “I’m sorry, Mom. Of course I will. I’ll do whatever I have to. Just don’t cry. I’ll get the girl here. I’ll make this right.”

Jane threw herself violently away from the memory, revulsion making her clumsy. Everything spun around her as Malcolm became aware of the intruder in his thoughts.

Jane! his mind shouted. Jane, get the hell away from this place!

Then, with a snap, he expelled her from his mind. She gasped and fell into her own body again. The everyday New York sounds of cars revving, pedestrians laughing, and cell phones ringing swooped in on her at full volume. Jane kicked the stone wall in frustration, leaving a gray smudge on the point of her ivory shoe. She could never forgive Malcolm for what he’d done, but now she had to admit that she couldn’t hate him, either. His family had twisted him until he broke. It was Lynne who had made him what he was . . . but that could also make him an asset to Jane. No one knew Lynne better—strengths, weaknesses, everything—than the son who had disappointed her so thoroughly.

Jane tapped in the code to the service door, feeling a reckless rage boil up slowly but steadily. It was time to storm the freaking castle.