I take another step, and the board beneath my foot creaks.
They stop speaking.
Madam Karina rounds the corner and spots me. She grabs my arm and drags me into the foyer. "What are you doing? Spying on us? That's very rude." Her breath smells the way it did the night she pushed me into Poppet. "Tell me what you heard."
"I didn't hear anything," I reply.
Candy sighs. "I'm going to bed. He's not coming back."
Madam Karina swings around and points at Candy. "Don't take another step. You tell me where he is."
"I already told you what I know." Candy throws up her arms. "He left a few minutes after the party started."
"What direction did he go?" the madam presses, growing hysterical.
She's asking about Mr. Hodge, I'm sure. I remember how upset she was when he was on his phone, his attention stolen from her.
Candy appears exhausted, like she's been going in circles with Madam Karina far too long. The white flower on her blouse hangs limply, and her clothing is disheveled. She was one of the few Carnations who was civil toward me, so I decide to help her out.
"Maybe we could try walking down the road to see if he got a flat or something," I say to Madam Karina. "Candy, you can go back to the entertainment room. I'll go with her."
"Thank God," Candy mumbles, attempting to bypass the madam. But the madam has other plans. She grabs Candy by the back of the neck and jerks the girl so she faces her.
"Don't you walk away from me," Madam Karina snaps, "You ungrateful brat."
Candy's face opens with surprise. "Madam Karina, I'm sorry. I just thought … "
"You thought what? That you could watch Mr. Hodge leaving to see her and not say anything? Is that it?"
"Madam Karina, I can help." My words are gentle even as my heart shotguns. "Let me take you up to your room." I inch toward Candy so that I'm standing between the two, using my hundred-pound frame as a laughable barrier.
The madam cackles. "Oh, here's the protector, Candy. Come to save you and anyone else I might upset."
"It's not like that," I whisper.
It's exactly like that, Wilson says.
Candy hesitates for several beats and then dashes toward the Carnations' entertainment room. Madam Karina turns to watch Candy flee, and releases a long sigh.
"Did you want to walk down the road and see-?"
Madam Karina wheels around and slaps me across the face using every ounce of her shrunken frame. I'm knocked to the ground and before I can think, she lunges at me, her knees pinned on either side of my chest. She wraps her hands around my throat and squeezes. As my breathing is cut off and the world grows fuzzy and dim, I fumble at her fingers. Head pounding. Mouth gaping. Legs kicking. Wilson roaring.
The madam releases her hold quickly enough, but I still suck in every bit of oxygen the room holds and fight to sit up. Madam Karina shoves me backward and leans her old Hollywood face down until our lips are an inch apart. "My dear child, I don't think you understand your place in this house, so allow me to clarify. You are not my partner. You are not the girls' ambassador. Perhaps one day, you will become Top Girl and sit at my right hand and come to judge the quick and the dead."
She kisses me once, swift, on the mouth as I gasp. "Until then, you are my property." She rises to her feet and steps backward, allowing me room to rise, though I don't. I can't. "Always and forever, Domino Ray, you are mine to have and to hold."
Madam Karina turns and quits the room in a flurry of silk fabrics and graying tendrils unraveling from her bun.
I lay on the ground, my hands protective around my aching throat, my lip quivering because, as much as I saw the warning signs, I'd hoped Madam Karina wouldn't hurt me. Not when it came down to it. Not even after Angie warned me. Not when the madam seemed to think of me as her found pet-the girl who convinced her to try again.
But she did hurt me.
She is my mother incarnate. Whispering lullabies in my ear and then digging in the knife once my guard has fallen away. She even wants the same things from me that my mother did. That's what Wilson meant when he said we shouldn't be here.
All at once, my vines of suspicion for this place, for this woman, weave into a thorny beanstalk springing toward the sky. I have to get out. I have to leave as soon as possible, and I have to get Poppet out, too. I don't know what's happened between Madam Karina and Mr. Hodge, but it's pushed a volatile woman over the edge. And I won't be here when she lands at the bottom of that quarry, bloodied and vengeful.