“I need your help,” he said. Juliet sat up, still dragging her brain out of sleep. Rowan looked terrible. His eyes were sunken and his cheeks were tinged with green. “We need to wrap her before your mother comes downstairs,” he said.
Juliet followed him back to Lily’s body and understood. The patchwork of new skin was livid and swollen. Lily looked like some hellish ghoul straight out of a slasher movie. They went to work wrapping Lily up mummy-style before Samantha could see her like that. While they worked, Juliet heard the phone ring and heard her mother answer the call upstairs. Samantha’s tone became increasingly agitated as the conversation dragged on. A few moments later, she joined them in the living room as Rowan hurriedly passed at least one layer of gauze over Lily’s injuries.
“That was your father,” Samantha said. She was pacing and wringing her hands. “We have to tell him.”
“Tell him what?” Juliet asked carefully.
“About your sister. That she’s back. The nosy FBI agent won’t leave him alone. She really thinks your father might be involved with Lily’s disappearance.”
“Mom, we can’t,” Juliet replied incredulously. She gestured to the living room. There were basins of bloody water and buckets of discarded skin on the floor. “We can’t let anyone see this.”
“He’s worried about her, Juliet, and I feel awful letting him think she’s still missing. Maybe dead.” Samantha gave her daughter one of those disturbingly sane looks. “You don’t know what it is to be a parent. He loves you girls, even though he’s not the fathering type.”
Juliet shot Rowan a look, and saw that he was as against involving their father as she was.
“That’s understandable, Samantha,” Rowan said equitably. “But right now our main concern has to be Lily, not James. If he knows she’s alive he’ll want to see her and she’s too weak to be exposed to another person and risk infection.”
Juliet shook herself and stifled her question. No one had told Rowan her father’s first name, and she already knew that if she asked him, Rowan would say that he knew James from this parallel world he claimed to come from.
“You’re right, Rowan. Of course you’re right,” Samantha said. She reached out and put her hand on Rowan’s shoulder, taking comfort. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
The phone rang again. “That’s probably that FBI agent,” Samantha said. The hassled look on her face started to cloud with confusion as she went to answer it. She was losing it.
“Mom can’t handle this,” Juliet said under her breath.
“I know,” Rowan replied. He looked just as worried about Samantha as Juliet was. There was true concern on his face, and it irritated Juliet.
“Who are you, really?” she asked, her chin tilted down and her eyes narrowed in distrust.
Rowan sighed. “I don’t blame you for not believing me.” He smiled suddenly, as if remembering something bittersweet. “When I first saw Lily I couldn’t believe it either, and she has a double in my world, another version of her named Lillian. I’ve known Lillian my whole life, and I could sense that Lily wasn’t her, but I just couldn’t accept it. Not for a long time. So I don’t blame you for not believing me. Actually I consider myself lucky that you’re helping me instead of turning me over to your city guards.”
He sounded so genuine. Juliet wanted to believe him, but how could she? Samantha believed him without question, but Samantha’s illness was tailor-made to believe in parallel worlds. In fact, Samantha seemed to live in a parallel world most of the time.
“I’m trying to understand all this in a rational way,” Juliet said, spreading her arms wide to include the silver knives, the salt and vinegar, and the strange symbols Rowan had painted on a square of black silk. “I’ve seen magic work, and I’m trying to make sense of it, but I can’t shake the feeling that you’re involved. Rowan—were you the one who burned my sister?”