I tried to see who it was, but everything went black.
I came to in a place that smelled like disinfectant and rust—a shabby clinic, fluorescent light buzzing above me, and Ernest sitting in the chair beside me.
"Agatha," he said, voice dripping with mockery, "I saved you again."
"So why are you always so ungrateful?"
I asked weakly, "How have I been ungrateful?"
He didn't answer.
He turned to the clinic doctor instead. "Finished? If the bleeding's stopped, we're leaving."
The doctor hesitated. "The bleeding has stopped for now, but..."
Ernest didn't wait for him to finish. He grabbed my arm and hauled me off the bed.
I stumbled, and he shoved me into the car.
"Where are we going?" I managed.
He didn't answer.
Everything blurred, swaying and dark, until the car stopped.
I saw Phoenix Terrace outside the window.
I froze. Phoenix Terrace?
Wasn't this where my birth parents were holding the banquet?
Where they were going to introduce me to high society?
Why had Ernest brought me here? Was he going to meet my parents?
Before I could think it through, he dragged me out of the car.
"Maggie, I brought Agatha." He walked into a private suite.
Something inside me went cold.