I release the breath I was holding.

"One down," Ash says, coming up beside me. "A few dozen more to go."

Methodically, Ash and I begin to open all the doors. Garnet watches us with a bemused expression. We've opened seven empty chambers before Ash says quietly, "Violet."

I move to his side and follow his gaze to the black bag filling the long rectangular space. Together, we pull out the metal sheet it's resting on. Ash reaches to unzip the bag.

"No," I say. "I'll do it."

Very gently, I pull down the zipper, revealing a pale face, stony in death. My breath catches in my throat.

"That's not Raven," Ash says.

I shake my head, tears filling my eyes.

"Did you know her?"

"No," I say. "But I met her once."

It's the girl from Dahlia's funeral, the one who was looking for her sister. I put my hand on her icy forehead. She looks so young.

I am overwhelmed by the unfairness of this whole situation. What makes me special? Why am I worth saving and not this girl, or the lioness, or Dahlia? I feel a surge of anger toward Lucien for forcing me to acknowledge this terrible truth but not giving me a way to do anything about it.

You saved Raven, a voice whispers in the back of my mind.

Not yet, I think. And it's not enough.

I zip the bag up and return the girl whose name I will never know back to her metal tomb.

"Let's keep looking," I say to Ash.

We find four more girls, none of whom I recognize.

"What if she didn't take it?" I say. Panic begins to creep up the back of my throat.

"She did," Ash reassures me, but his words are meaningless and I can tell he knows it. There is no way to know whether Raven understood me or not.

"They probably haven't found her yet," Garnet says. He's leaning against the wall casually, hands in his pockets, as if he'd hung out in morgues on a daily basis.

"Why are you still here?" Ash asks.

Garnet shrugs. "I want to see what happens when Lucien finds out you're here." Then he smirks. "Besides, this is the most fun I've had in a long time. Being royal is so boring. Any chance I get to stick it to my mother, I take. Stealing her surrogate right out from under her nose? From her own house? Too good to pass up."

"Why do you hate her so much?" I ask.

"Um, gee, Violet, you lived with her for two months," Garnet says. "How do you feel about her?"

He does have a point.

"Now multiply that by your entire life." Garnet scratches the back of his neck. "It's a miracle that I'm so well adjusted."

The echoing boom of a heavy iron door closing freezes us all in place.

"The light!" Ash hisses. Garnet's hand darts to the wall and we're engulfed in darkness. For several seconds, there's nothing but silence. Then the unmistakable sounds of feet and voices float down the hall.

"We have to hide," Garnet says.

"Where?" I ask. "I can't see anything."

There's a click off to my left, and Garnet's flashlight flickers on. The beam of light falls on Ash. He's crouched by the one of the compartments, the lowest one in the far left-hand corner. The door is open and his eyes meet mine.

"No," I whisper.

"Do you have a better idea?" Garnet says, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward Ash, keeping the flashlight trained down. I crouch by the black square hole where so many dead surrogates have been stored, my stomach churning with something stronger than disgust and sharper than fear. The wrongness of hiding in here makes my limbs numb and clumsy.

"We don't have a choice," Ash says. I open the door next to his compartment and force my feet to move, my body to bend and shift and slide until I am lying facedown on the cold metal slab. The voices are so close I can almost make out individual words, along with a faint squeaking sound. The flashlight goes out. Garnet's door closes, then Ash's.

I take a deep breath and shut myself inside.

Four.

THE DARKNESS INSIDE THIS METAL TOMB IS FAR, FAR worse than the blackness of Garnet's car trunk.

I press my forehead against the cold steel and try to pretend I'm somewhere else, or that Ash is with me, or that this is all a dream and I'm about to wake up back in the Marsh.

The light in the room switches on.

Pale yellow leaks into my hiding place. There is no handle on the inside of the door, so I've left it cracked the tiniest bit. The voices of two men are muffled.

". . . didn't want anyone noticing, I suppose."

"Don't see why anyone would care. How many surrogates has she gone through over the years? Twenty?"

"Not your place to count, lad. We do as we're told." The first voice is definitely older and has a rough, grizzled quality. "They say House of the Stone, pickup at midnight, and that's what we do."

House of the Stone! They have Raven! I nearly cry with relief.

There's the strange squeaking noise again, then a door creaks open. I hear the wrinkling of plastic being manipulated.

"She's not very heavy, is she?" the second voice says.

"Ain't none of them is heavy, lad. You'll see."

Plastic scrapes and shifts over metal. The door closes.

"Now," the first voice says gruffly, "it's back to bed and let's hope there's no more calls tonight."

Their shoes make tiny sticking sounds as they leave. The light switches off.

I keep still for as long as I can, hardly daring to breathe, waiting to see whether they come back. Finally, I can't take it anymore. My fingernails scrape the door, pushing it open. I wriggle out of the compartment as fast as I can and tumble onto the polished floor, as Ash and Garnet open their own doors. I scramble to my feet and push up the arms of the oversize Regimental coat, running my palms along the wall until I find the light switch.

The light is painfully bright after so much darkness. Ash's face is drained of color, and he climbs to his feet slowly. Garnet stays on the floor, leaning against the cabinets and smoothing back his blond hair, looking more rattled than I've ever seen him.

"She's here," I say to Ash.

"I know," he replies.

A smile breaks across my face, and I begin opening doors with a single-minded ferocity, pushing Garnet out of the way until I find one that was empty before.

I yank on the metal sheeting and Raven's body slides out, hidden underneath a thick layer of black plastic. Ash and Garnet join me as I pull the zipper down and open the bag.

Raven's face is as cold and lifeless as all the other girls' in this place, and for one paralyzing moment, I fear she's actually dead. Her beautiful caramel skin is waxy, her once-glossy black hair lank and tangled. She is naked. I quickly shrug out of the Regimental coat and throw it over her body, but not before seeing how painfully, sickeningly thin she is-every rib is visible, and her hip bones jut out in sharp points on either side of the tiny bump of her belly.

I press my hand against her cheek. Her skin is like ice.

"Raven," I say, my voice trembling. I watch for a flutter of her eyelashes, or a parting of her lips, but there's nothing. My best friend is deathly still.

"Raven, it's me," I say. "It's Violet." It hurts to swallow. "Please wake up. I've saved you. Please come back to me."

The silence that follows is crushing. Pieces of me break under the weight of it.

"Maybe she's really-" Garnet begins, but I whirl around and slam my hands against his chest, sending him stumbling backward.

"She is not dead!" I hiss. I turn back to Raven and shake her. Her head lolls on the metal slab. "Wake up, Raven! Come on, you took the serum, I know you did, so please, WAKE UP!"

I slap her hard across the face.

But nothing happens.

I feel Ash's hand on my shoulder. "Violet, I'm so sorry."

I shrug his hand away. I don't want anyone's pity right now. "She-"

Suddenly, Raven's eyes fly open. Her body arches, her eyeballs bugging out of her head, then she jerks onto her side and vomits on the floor. Ash and Garnet jump back as Raven's body convulses, coughing and retching, but I collapse on top of her, my forehead falling onto her shoulder, one hand smoothing her hair, blissfully grateful to feel her breathing and moving and alive. She rolls onto her back, panting. Her eyes wheel in her head until they find me.

"Violet?" she croaks. Tears stream down my cheeks, but I don't bother to wipe them away.

"I'm here," I say. "You're safe now."

Her gaze slips to the ceiling. "I saw my mother," she says. "She was brushing my hair. Then they took all her skin away."

"What?" I say. "Your mother is alive and in the Marsh."

"They took her skin away," she says again. "They showed me her bones."

Her eyes become unfocused and her body relaxes. She goes very still.

"Raven?" I whisper. I brush my fingertips across her cheek. She's breathing, but it's like a light has been switched off inside her.

"What did they do to her?" Ash asks in a hushed voice.

"I-I don't know." I run my hands through Raven's hair and feel a tiny scar, maybe half an inch long, on her scalp. Then I feel another. And another.

"Well," Garnet says, clapping his hands together, "this has been a great night, really one for the record books, and as much as I'd love to stay and watch Lucien freak out about all this, I think it's time for me to be getting back."

"Of course it is," Ash mutters.

"Hey, I saved your life, what else do you want from me?" Garnet snaps.

"Absolutely nothing," Ash says.

"Right," Garnet says. "Good luck with all the escaping and whatnot."

"Thank you," I say.

"Sure." Garnet's hand is on the doorknob when Raven sits up. The move is so unexpected and abrupt that I'm barely able to keep the jacket from falling off her shoulders.

"You're a coward," she says, her dark eyes on Garnet. There is a haziness in her gaze, as if she were focusing on two things at once.

We all stare at her in shocked silence.

"Raven?" I say tentatively.

"He's a coward," she says. "He breaks all the wrong rules. The easy ones. He's afraid." Then her face goes slack, her eyes returning to normal. "I'm tired. It's not time for the doctor yet."

She lies back down on the slab and starts muttering something to herself. I can't understand what she's saying, but I hear her name once or twice.

Garnet watches her for a second, then shakes his head. "Whatever. She's your problem."

With a halfhearted wave, he walks out the door. I put my hand on Raven's forehead, but she's gone back to that empty place, staring at the ceiling.

"What now?" Ash says.

"Now we wait for Lucien," I reply. "Lucien will come."

HOURS PASS.

Or, at least, it feels like hours. There's no way to tell time in this room. We turned the lights off to be safe. Ash and I sit on the floor against the wall, huddled together to keep warm. Raven hasn't moved or spoken since Garnet left.