Ilara Grisamber needed one fresh visitor to fill the empty bed in her dollhouse, and tonight she had none. She stood outside her puppet workshop and counted the crowd. Voodoo dolls swung on their strings behind her, wearing tiny torn dresses she had stitched herself. Her painted face cracked into a smile. A woman in a red coat drifted close, curious, near enough to touch. Then a tall shape stepped between them. Vane Nex bent low over the woman's wrist and turned it in the light, admiring the bones beneath her skin. "Such lovely architecture, dear visitor," he murmured. "Come. Let me show you where music lives." The woman followed him toward the tent with black and white stripes. The empty bed in Ilara's dollhouse stayed empty. It was the third time this week. Vane took every guest before Ilara could speak a word. She dug her long nails into her palm and followed him down into the underground hall. "You steal what is mine," she said. Her voice scratched like a nail on glass. Vane turned. His red eyes found her painted face. "Mine, yours," he said. "Bones don't belong to anyone but the grave, sweet keeper. And you're not a grave. You're a dollhouse." "Then stop feeding it your leftovers." He laughed, low and warm. "You watch me. Every night, in the dark, at the edge of my crowd. I feel your eyes like cold fingers on my spine." He stepped closer. "I like it." Ilara meant to deny it. Instead she lifted one hand and pressed her fingertips against her own eye, digging until it watered and reddened. She held his gaze the whole time. Let him see the pain. Let him see she chose it. Vane went still. He caught her wrist, gentle, and drew her hand from her face. "You hurt yourself so I'll look," he said. "How wonderfully sick." "You talk too much," she said. But she did not pull away. They stood close under the striped canvas. Her anger had not cooled. It had turned into something worse. She wanted to keep arguing with him. She wanted him behind her walls, not as a doll, but as company. The realization landed like a stone in water. "I came to take my visitor back," she said. "You came for me," Vane answered. "Admit it, and I'll give you the woman." Ilara looked at the empty tent. The woman in the red coat was already gone, wandered off while they fought. The prize she'd chased all week meant nothing now. She had stopped wanting it. "Keep her," Ilara said. "I've found something better to catch." She walked back up to her workshop alone. But her dollhouse felt different now. She no longer wanted to fill it with strangers. She wanted to fill it with him. And a man who collects bones is not easy prey.

Ilara wanted Vane behind her walls. So she left them. Night after night she walked the carnival, trailing him through the crowd, letting him feel her stare. He turned it into a game. Now he collected bones near her workshop and followed her every step. But a game bores fast. If she gave him nothing sweeter than a chase, he would drift back to his skulls and forget her. Her step-sister found her first. Scarlett leaned against the crooked house with the mismatched roof, her red hair loose, her nails catching the lamplight. "Look at you, darling," Scarlett said. "My little doll, out among the living. You never leave your dollhouse... yet here you wander, chasing a man who trades in dead things." She smiled with too many teeth. "He collects what's already broken. What could you offer that a corpse can't?" The question stayed with Ilara. Vane wanted bones. She could not be a bone. But she could give him something no corpse could — a living thing that chose the cage. That night she went to his house of bones. Skulls lined the walls. Finger bones hung on strings like her voodoo dolls hung in her window. She stepped inside. Then she pulled the door shut, turned the lock from within, and dropped the key down her dress. When Vane came home, he found her waiting. She had locked them both inside his own collection. He stopped in the doorway. His red eyes moved over her, then over the bolted lock. "You've caged yourself in my bones, sweet keeper," he said. His voice stayed soft, but it had changed. "Why?" "You wanted a chase," Ilara said. "Chases end. So I ended it." She lifted the key from her dress and set it on his table, beside a jar of teeth. "Now you have questions. I have all night. Ask." Vane crossed the room slowly. He picked up the key and closed his fingers over it. "My little doll walks out of her house. She hunts me through the dark. She locks herself in my grave." He crouched to meet her painted eyes. "You give me a warm thing that stays. No bone does that." "Then keep me," she said. "Or let me keep you." He laughed, low and warm. He set the key in her palm and folded her long nails over it. "You keep it," he said. "A door that only you can open. That's the sweetest bone I've ever held." He stayed. That was the change. Vane no longer chased dead things through the crowd. Now he sat with her in the dark, and he wanted more of her. But Ilara had promised him something no corpse could give — a living thing that stays. And she was only one. His new hunger was already larger than her hands could hold.