My Marionette Lover novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Grey Thread

"Don't talk here," Imogen said, very low. "Come with me."

She set her champagne on a windowsill and walked out the side door into the dark.

I followed her.

I don't know why, except that I had seen her wrist and the pain in her smile.

We crossed the lawn and went down the path to the lake.

The boathouse stood at the end of a wooden dock, shut up for the autumn, with the racing shells stacked inside on long racks.

Imogen unlocked it with a key from her clutch.

Inside it smelled of wet wood and varnish.

"She can't hear us here," Imogen said.

"Her threads grow thin past a quarter of a mile."

"At the lake, hers feels like a rubber band that's gone slack."

"You can see them," I said. "The threads."

"Only on myself." She held up her wrist. "I think I can see it because it's mine."

The grey thread ran from her pulse across the floor and out of the door.

It was thin, thinner than Arlen's.

Even so, I saw it twitch against her skin.

"How long?"

"Since I was twelve."

"My mother was in the hospital with a bad heart."

"The bills were more than we owned."

Imogen sat down on an upturned rowing seat.

Her perfect posture folded a little.

"Augusta Redfern came to the hospital."

"She paid it all."

"What did she want?"

"Nothing."

"For a year."

"Then one afternoon she gave me a doll to hold and said it was a present, and I felt something close around my wrist."

"A marionette."

"A small one, with my face." Imogen smiled thinly. "I thought I was dreaming."

She told me the rest of it with her hands in her lap.

At thirteen she'd started piano because Augusta liked music.

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