Chapter 1 - The Girl With Camila's Face
The key turned before Sofia could stop her.
"Don't," Sofia said.
Too late.
The young woman standing in the north hallway had already pushed the small brass key into the lock of the blue door, the one nobody in the Alvarez mansion had opened in twenty years.
Sofia's heart slammed against her ribs.
The girl looked impossibly like Camila: the same narrow chin, dark eyes, crooked smile, and white streak above her left temple.
Camila had vanished at nineteen.
This girl looked twenty.
"Who are you?" Sofia whispered.
"Mara Bennett." The girl kept one hand on the key. "My grandmother told me to come here after she died. She said someone would recognize me."
"Your grandmother's name?"
Mara hesitated. "Teresa Bennett."
Sofia nearly dropped the glass in her hand.
Teresa had been the mansion's housekeeper the year Camila disappeared.
Behind them, footsteps approached fast.
Sofia's uncle Rafael appeared at the end of the hallway. He was seventy now, but his voice still had the same hard edge she remembered from childhood.
"Step away from that door."
Mara turned.
Rafael saw her face.
For one second, every bit of color disappeared from his.
Then he recovered.
"You need to leave," he said.
Mara stared at him. "You know who I look like."
"I know nothing about you."
The lock clicked.
The blue door opened two inches.
Cold, stale air slipped into the hallway.
And from somewhere inside the dark room came the soft metallic chime of a music box.
Sofia froze.
Camila had owned one exactly like it.
Rafael lunged for the door.
Mara stepped between him and the opening.
"My grandmother said if anyone tried to stop me," she said quietly, "I should ask what happened here on October seventeenth, 2006."
Rafael stopped moving.
May you like
Sofia had never seen fear on his face before.
Now she did.
