Chapter 1

I woke up to the smell of gin and cheap perfume. The world was a blurry, swaying mess, just like the inside of my head. A woman with smudged mascara and frantic eyes was shaking my shoulder.

"Clara, baby, listen to me."

Her voice was raspy. I recognized her from the faded photographs in the history books I used to study. A Vaudeville dancer, long past her prime. My mother.

"He's a good man, a powerful man," she slurred, her words thick with laudanum. "Artie Gallo. He'll take care of you."

I tried to sit up, but the room tilted. We were in a fancy car, the leather seats cold against my bare arms. Outside, the city was a blur of brick and steel, smokestacks coughing gray clouds into the sky. This wasn't my world. This was 1920s Chicago, or a city just like it.

My last memory was of my own time, the 21st century. I was in an archive, carefully handling a brittle reel of nitrate film. The smell of dust and celluloid. Then, a sharp pain in my chest, and blackness.

Now, this. I was in someone else's body, living someone else's nightmare.

"He gave me this," my mother said, her voice filled with a childish glee. She held up a small, elegant cloche hat. It was beautiful, a deep sapphire blue, the kind a French designer would craft. "For you, of course. For your future."

She didn't get it for me. She sold me for it.

The car stopped in front of a massive stone mansion. A man who looked like he was carved from granite opened my door. Arthur "Artie" Gallo. His eyes were small and hard, like pebbles. He was old, his face a roadmap of cruelties.

He didn't look at me. He looked at my mother. "The deal is done. Get out."

My mother scrambled out of the car, clutching her new hat like a holy relic. She didn't look back.

Artie finally turned his gaze on me. It was heavy, possessive. "You're the new one. The Third."

He led me inside. The house was a monument to bad taste and stolen money. Gilded everything, heavy velvet curtains, and the constant, low hum of a generator. He walked me through the cavernous rooms until we reached his private study.

On a velvet pedestal, under a glass dome, sat a round, metal film canister.

"My prize," Artie grunted, tapping the glass. "The last known copy of The Seraph's Kiss. A masterpiece. Lost for years."

My heart, this new heart in this strange body, skipped a beat. I knew that film. A legendary silent picture by a famed European director, thought to be destroyed in a studio fire. As a film restorer, it was a ghost I'd chased in archives for years.

Artie' s lips curled into a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I like to give gifts. To the girl who pleases me most."

He ran a rough thumb along my jawline. "You're new. You're fresh. You've got a good shot."

He leaned in close, his breath smelling of whiskey and cigars. I had to endure it. I had to play the game. For now, this film reel was the only thing in this godforsaken world that felt like a part of me.