I am, I cried.
The voices （hers! all hers!） were singing in her head. Singing in golden, crystal-clear tones.
With a flash, she understood her lifelong obsession with monsters. With the old movies and stories and legends. Part of her was preparing. Preparing herself for the day when she’d wake up and realize what she truly was.
* * *
VI FOUND IRIS still on the floor of the office. She was sitting up amid the mess of papers and file folders.
“Vi?” Iris said.
Vi went to the papers on the desk, the final file they’d found.
She began by ripping off the back cover with the photograph stuck to it.
She looked at the girl, Patient S, the smile on her face, the contentment. She had been taken care of and loved by her grandmother, who was smart and clever and kind, the best doctor in the world. And her grandmother had baked her favorite cake, so sweet it made her teeth ache, but light and fluffy, truly the food of angels.
Lucky girl, lucky girl, the God of Birthdays sang.
Make a wish, urged the God of Wishes.
What had she wished for?
A wish that seemed to come from nowhere, yet everywhere. A wish that had been inside her all along but had just worked its way up to the surface of her conscious mind.
She’d wished for a sister.
Someone to share everything with.
She looked down at this girl in the photograph, this pitiful know-nothing girl, and hardly recognized her.
She flicked on Gran’s lighter and touched the tip of the file folder to the flame, watched it catch.
“Vi?” Iris called. She was up on her feet, swaying slightly as if the room were spinning. She put her hands on the desk to steady herself. “What are you doing?” Her face was pale and sweaty, her eyes focused.
Vi shook her head.
Not Vi. Not anymore.
Call me by my true name, I dare you.
And what was her true name?
Patient S?
The Monster?
She must have had a name once before, when she was some other girl with real parents and a real sister.
She searched her memory for a name, for some flash of an image of that past life, but nothing came.
Only darkness.
It didn’t matter. Not really.
She wasn’t that girl anymore.
Nor was she Violet Hildreth.
She was someone—something—else altogether.
The folder was fully engulfed now, the edges of the flames burning her fingers. Pain pulled her back into her own body.
Whose body, though?
She dropped the burning folder onto the other papers on the desk. Then she gathered more files, more papers, and added those to the little pyre.
Iris came closer. “Stop! What are you doing?” Vi pushed Iris away, ordered her to stay back.
Smoke and ash and blackened curls of burned paper drifted up, then fell to the floor, burning on the carpet, sending up a hideous chemical stink.
She threw the broken chair parts onto the flames.
Let it burn.
Let it all burn.
The desk itself had caught fire now, and the flames shot up, up to the low drop ceiling. The plastic cover over the flickering fluorescent lights was melting from the heat. The bulbs exploded. The room went dark.