“The key to a good disguise is to make one feature draw the attention away from all others,” King was saying as he worked on transforming Ella into someone else. “You want to make it look as if it isn’t possible that one feature is false, so that the mind is tricked into focusing on that feature and dismissing all others.”

Ella watched the face she’d drawn used to recognizing in the mirror transform into something else, a person she didn’t even know. Her eyes weren’t even the same color as usual after King put colored contacts into her eyes. Her hair was short and feathered, though it wasn’t actually...