“Stop right there!”
Gideon.
The hallway outside my room held the thick hush of late night. The lamp on the dresser cast a soft pool of light over the floorboards. My phone screen said 2:14 a.m. in harsh white numbers.
The shouting came again, fractured by the old glass in the windows. Another voice layered over Gideon’s—Ethan’s, deeper and carrying in a way that made my bones want to obey even before my brain translated words.
“Don’t take another step!”
Cold washed through me, fast and complete.
I was out of bed and moving before I could think, the floor cool under my feet. My hands fumbled the doorknob once, slick with sweat that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
The house felt wrong.
Not unsafe, exactly. More like it was holding its breath. The air in the hallway was too still. The usual night sounds—the old vents sighing, the refrigerator humming downstairs, the gentle click of settling beams—had all gone quiet, like the inn was listening.
Another shout.
“Sam, stop!”
Sam.
Not Mr. Jarrow. Not Jarrow. Sam.
My stomach rolled. I took the stairs too fast, hand sliding along the banister for balance, the wood warm from all the hands that had gripped it before mine. Every step sent a jolt upmy legs, my thighs shaking in that pre-collapse way I recognized from too many emergencies. My brain was already trying to make a list—shoes, phone, keys, Maude—but my body had revolted, choosing momentum over organization.
The foyer light was off, but a strange flickering glow painted the front windows—white and red, white and red, like distant lightning trapped in glass. Headlights, my brain supplied, slow and syrupy. Floodlights. Something bright and artificial cutting through the marsh-dark.
I could hear them more clearly at the bottom of the stairs.
Gideon’s voice, first. “That’s close enough!”
Ethan’s, a rumble that shook the air. “Don’t move!”
Lucas, sharper, cutting in over theirs. “Hands where we can see them!”
Someone else. A thin, broken voice, carried in on the night air and the hollow of the open doorway. “They said—they said if I just—if I just?—”
My father.
The sound of him hit me harder than the words. That specific pitch of panic, that wet thickness in his throat. The way he stretched his vowels when he was trying to sound sorry.
My knees almost stopped working.
The front door stood open, skewed a few inches off its frame like someone had flung it and the house had flinched. Cool air pushed in, smelling like salt and damp earth and the metallic tang of something I didn’t want to name.
Maude was in the foyer, back pressed against the wall just inside the doorway, a dish towel still clutched in her hand like she’d been snatched straight out of the kitchen. Her face was pale, mouth a thin line, eyes sharp.
“Don’t go out there,” she said when she saw me. Her voice was low and urgent. “Stay back, Hazel.”
“What’s happening?” My own voice sounded too high in my ears, like it belonged to a child.
Her gaze flicked briefly to the rectangle of darkness beyond the door. “Your father walked up the road,” she said. “The boys heard something on the drive. They went out to check. Found him coming toward the house.”
My heartbeat pounded in my throat. “He’s here?”
She nodded once.
