My breath stuttered, freezing in my throat. I blinked once and the figure slipped into the woods. Silent. Swift. Intentional. It wasn’t Harmony and their presence wasn’t an accident. It was sign. Harmony wasn’t the only one out here tonight. I didn’t have time to think. Didn’t have time to be afraid. I tightened my grip on the flashlight and took off down the path, boots sinking into snow, breath burning hot and fast in my lungs.
“Harmony,” I whispered into the wind, into the storm swallowing everything. “Please… don’t be too far. Please.”
The footprints grew softer as the snow filled them. The woods felt too quiet. Too still.
CHAPTER 41
Harmony
The snow swallowed sound in a way that felt almost deliberate, as though winter had decided to mute the world so it could listen more closely. Each step I took down the ridge path sank softly, quietly, until I felt like I was walking inside a dream I didn’t want to remember. The night pressed around me, thick with cold, the air sharp in my lungs. Even before I saw the house, my stomach tightened with a familiar ache of dread wrapped in memory, and memory wrapped in something darker. Marcel’s property emerged through the trees like a ghost of my childhood, the outline of the old porch barely visible beneath heavy drifts of snow. I stopped at the edge of the yard, breath hitching as a wave of nausea rolled through me. I hadn’t been back here since I left after high school for Montreal. I told myself I didn’t care what happened to the house that raised me. But the truth settled into my bones because this place held every version of me I didn’t want to face. My mother’s laughter echoed faintly in my memory, so out of place it made my throat tighten. She used to dance in the kitchen when she thought no one was watching. She’d hum softly while she washed dishes and press soft kisses to my forehead as shetold me I was good, even when Marcel said I wasn’t. I felt her absence now like a bruise under my skin. Coming here brought her ghost closer than it had been in years, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
I pulled my hood lower and forced myself forward. The porch creaked beneath my weight. Police tape fluttered in the wind, shredded and brittle, like the house itself was shedding pieces of the life it once contained. I reached into my pocket and touched the old house key, a stupid relic I should have thrown away years ago. My fingers trembled as the metal pressed against my skin. I wasn’t sure if it was the cold or the memories. When I slid the key into the lock, it resisted stiff from disuse, like the house itself recognized me and wasn’t sure it wanted to let me in again. My breath hitched.
“Please,” I whispered before I could stop myself.
The lock gave with a reluctant click. The door groaned open, and a rush of stale, chilled air flooded out around me, colder than the winter night behind me. My flashlight cut through the dark entryway, illuminating marble floors veined with dust, a sweeping staircase draped in shadow, and chandeliers overhead dulled by grime. Sheets covered some of the expensive furniture; others sat exposed, gathering dust like forgotten relics. And yet, beneath the lingering scent of stone and cold air, I caught the faintest undercurrent of something familiar. Something metallic. Something dangerous. I stepped inside, pulse thudding hard in my throat. Everything was exactly as I remembered. Everything was wrong in the exact same ways.
And yet, at the same time…It felt like the house had beenwaitingfor me.
A chill rippled through me. I didn’t want to walk this hallway again. I didn’t want to remember the nights I tiptoed past Marcel’s office, praying he wouldn’t call me inside. But I kept moving because stopping here and letting the fear win feltworse. My flashlight swept across the floor and caught on a single, clear footprint in the dust.
I froze.
It wasn’t mine. And it wasn’t old. The edges were still sharp. Someone had been here tonight. Fear slipped into me like a blade; slow, precise, and familiar in a way I hated. I stepped carefully around the print, following the path my body remembered better than I wanted it to.
The office door stood slightly ajar. A childhood fear tightened inside me, the kind that wasn’t logical but lived deep under my ribs, built from years of conditioning. The open door always meant Marcel was inside. It meant trouble. It meantdon’t breathe unless you’re told. My hand shook as I pushed it open. My flashlight traced the desk first: papers scattered from the raid, untouched since investigators swept through. A mug Marcel used every morning sat in the corner, cracked down the side. I used to sneak sips from that mug, thinking it made me grown.
The memory hollowed me out.Focus.I forced my attention toward the room, scanning for anything out of place. That’s when I saw the cabinet. The door hung crooked. The lock was broken. Someone had gone straight for it.
Inside, the shelves were nearly empty. Not rummaged through but completely stripped. Whoever came here hadn’t needed to search; they knew exactly what they were after. My stomach tightened. I knelt, letting the flashlight skim the floor. A faint disturbance in the dust revealed a dragged line, leading behind the cabinet. Dread crawled slowly up my spine. I shoved my shoulder against the cabinet’s side, just enough to expose the wall. The baseboard Olivier once pried open, the one where our father hid drives he never wanted traced, it was loose again.
My fingers hesitated before pulling it free. A black case lay tucked inside the cavity.
My pulse stuttered as I lifted it. Inside the case was a foam molded for several encrypted drives
and all of them were missing. That’s when something else caught my eye, a tiny scrap of paper wedged into the corner of the compartment, almost invisible in the dust. I pulled it free.
A faded relay header in old ink. It was barely legible.
One line stood out:relay:user—Ravenhill
timestamp:six months pre-arrest
My breath caught. That wasn’t possible, he was dead.
A floorboard creaked in the hallway. My heart slammed hard enough to hurt. Old, unwanted instincts took over. I flicked off my flashlight and dropped into a shadow behind the desk, hand clamped over my mouth to quiet my breath. The darkness swallowed everything. I couldn’t see my knees. I could barely hear anything except my pulse.
Another step.Slow. Careful. Too careful. I was being followed. A rectangle of faint shadow glided beneath the office door. I didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. The doorknob twitched. A soft metallic click before it turned farther, a loud crack outside shattered the silence. It was sharp, sudden, the sound of a heavy branch snapping under snow. The shadow outside the door stilled. A tense beat passed. Then footsteps retreated, quiet but purposeful, moving deeper into the house. I stayed frozen until my lungs burned for air. When I finally rose, my legs trembled under me. I braced a hand on the desk, forcing breath back into my chest.
Someone was here. Someone who knew Marcel’s hiding spots. Someone who walked this hallway with confidence. Someone who wasn’t afraid of being caught. Eric would come looking for me soon. Ice slid down my spine. I shoved the baseboard back into place, slipped out the office, and moved silently through the house until I reached the back door. As the door clicked shut behind me, a sound lifted faintly above thewind, a distant crunch of snow, steady, purposeful. My breath caught. For one fragile heartbeat, I thought it might be Eric. The cadence was close to his, familiar enough to pull a painful ache through my chest.
“Eric?” The whisper froze in the air, swallowed before it could travel.
I held still, listening hard. Another crunch then nothing. No voice. No answer. Just the wind pushing through the trees in long, hollow breaths. It could have been him. It could have been the intruder or my fear twisting shadows into people. I didn’t have the luxury of finding out.
Snow drifted through the porch light in slow spirals, dusting the steps and softening my footprints almost as soon as I made them. I started toward the ridge but then something glinted near the old shed. A broken window latch dangled from the frame; the glass pushed inward. I noticed fresh boot prints that were larger than mine had circled the building in uneven arcs before disappearing into the trees.
As I stepped back from the shed, my coat snagged briefly on a splintered edge of the broken window frame. I jerked free, too focused on the trees to care about the tug. I didn’t notice the faint flutter of paper as something slipped from my pocket and drifted into the snow, the faded relay scrap now half-buried near the shed’s foundation. I dropped to my knees and picked it up.
