“We’re going to be okay, baby.”
I paused on the bottom step.
She didn’t know that. Couldn’t know that. Had absolutely no evidence to support it.
She said it anyway.
Because that’s what mothers did. They absorbed the worst of it so that no one else had to.
* * *
Two hours later, my arms hung heavy, shoulders burning. Moving quietly cost three times the energy of moving fast, and the debt had come due.
But the house stood as secure as I could make it.
The back door was braced. Every ground-floor window was boarded from the inside, and second-floor alley windows were sealed. From the street, the brownstone would look dark and abandoned—the same as every other house nobody had come home to. With luck, whatever moved through the city after nightfall would keep moving.
I leaned against the kitchen counter, working my hands open and closed, trying to push the stiffness out of my fingers. Hunger had gone past discomfort and curdled into what resembled irritation—or maybe that was just easier to call it. The last real meal had been dinner with Fiona the night before.
The afternoon’s golden light had begun to fade. Shadows pooled in the kitchen corners. Outside, the city had gone completely quiet.
Darkness was coming fast. And darkness meant trouble.
I moved to the doorway and looked into the living room.
The three of them sat scattered across the space—Fiona on the edge of the couch, Libby rigid in the armchair, Lily on the rug with her eyes fixed somewhere past the middle of the room. Nobody spoke. Lily’s fingers worked at the hem of her sleeve in a slow, repetitive pull—the same motion her mother made with her cardigan cuff.
“We need to move rooms,” I said, keeping my voice just above a murmur.
Three heads turned.
“Why?” Lily asked. Her voice came out smaller than she probably intended.
“It’s getting dark.” I nodded toward the boarded-up windows. “If we use lights in here, the gaps in the boards will act like beacons. We need a windowless room, or one we can black out completely.”
Libby straightened slightly. A long pause—longer than the question seemed to warrant—then her words came out careful and measured, as if she’d weighed each one.
“There is one. My husband’s old study. Back of the second floor, hasn’t been touched in years.”
She stopped, and the room held the silence around her.
“You don’t use it?” I asked.
“No.”
Her eyes dropped to her hands. Her mouth opened, then pressed into a thin line. For a second, the skin around her eyes tightened, a flicker of old pain, and then her jaw set. By the time she looked back up at me, the mask was back in place.
“We’re going to need it tonight,” I said quietly.
She swallowed and nodded. “I understand.” The words resigned, like a door she’d spent years keeping closed had just run out of reasons to stay shut.
“We kill every light,” I continued. “Stay quiet, stay together. Nobody moves through the house alone.”
Fiona nodded once. Lily pulled her knees tighter to her chest but didn’t argue.
Libby pushed herself upright from the armchair. She smoothed the front of her cardigan once, then again. Her hands dropped to her sides, and her gaze went to the doorway for a moment before she looked at any of us. “Follow me.”
We moved upstairs in single file. The house creaked way too loudly. At the top, Libby led us down a short hallway and stopped at a door at the far end.
