The beam cut across beadboard walls and framed mountain prints, then into the front room.
Quiet.
The sound had stopped.
Izzy swallowed and stepped forward anyway.
The floor creaked beneath her bare feet. The fireplace loomed ahead, all stone and shadow. The kitchen doorway sat open to her left. The windows reflected her back at herself in pale fragments.
She stood still, listening.
“See?” she whispered. “You’re tired. That’s all.”
A soft flutter sounded above her.
Izzy looked up?—
—and something dropped from the beam and shot across the room.
She screamed.
It hit the stone above the hearth, clung there for one impossible second?—
—and then another shape moved.
Then another.
The ceiling erupted.
Wings tore through the room, circling, diving, filling the air.
Izzy screamed again, louder, hands flying to her face as she stumbled backward into the table.
“Oh my God—oh my God?—”
Something crashed to the floor behind her. Wings rushed past her head.
She ducked, half-blind, heart slamming.
The front door slammed open.
Boots hit the floor.
“Izzy—”
She screamed at him, too.
“Hey. Hey.”
Hands caught her arms, steadying her. His grip was firm. Unshakeable.
Heat cut through the cold rush of panic in her veins.
“Take your hands down.”
“No!”
Mortification hit almost as hard as the panic. She was barefoot in sleep shorts, screaming over airborne rodents while Grant Scott watched.
