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"Nothing's happened," she says first, because she's good at this. "Nobody's here. No smoke, no rot, no anything. Your girl's fine, she's on the floor with the book."

"Cass."

"The cat came in about ten minutes ago and went straight through the house and stood in the kitchen doorway and he hasn't moved since." A pause. "He's not looking at anything, Gage. That's the thing. There's nothing in there to look at."

I put the truck sideways into my own driveway and I'm out of it before it stops rocking.

Six wolves in the yard, all of them turned toward the house.

Maren is standing in the middle of my kitchen with the ledger closed against her chest and both arms locked around it. The candles on the saucer are guttering hard in the draft off the open back door.

Eight feet from her, where a creature has hung with its mouth open and one arm reaching for hours, there’s nothing.

No smoke. No ash. No mark on the floor.

"Where is it?"

"I don't know."

"Maren?"

She turns around, and her hands are open at her sides, and both of them are shaking so hard I can see it from the door.

"I never let go," she says.

35

MAREN

TWO DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

There's nothing in Gage's kitchen, and I'm still holding it.

Saturday evening I put my palm up at the creature coming through a doorway and told it no. It stopped. It hung there. And some part of me has had my shoulder against that door ever since and did not think to mention it.

Now the creature is gone and my shoulder is still holding the door.

"Any different?" Gage says.

"No."

He's been up since Sunday. There's a coffee ring on the ledger and neither of us has moved it.

"Evelyn said the door is yours." He says it carefully. "You put it there. So you can take it down."

"I've tried since one in the afternoon yesterday."

"I know."

"I've tried in every position a person can be in."

"I know."

I hold my hands out in front of me. They shake. They've shaken for a day and a half and I've started thinking of them as someone else's problem.

Gage puts his hand over both of them. I'm getting used to the electric spark each time we touch.

It's the same as it was at the fire pit. Whatever's roaring in me finds something quiet to lean on, and the shaking drops off, and I hate that it works and I'm not letting go of him.