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Callie stared into the fog. “Kai’s doing a great job of driving me away already. But it’s still going to destroy me. I never wanted anyone the way I want him. For a whole month, it felt like magic.”

Priya leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. Then the house appeared, and the conversation died.

It stood at the end of the block behind an overgrown yard strewn with broken bottles, cardboard, and weeds turned gray in the fog. A Queen Anne, once ornate and decadent, now boarded and sagging, its turret half-erased by mist. The porch slumped forward. Its dormer windows were dark behind warped plywood. The gingerbread trim hung in tattered, delicate decay.

Damian sat on the front steps. For a moment, we stayed in the car, parked on the street.

Even through the windshield and the fog moving between us, I could see the tension in him. He stood as I cut the engine, one hand already near the flashlight in his coat pocket.

“One thing,” I said. “Anything they gave you, leave it in the car.”

Callie worked the puka shells over her knuckles and set them in the cupholder without a word. Priya’s hand went to her throat and unclasped the necklace. Jess folded her arms.

“Jess.”

“Okay.” She pulled the cuff off her wrist and dropped it in the cupholder with Callie’s shells. “But what about yours, Marlowe?”

All three of them looked at me.

“Mine’s clean,” I said quietly.

Priya’s hand landed on my shoulder like one more are you sure.

I looked at the house, at Damian, at the fog thickening to soup. “It’s okay. Let’s go.”

The chill snapped at me as soon as I climbed out of the car. Somewhere nearby, a cat let out a long, ugly howl. The wind kicked a plastic bag across the sidewalk, and its scrape over the concrete sounded like fingernails.

Callie stopped beside me. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“I know you can,” I said. “You’ve survived the worst news of your life. You can sit in a creepy house with me and hold my hand.”

We crossed the yard together. Damian inclined his head toward the left side of the house. “This way.”

He led us around the side, where the weeds grew higher and the siding had blackened from years of damp. A basement window sat half-hidden behind a tangle of blackberry canes. The boards over it had already been loosened.

“This is how serial killers enter houses,” Jess said.

“That looks like it would barely fit a feral child,” Callie said, eyeing the narrow space.

Damian crawled in first. A moment later, his flashlight came on, throwing a hard white beam across dust and concrete.

I handed him my backpack and climbed through after him.

The frame scraped my hip. My boots landed on the basement floor with a dull thud.

One by one, the others followed.

When Priya hesitated in the window, I reached up.

“Priya.”

She didn’t move.

“Look at me.”

She did, at least.

“Feet first,” I said. “Then hands. Then you’re in.”