Page 109

I accept that. Because she's right. Again.

"I know."

"What happens now?"

I watch the tree line. The place where the entity keeps appearing. The place where the boundary between normal and impossible keeps getting thinner.

"Now we stop waiting for it."

Her eyes narrow.

"And?"

I look back at her.

"And we make sure whatever is coming regrets choosing this house."

Somewhere downtown, a bell rings. A Halloween tour begins. People laugh. Children scream happily. They think they're pretending to be afraid. They don't know fear has already arrived.

And it's standing just outside our door.

15

CARYS

OCTOBER 23 ~ 8 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

There is a difference between being brave and being reckless. I know this because I have spent most of my adult life convincing other people they don't have to confuse the two.

My entire career is built around helping strangers recognize their own patterns. The excuses they make. The boundaries they ignore. The warning signs they explain away.

And yet, somehow, when it comes to my own life, I have spent more than a day now doing exactly what I tell everyone else not to do.

Pretending I am fine because admitting I'm not would require me to acknowledge how impossible everything has become.

My son—apparently my son—is sitting at my kitchen table learning how to control supernatural instincts from the man who may have unknowingly passed them on to him.

An entity is stalking my house. My technology is being manipulated. People have been disappearing for years. And my biggest personal problem is that Rhett Cambridge still makes me want to scream and kiss him in equal measure.

Which is deeply inconvenient.

I hate that my brain notices things like that. I hate that after 15 years, I can still recognize the exact sound of his footsteps. I hate that when he walks into a room, some part of me immediately knows.

Safe.

The thought irritates me so much I immediately reject it. Rhett is many things. Frustrating. Controlling. Infuriatingly calm when the world is collapsing.

Safe is complicated. Especially when the last time I trusted him with my heart, he disappeared.

I shut my laptop harder than necessary. The sound makes Sayer look up.

"Everything okay?"

"Yes."

A pause.

Then: "No."