Page 69

Through the dining room, where the chandelier trembled faintly in his wake. Through the kitchen and its green cabinets. Out through the back wall into the garden.

The morning opened wide around him.

Leo crossed the lawn faster than he had moved in years. He went all the way to the fence, turned, and raced back toward the manor. He passed through the porch, the foyer, the staircase, the turret room. He circled the upper hall simply because he could.

No padded darkness.

No stubby flippers.

No invisible line pulling him back to a living man.

The house had him again.

His house.

Leo drifted onto the roof and stood beside the chimney, looking over the grounds. There was the gravel road, the overgrowth beyond the fence, and the patch of flattened plants where Nate had chased the fox.

A whole world.

Small, perhaps, compared with the one he had watched through the truck window, but it was his.

He stayed on the roof until the wind began moving through him.

Then he inspected the shutters.

The east-side hinge was worse than before. He checked the roof damage, the turret windows, the water stain in the northern bedroom. He went down to the kitchen and confirmed that Nate had removed two more cabinet doors while Leo was away.

The nerve.

He found fresh pencil marks along the wall beside the dropped ceiling. Measurements. There were tools on the table, folded plans on the counter, and a new package of dust masks beside the coffee maker.

Signs of occupation.

He followed them through the house.

A jacket over the stair rail. Work gloves on the mantel. A coffee mug abandoned on a windowsill. Nate’s sleeping bag rolled against the sitting-room wall.

Leo stopped in the doorway.

Nate sat on the floor with his back against the wall, laptop open across his thighs. He had changed out of his jacket but not his work boots. His head was bent over the screen, his expression softened by concentration. A cup of coffee sat beside him.

There was something deeply unfair about the sight of him there. Solid and warm and entirely at ease in Leo’s house.

Leo should leave.

But leaving the medium unsupervised in his house would be irresponsible.

He moved closer.

On the laptop’s screen was an image of the manor.

It was a view from outside. Nate stood on the porch, one hand resting on the railing while words moved beneath the image too quickly for Leo to read.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Nate looked up.

Something in his face loosened. “You’re back.”