Chapter 3

It bothered her. She still didn’t take the account off her rotation.

Nothing had ever actually happened in that house. She told herself so on a loop, every time, the whole way there and the whole way back. She was inventing it.

That day went the same as always. She carried the bag to the door.

Three seconds after the bell, the gate opened.

She stood outside the threshold, took a breath, and jogged across the front courtyard toward the house.

She’d been doing that for several runs now — moving quickly, in and out, as though one step slower would let something come up out of all that silence, take hold of her, and pull her into that cage of a house.

And every time she got safely out again she laughed at herself about it. Persecution complex. Her brain manufacturing enemies out of an empty room and a rich man’s taste in furniture.

And every time she crossed that threshold, she sped up anyway.

She jogged to the table, set the paper bag down, and reached for the tip.

Her hand stopped.

It wasn’t a fifty this time. It was a hundred.

Lily glanced toward the staircase, then back down, not understanding.

“Maybe he didn’t have change.”

And while she was standing there deciding, the light went out.

All of it. Every light in the house at once.

Then, behind her, a sound. Heavy and unmistakable.

The front door closing, and locking.

The dark was total. Not dim. Not dusk. Absolute — the kind where a hand in front of your face is theoretical.

It took her sight and it took her sense of direction with it, and for a second she genuinely did not know where in the room she was standing.

Every horror story she’d ever heard arrived at once. Cold sweat came up across her back.

She reached for her phone on instinct and found nothing. She’d left in a hurry. It was in her bag at the restaurant.

The panic lasted a few seconds. Then she got a hand onto the dining table, made herself stop where she was, and listened.

Silence.

The house was quiet enough that she could hear her own pulse working in her ears.

No sound was better than sound. She told herself that, and made herself believe it, and evened her breathing out, and started moving toward where the front door ought to be.

Whether this was somebody’s idea of a joke or the power going out, the answer was the same. She needed to be on the other side of that door.

Before anything else happened.

At least the place was empty. There was no furniture to catch a shin on and nothing left lying on the floor, which was the single advantage of a house furnished like a waiting room.

She found a wall quickly.

And it felt wrong under her hand. She’d walked a straight line toward the door. What she was touching should have been the door.

The stories came back — sealed rooms, spaces that rearrange themselves — and her legs went unreliable.

“Listen. Whether you’re a person or — or something else. We don’t have a problem with each other. Leave me alone.”

“People say you settle up with the one who wronged you. If somebody did something to you, go find them. There’s nothing here for you.”

She got to the end of it before she registered that she’d said all of it in Spanish.

She breathed in and said it again in English.

And out of the dark came a sound. A short exhale. Almost a laugh.

It was very quiet. In a room where she could hear her own heartbeat, she heard it perfectly.

“Who’s there?” She spun, put her back flat to the wall, and swept her eyes across a room she could not see.

Nothing came back.

Only a deeper silence, as though the sound had been something she’d manufactured.

She knew better. It had been real.

The dark made everything bigger. She wasn’t sure she could stay upright — if the wall hadn’t been behind her she’d have gone down.

Her hands were fists. Her palms were wet and cold.

She took two long breaths and pressed the fear down and made her voice work.

Sliding sideways along the wall, feeling for the door, she kept talking into the black. “I don’t know why you’re doing this. But I think anything can be discussed.”

“Did I do something wrong? Tell me and I’ll apologize. Or I’ll make it up to you some other way.”

Silence.

Nothing moved.

Sweat came out along her hairline. She still hadn’t found the door.

And if he worked out that she was feeling her way toward an exit, there was no telling what he’d do about it. So she kept talking. As long as her voice was going, his attention had somewhere to sit that wasn’t her hands.

She tried a different angle, and softened her voice into something more reasonable.

“You’re the owner of this house, aren’t you? Look — you’ve been ordering from us for over a year. You’re one of our most important regulars. Where I come from we say a good neighbor is worth more than family far away. In a manner of speaking, that makes us neighbors.”

“And neighbors can work things out. Whatever this is, we can talk about it.”

As the last word left her, her fingers found the edge of the door.

Her heart came down out of her throat, a little.

She kept sliding along the frame, feeling for the handle.

Her fingertips moved over cold metal — and touched warm skin.

She snatched her hand back and nearly screamed.

Someone was there.

She had touched him.

Her mind went white.

The fear crested and she heard herself, close to crying. “What — what do you want from me?”

There were tears in it. There was also anger she couldn’t get down.

Because if this couldn’t be talked through, then she was going to fight him, and she was going to lose.