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They were passing under a street sign pointing them toward Yveswich General Hospital when they heard someone screaming.

Darien froze, his head whipping to the side.

The sound got louder. It was a woman, whose voice resembled?—

“IVY!”Darien shouted.

Before Roman could stop him, Darien took off like a bat out of hell.

“Darien!”Roman bolted after him.

The screaming continued, and gods was it awful. It sounded like someone was being tortured. Burned alive. Darien was far away now, his shouts for Ivy bouncing faintly through the deserted streets.

“ROMAN!” the voice screamed.“ROMAAAAAAN! HELP! ROMAN!”But it didn’t sound like Ivy—not to Roman. It never had.

To Roman, it sounded like Helen. His mother.

But his mother was dead.

Roman pushed himself faster.“Darien! DARIEN—SLOW DOWN!”

‘Something doesn’t feel right,’Sayagul said down the Spirit Bond, the dragon speaking for the first time in hours. She wasgroggy, barely able to slur her words thanks to the exhaustion gnawing on Roman’s bones.

‘I know,’Roman said. He skidded around a corner, his leg shooting out to the side as he fell on loose gravel, landing hard on his shoulder. He grunted. Shoved to his feet, stones digging into his palms. “DARIEN, WAIT UP!”

‘Do you think it’s a Crossroads?’Sayagul asked.

‘Shit, I hope not.’He leapt over a stretch of frozen water on the road, boots shattering the thin ice along the outer edge. ‘We have to find him?—’

‘There,’the dragon said, indicating with a shadowy wisp.

Roman turned a corner, ducking around a stop sign, and thumped to a halt in front of a row of big, pretty houses, each painted a different shade of pastel—sky-blue, lemon drop, blush, mint-green, and lavender.

It was the sidewalk in front of the lavender house where Roman found Darien. The yard was encased with a white picket fence, the gate of which was shut. The wind howled like a hungry wolf, its strong gales ripping white and purple flower petals off rose and lilac bushes.

The screaming had stopped. Aside from the wind, the street was dead silent, no one—person or monster—in sight.

Roman approached his cousin on quiet feet. “Darien?”

Darien didn’t turn. He just stood there, staring at the house. Then he said, so quietly Roman could hardly hear him, “It was Ivy.”

He broke his stillness as if he’d snapped out of a trance and paced the sidewalk like an animal in a pen, eyes glued to the house, his breath forming ghosts in the air. The driveway was lined with more white roses and purple lilacs, what remained of their petals frozen into segments of brittle glass.

“It was Ivy,” Darien said again, talking mostly to himself. “She was here—I heard her.”

“Darien.” Roman spoke with caution, his teeth chattering so violently he could hardly talk at all. “Are you sure it was h?—”

“It was Ivy!”he exploded, whirling to face him. His nostrils were flared, the veins in his neck bulging. “I think I know the sound of my own goddamn sister’s voice?—”

The screaming started again. The sound was coming from inside the house. And this time, there was no doubt about it—it was Helen Devlin.

But that wasn’t who Darien was hearing.

“Ivy!”Darien jumped the fence and bolted, across the frosted yard that crunched under his boots. Up the freshly painted steps, heading straight for the door?—

The door that was suddenly wide open, welcoming him in.

“Shit.”Roman leapt the fence and barreled across the yard, up the steps?—