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“There’s one last thing I want to do.”

A snap of Don’s fingers, and the Familiars stopped fighting.

Bandit crumpled to the floor with a whimper, his eyelids drooping shut.

A flourish of Don’s hand, as if he were waving a stave, and the house began to change, carrying them back to the past.

To the night when his mother died.

There she was again—stepping out of the cab and walking into the building, her coat fluttering behind her.

The knee on his chest—shifting up to press on his throat—was the only reminder that this wasn’t real. This night had long since passed, his mother gone. Buried in a place with no sunlight, no warmth.

It haunted him, that truth. It was a ghost that had haunted him since the day he lost her.

“Beautiful,” Don said, as if he had a right to say that. A right tolookat her. “Justbeautiful.Your father was a lucky man.”

“Get.Off.”

“I’d like you to see something first. It’ll just take a minute.” The scene sped up, a movie stuck in fast forward.

It slowed to a normal pace, and Darien felt like he might throw up as another vehicle—a van—sputtered to a stop in frontof the building, and the younger versions of himself and Ivy got out through the sliding door, fountain drinks and crumpled bags of popcorn in hand. They were gushing about the movie they had seen at the cinema, their two friends who were still in the van sharing in their excitement. After about a minute, they said their good- byes, and the van drove away.

He knew what would happen next—knew how badly it would hurt him if he saw it again. But he found that he couldn’t look away, so he watched through a mist of tears as the first woman he’d ever loved died a brutal death.

A scream ripped through the night, followed by a streak of color as something plummeted off the roof of the building?—

And hit the ground with a sharpbang,the sound like a firecracker.

The two teens gasped and stumbled backward.

Ivy was the first to recover from her shock. The first to react. She lurched forward on unsteady legs, a shattered sob floating off her lips.

Several beats of silence passed.

And then they started screaming.

Blunt force trauma,the doctor had told him, when he’d booked an appointment two years after her death, demanding the doctor describe how she’d died in detail—thinking, in vain, that it might give him closure.

It had not.

Somewhere nearby, in the present, a whimpering Bandit dragged himself across the floor. But even as the dog attempted to comfort him, Darien couldn’t tear his focus off the scene.

Seeing his mother die once in real-time was bad enough. This second time—watching it from an outsider’s perspective—was torture.

He couldn’t breathe. And for one horrible moment, as tears rolled down his face, he found that he didn’t want to be alive.

Don shook his head, tsking, as a younger, sobbing Darien clung to Elsie’s body. Ivy wept on her knees nearby, burying her damp face in her arms, screaming, “Mom,Mom!Somebody help —my mom—please! She’s hurt, we need a doctor!—”

“Awful, isn’t it?” Don’s knee crushed his windpipe. “Absolutely awful.”

Darien pushed against his uncle’s hold. “Get the fuck off me,” he gasped.

Don grabbed him by the wrist, the memory vanishing the minute the back of his bad hand banged against the floor. Shadows curled up from the ground, winding around Darien’s wrists and ankles.

One tendril snaked higher—wrapping around his bad hand with an icy cold touch.

A bolt of fear zipped up Darien’s spine. “What the hell are you doing?”