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When Thomas Walsh was very small, he’d found death waiting for him inside the trunk of a sedan. For the first hour of his confinement, he’d kicked and kicked, driving the little heels of his light-up shoes—the ones his mother had scrimped and saved to buy—into the latch. With each kick, the dark had flickered wildly back at him in swirls of reds and blues. All these years later, he still dreamed of the flashing colors.

It wasn’t colors that rattled him awake now. He opened his eyes to pitch black, his skin itching with the palpable feel of being watched. For several heartbeats he lay prone atop the mattress and tried to ascertain whether the prickle in his skin was just the result of waking somewhere unfamiliar, or something more.

Across the room, the door snicked shut.

He jacked upright, his heart hammering. “Hello?”

Silence seeped into his skin like a frost. No one answered, though the quiet seemed to leer like a living, breathing thing. He suppressed a shiver, rubbing feeling back into his arms.

His house in Worcester made noises at all hours. House noises—joints cracking, foundation groaning, soil settling. It was a never-ending cacophony of disruptions. The radiator clanged. Wind whistled through the weather stripping.

By contrast, the Farrow house was as still as a tomb.

He wasn’t sure he liked it.

He slid out of bed and tugged on a shirt, toeing carefully out into the corridor. The hallway stretched out like an artery in either direction, disappearing out of sight into the shadows.

“Hello,” he said again, speaking into the quiet.

His voice had an echo. Hello. Hello. Hello.

Far overhead, there came the muffled thud of a door. Uneasy, he returned to his room.

After that, sleep evaded him. It wasn’t that he was scared of the dark—it was small spaces that did him in—it was only that he’d gone to bed with a hunted feeling in his chest, and now that he was awake again it was back. He fell to pacing, doing his best not to let his first official day on the job replay on a loop in his head.

It was a futile effort. Everything out of his mouth had been the exact wrong thing. He’d tried to be friendly. Amicable. Charming, even. He’d done his level best to win Vivienne over. And yet, the harder he’d tried, the worse he’d seemed to do.

He’d told her she reminded him of a praying mantis.

He flopped onto his bed with a groan and pulled his pillow over his face. The fabric smelled cold and clean, like bleach. It wasn’t an objectively bad smell, but it pitted his stomach all the same. It wasn’t his . It wasn’t home. Reaching across the mattress, he groped for his phone and pulled it under the pillow, scrolling through until he found the contact he was looking for.

His sister picked up on the second ring.

“You asshole,” she said. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Hello to you, too.” He rolled out of bed and crossed to the desk, sinking into the large armchair situated before it. He could hear the television blaring in the background. “Hey, would it hurt your feelings if someone compared you to a praying mantis?”

There was a pause. He heard the sound of Tessa munching on popcorn. Then, “You told someone they remind you of a praying mantis?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Literally, why else would you ask such a stupid question? You’re a terrible liar, Tommy. And a terrible flirt. If that’s your best pickup line, you’re going to die alone.”

“I wasn’t flirting, I was—” He groaned and sank deeper into his chair, crooking his elbow over his eyes. “Never mind. What are you watching?”

“Some creature feature on TV. It’s got lab-mutated crocodiles.”

“Nice.”

“The acting is so cringe, it’s giving me secondhand embarrassment.”

“So, your favorite kind of movie.”

“Exactly.”

Quiet stretched between them. He felt a sudden, yawning homesickness deep inside his chest. When he was younger, he’d resented his cluttered house with its carpet of cat fur and the ceaseless whir of his mother’s machinery—the way his father’s things were everywhere, even long after they’d buried him. He’d despised the way death clung to everything.

Hated that there was never anything he could do to help.

Well. He was doing something now.

Tomorrow, he would do better. Be better. He had to be.

“Mom is fine,” said Tess finally, as if she could hear him trying not to ask. “She misses you, though. We both do.”

“Trust me, I’d be home if I could. This guy’s offer was too good to pass up.”

“Was it?” Tess didn’t sound convinced. “Better than going back to school?”

“I already told you,” he said, a little sharper than he’d meant to, “college wasn’t for me.”

“You mean your scholarship is gone, and Mom can’t afford it by herself.” Tess rattled the popcorn bowl. When he didn’t deny it, she added, “I’m not a baby, Tommy. You don’t have to cushion everything.”

“There’ll be money for you when it’s time to apply.”

“I don’t care if there is or isn’t.” The faint sound of televised screaming drifted in through the receiver. “Mom says Uncle Ryan has work for you. If you want a job so badly, I don’t get why you can’t just do that.”

“This is kind of a unique situation.”

“Is it?” A straw slurped wetly in his ear. “How?”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Did he tell her he’d been hired to babysit a spoiled brat with a trust fund the size of a small country? Did he tell her about Philip’s strange request to spy on Vivienne’s friends? He’d make enough to start chipping away at his mother’s bills. To set aside tuition for his sister. To do all the things his father should have been doing, instead of drinking himself into the dirt.

That’s all that mattered.

In the background, there came the screams of a B-list actress being death rolled by a mega-croc.

“Don’t stay up all night,” he said.

“Rubber, glue,” said his sister, and hung up without a goodbye.

When she was gone, he set aside his phone and pried open his laptop. The sudden throb of blue light seared his eyes, turning the shadows liquid. On the screen, his browser was still open to the last email he’d received. It was a message from his fraternity president—the sixth in what was quickly becoming a long line of unanswered queries.

Thomas,

Me again. Just checking in. Have you run into any trouble transferring your class credits? Some of the others have. If you need any resources, I’m happy to assist.

Don’t hesitate to reach out.

—C

As with the other six messages, he clicked out of the tab without drafting a response. Pulling open a new tab, he typed Vivienne’s name into the search bar.

Several results popped up, most of them for her personal accounts—platforms full of candid snapshots and videos set to music, page after page of dreamy, unfocused portraits. But there were others, too. He scrolled past multiple newspaper headlines about the local dance school. There, on the front page of the Connecticut Journal , was Vivienne—sequined and glittering in the first row of an ensemble, her hands on her hips and her chin upturned. She looked happy. Confident. He kept scrolling.

A few results down he came upon an older headline, this time from a feature article in a national news outlet.

Girl, Four, Found Wandering Red Rock Canyon’s Scenic Drive Three Days After Family Reported Her Missing.

This time, there was no accompanying picture of Vivienne. Only a faraway, grainy shot of several ambulances clustered on the side of a desert switchback. The article was vague. It didn’t tell him much. Only names. Dates. A few quotes from the chief of police. He clicked out of the screen and shut his computer. Sitting back, he rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw spots.

He’d figure her out, but it wouldn’t happen overnight.

It definitely wouldn’t happen by trawling the internet, reading decade-old articles.

···

Eventually, he must have slept, because he was awoken by the sound of scrabbling. He lay on his stomach, his eyes pulled shut against the white spike of sunlight spearing through his blinds, and listened to the ominous rustle of something moving across his room.

Prying one eye open, he found two full-grown Dobermans perched astride his bed, their ears shaped into handsome peaks and their caramel-dark fur brushed to a sheen. At the sight of him peering out at them, their bodies twitched to a standstill. The nearer of the two let out a menacing growl.

Thomas wasn’t afraid of dogs—he’d spent the last several months wrangling breeds of all shapes and sizes—but at the moment he felt less like he’d just come face-to-face with man’s best friend and more like he’d been cornered by a pair of velociraptors.

He lay very still and tried to think what to do.

“Hello,” he said, after a moment’s contemplation.

With a bark of alarm, both dogs exploded into flight, their paws slipping across the floorboards in their wild bid to flee. He sat up and watched them go, mordantly amused, and then reached for his phone and pulled up the day’s schedule.

It was blank. Whole blocks of nothing stared up at him, marked only by each empty hour. He refreshed the page, certain he’d missed something. The schedule remained blank. Clicking over to his messages, he pulled up Vivienne’s number.

Thomas

There’s nothing on the schedule today.

As an afterthought, he added:

Thomas

Let me know if you need anything.

Her response was immediate, marked by a ding that reverberated absurdly in his solar plexus.

Vivienne

don’t text me.

“You got it, princess,” he said to his phone, before tossing it back onto the bed.

He couldn’t stay put all day, waiting in his room like a kenneled dog. Not without going stark raving mad. Rolling out of bed, he pulled on a pair of gym shorts and a mostly clean T-shirt and headed out in search of a place to burn off steam.

He didn’t make it far. Philip poked his head out of the door to his office just as Thomas ambled past.

“There you are,” he said, shaking his watch loose from his sleeve. “I was hoping I’d run into you. Amelia tells me Vivienne gave you the slip yesterday morning.”

“Oh,” said Thomas. He hadn’t realized they’d been watched. The thought made him uneasy. “Yeah, she found another ride to the studio.”

“Is that right?” Philip’s smile was veneer straight. “She’s a spitfire, isn’t she?”

“Uh,” said Thomas, who wasn’t sure how to answer.

“She’s testing your limits, seeing where you fall in the pecking order. Back in my days at Phi Epsilon Nu, we called that a good old-fashioned hazing. It’s nothing to lose sleep over.”

“Understood,” said Thomas.

Philip leaned in conspiratorially, peering down the hall as if he expected Vivienne to appear at any moment. “A little friendly advice—fire needs to be fed. Without oxygen, it starves and dies. Vivienne’s oxygen is attention. Don’t give her any, and you’ll be square. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Excellent.” Philip clapped him hard on the shoulder. “Now, have you given any thought to my offer to bankroll some summer courses?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Make sure you give it due consideration. A smart boy like yourself ought to have some sort of direction in life. What are your interests? Your aspirations? Where do you see yourself five years from now? Ten?”

“Uh.” Dully, Thomas wondered if maybe he should lie. He thought of the ignored emails from the Priory’s president, the mediocre grades, and the unfinished credits. In the end, he settled on a half-truth. “I’d love to be where my uncle is. He’s his own boss.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” boomed Philip, and clapped his shoulder a second time. “You’re in good hands—the Farrow name opens a whole lot of doors, and I take care of my own. Understand?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Fantastic.” He lifted a steaming mug of coffee off a nearby file cabinet and raised it in a toast. “Now, if you’re looking to get a workout in, we had a state-of-the-art fitness center installed just last winter.”

“Nice,” said Thomas. “No one will mind if I use it?”

Philip’s smile stretched as wide as a wolf’s. “Our home is your home, son. So long as you work under my roof, the world is at your feet.”

···

Thomas’s days fell into a plodding sort of routine after that. He woke each morning to find the schedule empty, the Dobermans standing vigil at his bedside, whale eyed and circumspect. He stretched. He dressed. He went for a run. Sometimes two miles. Sometimes five, looping the house until he had the vast Tudor-style estate memorized from every angle. When that was done, he showered and ate. He spent the remainder of the morning surfing through channels on the guest room television, caught between feeling like he was going insane and feeling like he was getting away with murder.

He’d never been paid so much to do so little.

Each night, he fell asleep on top of his bedspread, a nature documentary washing his room in limpid blue, David Attenborough’s voice lulling him into a trance. In those moments, hovering on the cusp of sleep, he could almost forget he wasn’t at home. He could almost believe his mother was asleep upstairs and his sister was snacking in the adjacent armchair.

He could almost pretend he wasn’t slowly losing his bearings.

Almost.

He was a week into the job when Amelia cornered him in the kitchen. She materialized in the doorway just as he was finishing up a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. Without so much as a glance in his direction, she clicked across the tile and pried open the fridge. A chill eddied into the room as she stood in the refrigerator’s glow and surveyed the contents. Thomas choked down his last bite of toast and wondered if she was waiting for him to say something.

When at last the door swung shut, it was with a slam. Thomas found Vivienne’s mother peering over at him, steely eyed.

“Are you enjoying our facilities?” she asked, her voice chilly.

Wariness scudded through him. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. And then, because his mother had raised him with some semblance of manners, he added, “You have a beautiful home.”

Her expression tightened, and he knew immediately he’d said the wrong thing. “And how about the food? Is it to your liking?”

He glanced down at his plate, scraped clean. “The food is fine, ma’am.”

“That’s wonderful.” Her smile was thin. “We want you to be comfortable, of course.”

Out in the yard, there came the sound of a lawn mower engine as the landscaping crew arrived and began unloading their gear off the truck.

Thomas cleared his throat. “Is there a problem?”

“You tell me,” said Amelia, still smiling that wax-statue smile. “I assume you have a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Vivienne hasn’t been to a single studio session at the summer institute?”

Something froze inside him. “There’s been nothing on the schedule.”

“Is that so?” An edge crept into her voice. “I find that strange, seeing as I wrote the schedule myself.”

Thomas said nothing. To speak would be to disagree, and he didn’t get the sense Amelia would take kindly to any opposition. In any case, he had a sinking feeling he knew exactly what—or who—had happened to the schedule.

“We paid good money to ensure her place in the program,” Amelia went on. “I was able to pull some strings, but she can’t afford another absence. Dance is Vivienne’s life. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly, ma’am,” said Thomas, and he meant it. “It won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t,” said Amelia as she left the way she’d come.

He found Vivienne in the family’s solarium, and she wasn’t alone. He could hear the raised voice well before he reached the open door.

“This isn’t a game to me, Vivienne,” a man snapped. “This is my life .”

Thomas rounded the corner, his anger driving him forward at a clip, and slammed neatly into another body exiting the room at nearly the same speed. They each reared back, startled and infuriated.

The man in front of him was dressed in dark scrubs and sneakers. His face was drawn and several days’ worth of scruff had grown in along his jaw. Shadows sat like hollows beneath his eyes.

“Excuse you,” he snapped, and pushed past Thomas with a parting backward glance.

Thomas didn’t spare him a second thought. He was far too focused on seeking out the object of his ire. He found her seated in a wide rattan chaise, dressed in a puff of pink and applying polish to her toes with laser focus. Vivienne didn’t look up as he approached. Instead, she hyperextended her leg, foot arched, so that he was forced to draw up short or else piledrive directly into her freshly painted nails.

“He seemed nice,” he said, doing his best to exude a sense of civility. “The scrubs give him a real ‘mad scientist’ vibe.”

She wriggled her toes.

“What’s his name?”

This earned him a response. Why? So you can run and tell P-h-i-l-i-p?

“I’m just making conversation.”

She angled her head to the side, still scrutinizing her feet. The two littlest toes had been taped. The biggest sported a broad, yellowing bruise.

Do you think this shade of pink matches my complexion?

She didn’t look up at him as she asked, but the smile tucked away in the corner of her mouth told him she knew exactly why he was there. Something dangerous detonated beneath his bones.

“Here’s the thing I don’t get,” he said. “Why go to all the trouble to give me some bogus schedule when you’re the one who gets screwed over in the end?”

Vivienne retracted her foot and set to replacing the cap of her polish. She still hadn’t looked at him, and her indifference was an obvious snub.

A second, larger explosion followed the first.

“I’m not here to ruin your summer,” he said, his voice tight. “You do know that, right? You don’t have to play head games with me to get what you want.”

Outside in the yard, the lawn mower rumbled past. The hum of a distant string trimmer flooded the sun-soaked space. Slowly, Vivienne’s right hand curled over her heart, then met her left in a jeering cradle.

Crybaby.

He flattened his outrage into a quiet “Excuse me?”

That’s the name of the polish. She stuck out her arm and wiggled her fingers just underneath his nose. Her nails were the same glossy pink as her toes. I think maybe it looks better on you than me.

It occurred to him then that he’d been doing everything wrong. Fencing with a foil, when she was using a sword.

In as mild a voice as he could muster, he said, “I think I owe you an apology, Miss Farrow.”

Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. Her eyes flicked to his, some of the pretense dropping away.

He’d been too cavalier before. He saw that now. He’d misjudged her. He’d thought that maybe if he was chatty enough, charming enough, patient enough, he’d win her over. He’d get her to tolerate him. To like him . They might even be friends.

Philip told him fire needed oxygen to thrive. Starve a fire, and it fizzled out. But what Philip didn’t know about Thomas was that he’d never mastered the art of walking away from a fight. It just wasn’t in his nature.

And so, he threw on gasoline.

“I had no idea you and I were playing a game,” he explained. “Now I do.”

Her eyes tightened, wariness edging out her triumph.

“You win this round,” he added, and shrugged. “I’m not too proud to admit it—you made me look bad in front of your mom. You almost got me fired. But that was my mistake. I didn’t know we were keeping score.”

He let the silence tick away between them. Gave his words a moment to sink in.

“I’m in it now,” he said. “And I don’t lose. I’ve downloaded your schedule—your real schedule. You have until Monday to gloat. And then I’ll drag you to campus if I have to.”

Cold fury flickered in her eyes. That’s not in your job description.

“You’re right. It isn’t. But here’s the thing—your parents are paying me an ungodly amount of money to do whatever they tell me to do.”

So you admit you’re just a l-a-c-k-e-y.

What he was was broke. Directionless. Desperate. She thought she’d shame him?

He didn’t have any shame.

“If that’s what you want to call it,” he said, “then go ahead. I’m here to do a job. I’d rather be friends, but if this is how you want to play it, fine. You don’t have to like me, Miss Farrow, but you’re sure as shit not going to get me fired.”

She stared up at him, silent. Always silent. Her stare was molten gold.

“I’ll see you around,” he said, and turned to go.

He was halfway to the door when the tinkle of breaking glass drew him back. He turned to find the bottle of nail polish shattered across the floor where she’d thrust it. Crybaby pink ran like mercury along the grout.

You’re right , she signed, after a beat.

“Oh yeah? About what?”

I’m not going to get you fired. A smile sharpened the corners of her mouth, as alluring as it was dangerous. I’m going to make you quit.