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Vivienne woke, quite absurdly, to the crowing of a rooster. Her very first thought was that she must have been dreaming. Her second thought was that she hadn’t the slightest idea where she was. She stared up at the ceiling of an unfamiliar room, tucked inside an unfamiliar bed. Wrapped in the lingering haze of sleep, it took her several seconds to remember.

She was in her brother’s house.

It hadn’t quite sunk in yet.

She had a brother . The word felt foreign, after so many years of thinking herself alone.

Outside the room, the rooster crowed a second time. She didn’t have the energy to go and investigate. A faint but febrile ache pulsed in her joints. She suspected it was the end result of being swallowed up by an eldritch horror and then dragged through gaps in the sky. The whole of it felt like a fever dream. The bent bowers of bone. The ever-shifting features of the Not-Thomas. The stunted shape of her lifelong haunt hovering alongside her.

She shut her eyes and pictured its face. After all these years, it hadn’t been what she’d expected. She’d envisioned something slippery and strange. A parasite, with wide alien eyes and a predator’s smile.

Instead, she’d been faced with an angry little girl with honey-colored eyes.

She wondered, not for the first time, if maybe she hadn’t done it to herself—if she hadn’t calcified the bits of her that were tender to the touch. Turned her fury to poison, growing angrier and angrier, until it spilt clean out of her.

No creature ever started out with venom in their bite. They evolved.

They survived , and so had she.

Stretching out her limbs, she rolled onto her side.

Thomas lay beside her, flat on his back and breathing deeply, one arm crooked over a stomach bound in gauze. On his wrist sat the bracelet she’d given him, the word CRYBABY spelled out in black-and-white lettering. They’d fallen asleep hand in hand the previous night, too tired to even turn down the sheets. At the sight of him lying there, the flare in her chest shone brighter still.

He’d come after her.

Over and over. Again and again.

Just like he’d promised.

She’d given him a hundred reasons to walk away. A thousand. Anyone else would have turned tail and run at the first gnash of her teeth. But not Thomas. He’d stayed. Until the end, and then beyond it. She hadn’t known it was possible to be loved like that.

She hadn’t known it was possible to love like that.

She’d been told, after—after the ambulance, after the hospital, after the sleepy drive home in the predawn haze—that the House had been constructed atop a great locus of power. It concentrated her own nightmarish abilities, brought Thomas’s into overdrive. In his fury, he’d shouldered through worlds.

He’d shattered the skies for her.

Beneath the soft light in the window, she could just make out the tattoo inscribed along his forearm. Non omnis moriar. The handiwork was a blocky stick and poke, as if it had been done by an amateur. Reaching for him, she traced the lettering with a whisper-light touch.

“It means, ‘I shall not wholly die,’” spoke Thomas, startling her.

She glanced up and found him wide-awake, the morning light pooling in his eyes. Dimly, she wondered how long he’d been watching her. Probably as long as she’d been watching him. A single butterfly fluttered through her stomach at the thought.

“I’m pretty sure it’s from a poem,” he said, angling his arm to better see the ink. “Everyone in my fraternity has one. It was a mandatory part of initiation. That, and the occasional reconnaissance mission through gaps in the sky.”

Did you use a steak knife? she asked, thinking of Frankie.

He frowned. “What?”

Nothing. Never mind. What were you looking for?

His focus dropped to her hands, cradled between them. He didn’t ask why she still wasn’t speaking, after everything. Anyone else might have, but not Thomas. He understood. He’d always understood. She felt suddenly and unequivocally seen, all the way down to her marrow.

Quietly, he said, “We were supposed to see if anything would follow us back.”

She thought of the bottom of the gorge, that interminable voice slithering out from the dark, and suppressed a shiver. Why didn’t you tell me?

“Tell you what? That I used to experiment with the occult? It’s not exactly something you bring up in casual conversation.”

We’ve never had a casual conversation.

“True. You were too busy trying to get me fired.” He smiled at the look on her face. “I don’t know, it just didn’t seem like relevant job experience at the time.”

What about now?

He considered her question, ribboning a strand of her hair through his fingers. “Now that we’re on the other side, I have a strong suspicion that it’s why Philip hired me. I think he assumed I’d dealt with a situation like yours before.”

Have you?

“Vivienne,” he said, fixing her in a solemn gaze, “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

She’d been asking about the Vivienne in the glass, but it was clear from the look on his face that he meant the Vivienne right in front of him. Too late, she understood that was all he’d cared about from the start. She’d spent so much time trying to hide the parts of her that were rotten, she’d neglected the rest. The girl in her skin. The flesh and blood bits.

Again, she had that dizzying sense of being seen. Of being loved .

A thousand emotions bubbled to the surface, each of them as indecipherable as the next. She’d spent so long with her own two hands wrapped around her neck, suffocating herself. Silencing herself. It was overwhelming, to suddenly feel so much all at once. She wanted very badly then to say something to him. Something meaningful. Something earnest. But she didn’t know where to begin.

Her voice raw from lack of use, she landed on, “I think there’s a rooster in the house.”

The beginnings of a grin dimpled his cheek. “If I know Price,” he said, crooking an arm under his head, “it wouldn’t be the strangest thing he has living under this roof.”

They lay like that for a while longer, watching the sun burn off the lingering haze. Slowly, the light turned from pale white to a warm, buttery yellow. Outside in the hall came the sounds of the house beginning to stir. Pipes rattled. Floorboards creaked. A shower kicked on a few rooms away. Eventually, Thomas drifted back to sleep.

She waited until she was certain he wouldn’t wake and then slipped out into the hall. Pulling the door softly shut, she drew up short. A rooster stood there, piebald and suspicious, eyeing her as though she were the stranger among the two of them.

And she supposed she was.

The moment she took a step in the bird’s direction, it fled, bobbling down the hall in a panic. She followed after it, feeling a little like Alice trailing after the white rabbit as she made her way down a crooked staircase and into a broad marble foyer.

After a brief search, she found the rooster perched atop a broad executive desk inside a sparsely decorated office. And he wasn’t alone.

Colton Price sat at the desk, his brow furrowed and a pair of round-wire frames sliding low on his nose. From the looks of it, he appeared to be doing a crossword. Behind him, a lopsided painting of a monarch butterfly unfurled in a wide mural of rich golds and honeyed browns. It made him look just a little bit like a winged creature himself, inhuman and imperial. His eyes flicked up to hers as she stood marveling at the funny juxtaposition of it all.

“Hello,” he said.

The silence that followed was pronounced. She wasn’t sure what to say to fill it—if she wanted to say anything at all. She knew he signed, at least a little. She’d seen him talking to his girlfriend in the hospital waiting room, he and Lane bent close together in a world of their own.

“You dance, right?” he asked, when she was quiet. “Walsh says you’re a ballerina.”

She nodded.

“Excellent.” He gestured to his crossword. “Five across, I can’t figure it out. The clue is a step in which one foot is beaten against the other leg or foot. I’ve got a t three letters in, but I haven’t been able to get the rest of it.”

She smiled over at him, finger spelling the answer. He watched her meaningfully and then snatched a pencil from out behind his ear.

“Battu,” he said. “Great.”

He didn’t say anything more—didn’t force conversation, didn’t pepper her with questions, didn’t divert to uncomfortable small talk. With Philip, the silence had always meant he was done with her. She was dismissed, discharged, put back on the shelf until he needed her next. With Colton, the quiet felt like an invitation. She took it, hovering in the open door and studying his profile.

She supposed there were similarities, if she really looked for them. They were both sharply featured, all angles and edges. They had the same dark hair and a pert, straight nose—though his fit his face and didn’t look too pretty. The resemblance stopped there, but it was enough.

The rooster let out an irritable warble. Colton set down his pencil and peered up at her. She wondered if he was doing the same as she’d just been—silently charting their similarities.

Finally, he asked, “Do you want to see our brother’s room?”

It was quiet there, too. In Liam’s room. They sat on the edge of a pristinely made bed, in a bedroom littered with dozens of headless trophies. She didn’t ask about them, and Colton didn’t explain. Instead, he handed her a photo. The frame was chipped gilt, the glass cracked down the middle. Years of sun exposure had faded the colors of the yellow kayak and orange life jackets, but the faces of the two grinning boys were unmistakable. The younger of the two was Colton, gap-toothed and sunburnt. And the older—

It was the boy from her dreams. The drowned boy, who’d been both enemy and friend. She ran a finger over the crack in the glass and felt a deep and terrible sadness. The sort of grief that didn’t have a name. For a heartbeat, she considered telling Colton but quickly thought better of it.

She’d been haunted by Mikhail, too, and in the end, it hadn’t been him at all.

Just a pitiful likeness, sent to lure her into the belly of a beast.

“I was thinking of redoing this room,” said Colton suddenly. He’d picked up an autographed baseball from its stand and was turning it over and over in his hands. “I’ve decided I’m tired of living in a tomb.”

That startled her into looking over at him. She’d had the same thought a thousand times in her chilly house back in Connecticut, with its vast, echoing halls and its perpetual chill. She watched without speaking as Colton set the baseball back onto its stand and rose from the bed. He positioned himself wordlessly against the dresser, his hands in his pockets. His eyes roved around the dust-laden space, drinking it in.

“It could be yours,” he said. “If you wanted it.”

In the photo, the two brothers smiled up at her. One living. One dead. Both hers. Her fingers tightened on the frame. She didn’t feel like she had any right to them.

“My mom will be wondering where I am,” she finally said. It came out rough-hewn and unfamiliar.

“Are you close?” asked Colton, peering too astutely over at her. “You and your mom?”

After a moment’s consideration, she said, “I’m all she has.”

He nodded as if he understood. And maybe he did. Maybe he understood better than anyone. Maybe they’d led very similar lives, without ever meeting. She’d read that about identical twins once—that they made the same choices, chased the same dreams. Maybe the same was true for other siblings. Even just half.

“Well, if you ever need it,” he said, “you have a place here.”

He said it so casually, without caveat or conditions. It should have been a comfort, and yet her hackles raised regardless. She hated how easily her guard went up—how immediately she wanted to ask what he expected in return. Surely, he wanted something. Everyone always wanted something.

But he only smirked and added, “If you’re okay with the occasional poltergeist, that is.”

And a rooster , she added, bringing the tip of her thumb to her forehead.

“And a rooster,” agreed Colton. “Lane’s watching Bastard for some friends. With any luck, they’ll come get him today. Roosters are against Boston’s city ordinances.”

She found herself smiling in spite of her misgivings. A wide, open smile that mirrored his. It was another reflection, this time in the form of a brother. It was a little bit funny, how she kept discovering her own humanity in the faces of those around her. In the care they took with her. Suddenly, she wanted to tell him she’d do it—she’d stay. She managed to bite her tongue just before the words could slip out, atrophied and eager.

There were still some loose ends to tie up back home. Apologies to be made. Rifts to be mended. She’d left a path of carnage in her wake on her way out of town. Hadley. Frankie. Hudson. Reed. She couldn’t disappear. Not when she still owed them an explanation.

“Maybe someday,” she said softly, setting the picture back onto its shelf.

The faintest hint of a smile shone in Colton’s eyes. “Someday works.”

That’s where Thomas eventually found them—sitting together in companionable silence, the sun pouring through the windows in dusty reams of gold. They heard him before they saw him, his feet thudding heavily down the hall. He skidded into the open door just a touch too fast, wincing as he caught himself against the frame.

“Is there a fire?” asked Colton, looking amused.

Thomas cut him a baleful look. “It’s been a long forty-eight hours.”

“I’d agree with that,” said Colton. Then, “It’s good to see you on your feet.”

Thomas glanced between them, frowning slightly. “You know,” he said, “now that I see the two of you sitting side by side like this, I’m finding it a little bit unsettling.”

Colton’s mouth split into a grin. “It’s okay, Walsh. You can admit you think I’m pretty.”

···

Later, once the sun had well and truly risen, they said their goodbyes on the front porch, hovering in the shade of the steepled portico. Lane stood beside Colton, dressed all in black from head to toe, the rooster tucked under one arm.

“I’m sorry you have to leave so soon,” she said. “We have friends coming by later. I really think you’d like them.”

“They’re an acquired taste,” said Colton. “Anyway, she’ll be back.”

He said it with confidence, as though her return was inevitable, but she could see in his expression that he wasn’t sure. She knew, in that moment, that solitude had been etched into him the same way it was etched into her. That he hated it just the same.

I’ll be back , she agreed, and she meant it.

His smile was slow but sincere. “Excellent.”

Down in the street, Thomas pulled open the passenger door of his truck. Vivienne dithered on the top step a moment longer, wondering whether or not she should go in for a hug. Lane made the decision for her, dumping the rooster unceremoniously in Colton’s arms and tugging Vivienne in close. Vivienne experienced a single beat of uncertainty before returning the embrace.

“I’m so glad you exist,” Lane whispered in her ear, just before letting her go.

Vivienne carried that with her all the way home, sitting with it in the front seat of Thomas’s truck, the music blasting and the windows down. I’m so glad I exist , she thought. Up ahead, the road unfurled in an endless ribbon of black. It seemed to go on forever, carving into the mountains and out of sight.

“I called my sister,” said Thomas, turning down the music. “I think we’re going to have a problem. She’s in love with Molly and Judd. She’s ready to fight you for permanent custody.”

The wind whipped Vivienne’s hair into her face. She pushed it out of her eyes, a thought occurring to her in a sudden, sinking rush.

Will you go home , she signed, after you drop me off?

It was a while before he answered. A new song came on, the singer’s voice filtering out through the speakers in a wind-bitten tenor.

“As you may or may not have heard,” Thomas said, “I’ve been let go from my job.”

She turned to face him in full. She hadn’t even considered that.

“It does make sense,” he said quickly, before she could think of something supportive to say. “Moving back home, I mean. It’s what unemployed college dropouts usually do.”

I’m sorry , she signed.

“Don’t be,” he said. “I’m glad I took the job. I’d take it again.”

An oversize flatbed rushed past, carting lumber. Thomas drummed his thumbs against the steering wheel, matching the beat of the music.

“Price, uh,” he started, and cleared his throat. “Price has some connections. In Boston. I have a phone interview lined up for next Monday.”

In B-o-s-t-o-n , she repeated.

“Well, yeah,” said Thomas. “The job would be in Boston.” He cut another glance her way. “I, uh, heard a rumor that you might be headed up that way, too.”

I might be , she signed. I haven’t decided.

“No?” He checked his side mirror, changing lanes. “Well, you don’t have to figure it out today. You have time.”

So do you , she signed.

“Yeah.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Hey, maybe if we both end up in the same city, I can take you out on a real date.”

Her heart gave a violent flutter. She pressed her fists together, thumbs extended. A date?

“Yeah, a date—dinner, a movie, a walk in the Seaport.” He paused, his cheeks coloring, and added, “You know, things you do with a girlfriend.”

A girlfriend. It was a normal word, for a normal girl.

Quietly, she said, “Tommy?”

He whipped around to face her before she could say anything more, the truck drifting slightly into the adjacent lane. A horn honked and he corrected course with a muttered curse.

“Sorry.” His eyes darted back to hers. His cheeks were flush with color. “What?”

“ Am I your girlfriend?”

His laugh was quiet. “I hope so.”

She tugged the strap of her seatbelt loose and leaned across the center console, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “I love you,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m glad you exist.”

He caught her hand in his as she dropped back into her seat. “I love you, too,” he said. “But you already knew that.”

Up ahead, the road stretched endlessly on. She tipped her head back against the headrest and shut her eyes. Today was going to be a very good day. She could feel it in her bones.