Page 120 of The Midnight Knock

I have to stop you, Thomas said, tears in his eyes.He says that if I don’t stop you, everything will break.

Tabitha remembered the spark as Thomas struck the match. The next thing she knew, she was here, waking up again, just like always. She was observing her own memories like a woman watching a film.

She’d never had patience for the movies. Her mind always wandered. Now, for instance, as Tabitha watched herself fix the linens on room 5’s bed, she wondered if Jack Allen Cross was even more dangerous than she’d once thought.

She wondered if maybe, after these endless nights of death and pain, her brother might have finally lost his mind.

And then, at four o’clock, the silver glare passed over the sky, and once again the world was in motion.

There was so much Tabitha still didn’t understand about their father’s ceremony, but she knew that the silver light signaled the moment when a new loop properly began. Without deliberate intervention, things would repeat as they always did—an object in motion, after all, will remain in motion—but after the silver glare faded from the sky, anything was possible, at least theoretically. At least for the next twelve hours.

Tabitha never did get used to that thought.

Here in room 5, she tossed pillows onto a bed, where they landed at just the right angle to look dense and inviting. She heard a familiartinkof glass: that crack, the one that changed everything, spreading again over the bathroom’s mirror.

What she didnothear was the steady scrubbing of Thomas’s brush on the porcelain of the bathtub.

Instead, Tabitha heard only silence in the bathroom. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. The first twitches of anxiety spread in her belly. That silence was new. That silence might be bad.

Better safe than sorry, she thought. Tabitha eased a hand behind the nightstand. She unplugged the cord of the room’s heavy brass lamp, just in case.

The air shifted behind her, and Tabitha knew she’d been right to be afraid.

Tabitha wrapped both hands around the lamp, gripping it like a cudgel, and began to turn, but she was too late. Before she could even get her momentum going, something wrapped itself around her neck and jerked Tabitha backward, away from the nightstand. The lamp slipped through her hands, landing hard on her foot, but she didn’t feel the pain.

She was too busy clawing at her throat. She tried to scream but found she lacked the air.

For his part, Thomas was trying not to cry. In his fists he held the two ends of a tightly wound towel. It served as a decent garrote, just as Jack Allen had promised him it would. Tabitha was not the only one who’d taken stock of last night’s events as the twins had watched the earlier, immutable part of their day play out. And when the silver glare set the world into motion again, she was not the only one who’d known that something drastic might need to happen.

The only difference? Thomas wasn’t entirely alone.

“It’s fine, son. It’s fine.” Jack Allen’s whisper was soothing in his ear, paternal. “She’s not really dying, you know. The two of you will start over again together tomorrow, right as rain.”

Tabitha fought. Thomas wept.

“You’re doing the right thing, son,” Jack Allen said. “You’re saving the world.”

At long last—much, much longer than Thomas would have thought possible—Tabitha finally stopped struggling. Her face had turned blue. Her eyes bulged hideously from their sockets. Thomaseased her to the floor, his chest heaving, and pressed a finger to his sister’s throat. He found no pulse.

“It’s fine, son,” Jack Allen whispered again. “It’s fine. You’ll see her again tomorrow. She just needs to calm down a little.”

There was a knock at the adjoining door that connected this room to room 4. Sarah Powers said, “Is everything okay?”

Thomas caught his breath. He forced himself to smile. “Just dropped a lamp. Nothing to worry about.”

There was a pause, their cousin clearly not entirely convinced, but in the end, she said simply, “I’m going to the house out back. I’ll see y’all when it’s time.”

“Good luck over there.”

Thomas heard steps across the back porch. The faint whisper as Sarah’s boots crossed the dirt.

He rose. He replaced the lamp his sister had dropped. Plugged it back in. Tried to smooth a dent the fall had made in the lampshade and gave up. He hooked his hands under Tabitha’s shoulders and started dragging her toward the front door. He’d get her into the supply closet. She’d be fine there for the night.

She’s not really dead, Thomas told himself.She’s not really dead.

There wasn’t time for more thinking. The guests would be here any minute, and Jack Allen had so many instructions.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS?ETHAN