Page 77 of Where the Roses Bloom

“You lost her the day you stopped treatin’ her like a person and started treatin’ her like property. And she’s not gonna carry that weight inmyhouse.”

I reached out and wiped the mirror clean with my forearm. Hard.

Just my reflection now.

Nothing but me.

“Try me again,” I said. “See how long you last.”

And then—bang bang bang—a knock on the front door, hard and fast.

“Rhett!”

I turned so fast my neck popped.

“Rhett, it’s me! Open the damn door!”

I moved quick through the house and wrenched the dooropen, still half expecting something unnatural on the other side.

But it was just Silas.

He stood there in his work boots and sun-faded T-shirt, one hand shielding his eyes like he’d jogged over from town and hadn’t quite caught his breath.

“You okay?” he asked, frowning at me. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

I stepped aside to let him in, shaking my head. “Don’t say that unless you mean it.”

He gave me a look—half wary, half annoyed—and crossed the threshold.

The second he stepped inside, he paused. Just for a beat.

His eyes swept the entryway, then flicked toward the stairs.

I clocked it.

“You feel that?” I asked.

“Feel what?”

I didn’t answer. Hedidfeel it. He just didn’t want to say it.

“Came to talk curse stuff,” he said, finally turning back to me. “Been thinkin’ on your situation with the girl. I don’t want you to take this lightly, what happened with our folks and with Amelia?—”

I gestured vaguely toward the kitchen. “Coffee’s fresh.”

Silas stuttered. “Are…are you listening?”

“Not really,” I admitted, already halfway to the kitchen. “You want cream?”

“Rhett.”

I stopped to look back at him.

My brother was still standing in the foyer like something was keeping him from stepping in deeper. His eyes weren’t on me anymore. They were down the hall…toward Hazel’s study.

“You ever have a dream that sticks with you?” he asked, voice rough. “Not just haunts you, but…warnsyou?”

It made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end…made me want to call Willow. She’d said she would be distracted tending to Jasmine Evers all day, maybe until the evening…but I needed her beside me. I didn’t trust there wasn’t some dark force out there, working against us.