They both glanced up at Merle House.
The larger world was unrecognizably changed from what it had been when he was a kid, but this place seemed eternal. And though he hadn’t set foot here in years, it felt as if he’d never left, as if he was still the same teenager he was the night he’d left for the last time. The air was crisp and cool, a light breeze.
“I was so sorry to hear about your wife,” said Claire. “I meant to call.”
The cab drove off, disappearing down the drive.
The wind tossed Claire’s skirt, and the hem of her belted jacket, the strands of her auburn hair.
“Thank you,” he said. There wasn’t really anything to say when people offered their condolences. It had stopped feeling like a gut punch every time, so that was progress.
“I heard you had . . . an incident at work,” he said.
“I . . . ,” she said, looking up to the sky. “I was attacked by a patient. Violently. I’m—um—you know—getting better.”
He nodded. She looked fragile, a bit edgy. There was some faint scarring on her throat and jaw. The side of her face seemed swollen, off somehow. But she’d barely aged, the volume of her beauty only deeper, richer than it had been when she was younger.
“Wow, Claire,” he said softly, gently touching her arm. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”
She shifted away just slightly, subtly, and he drew his hand back.
“Horrible things happen, right?” she said. “You just have to move on, try to get past it.”
“That’s true.”
He looked back at the house, out toward the woods.
“Matthew emailed you?” asked Ian. She nodded, wrapped her arms around her center.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me too. He said he needed help with the house.”
Claire nodded. “He told me that Avery March still had questions,” she said. “That he thought we all owed it to her to have a sit-down and give her anything we knew about Amelia.”
“Sounds like he’s looking to clear some bad energy from the place.”
She looked at him with a new glimmer of interest. “That’s what you do, right? Ghost hunting?”
He smiled. “It’s more like space clearing, energy balancing.”
She nodded with a little frown. “I guess that’s what I do, except with people.”
He smiled at that. “Liz used to say that we were house psychologists. We help them get over their issues and move on to find peace.”
The shadow of a smile touched her lips. “I like that.”
He heard a low murmur from behind him, and turned to see about a hundred crows perched in the trees and on the barn. They’d always lived here, this big murder of crows. Their black bodies gleamed against the gunmetal sky. He had an affinity for crows, their intelligence, their mischievous natures, their love of shiny things.
“I guess I always knew we’d need to come back here; didn’t you?” asked Claire.
He thought about it. Maybe. Maybe not.
There was a time when life was so good with Liz and their weird little business that he never thought about the past or the future. When he was just happy every day. Just like he’d asked the Dark Man that night when Mason made his wish. Silently Ian had said, in the space under Mason’s wail, I want to be happy every day. He didn’t even know what that meant until he got it with Liz.
“Shall we?” he said, making a flourish with his hand, picking up her overnight bag, and following her up the steps.
They rang the bell, and a few moments later a frazzled-looking Samantha Merle came to the door and let them in, Matthew drifting down the stairs a minute later.
“We’re having a bit of an emergency,” said Samantha, running a nervous hand through her wild hair. She looked frightened, tired, her eyes rimmed with fatigue. “Our daughter, Jewel—it seems that she’s run off.”
“Oh my God,” said Claire. “What can we do?”
Ian wasn’t even surprised to arrive here and find yet another missing girl. In fact, he had a weird sense of déjà vu. Had he had a dream that was just like this?
“It looks like, from the app that tracks her phone, that she’s at Havenwood,” Matthew interjected.
Ian almost laughed. Of course she was. Why not?
A look passed between Samantha and Matthew, not a pleasant one. And then Samantha was gone, racing out the door without another word to any of them.
Matthew brushed past them, chasing after his wife. On the porch, he called her name. But she just kept going. After a moment, he turned and came back inside.
Then, it was just the three of them in that foyer where they’d last said goodbye and never seen each other as kids again—for various reasons. Claire’s mom had gotten stricter after Amelia March went missing. Ian’s parents hadn’t wanted him to hang around with anyone connected to Mason, and that included Matthew and Claire. And, anyway, Matthew’s parents had come and taken him home the day after they were all questioned by the police. He hadn’t returned the following summer. They’d all gone off to college, except for Mason, who’d gone to juvie, then returned to work for the old man—or so Ian had heard.
“So,” said Matthew. He clapped his hands together, the sound echoing off the tall ceilings. He seemed taller—was that possible?—darker in the eyes, somehow not as nice as Ian remembered him, even from the last time he’d seen Matthew and Samantha in the city a couple of years before Liz passed. “Welcome back to Merle House.”
“Should we go with Sam?” asked Ian. “To look for Jewel.”
“Yeah, we probably should,” said Matthew.
They stepped back out into the gray light of the overcast day just in time to see a black Mercedes drift up like a shark and a tall person climb out. It took a second for Ian to place her. Avery March, Amelia’s sister.
“Sam called me,” she said as she approached. “Jewel is missing?”
Matthew lifted his palms. “Let’s not say missing. She’s gone
