Page 58 of City of Liars

I knew this portrait. It hung in the upstairs sitting room in my grandmother’s house in North Carolina. The dog’s name was Anton; Grandma Ella had named him for the son of one of Great-Grandpa Charles’s business associates, on whom, she’d confided in me, she’d had a terrible crush.

His gaze lingered on the portrait. “Ella,” he said, and that single word held a world of grief. “My little girl. She was lost.” He raked his hand through his hair, the whites showing all the way around his eyes. “She was gone.”

“But you found her,” I protested. “You saved her.”

His eyes left the portrait, fixing on mine. His voice was filled with a dreadful hopelessness. “Did we?”

The fire crackled and spat, sending red-tinged shadows creeping up the walls. They gathered and took shape: a little girl; a gaunt woman; a stuffed teddy, lying abandoned in the snow. “Of course you did,” I said, uneasy. “You brought her home again.”

Tears snaked down his cheeks, dropping on the green journal. The shadows twined around his ankles, then crept upward, wrapping around his body until they obscured his face, red as blood. I wanted to turn, to run, but my feet were rooted to the floor.

I hadn’t seen him move, but suddenly he stood next to me. Cold radiated from his body, despite the warmth of the fire. His grip closed on my arm, icy and implacable. “Forgive me,” he said, from within his shroud of shadows. “You must. You have to.”

Terrified, I tried to yank my arm away, but there was no need; his grip was fading, and so was he. I could see his desk through his body. In another moment, he wasn’t there at all.

I sucked in my breath to scream—and woke up instead.

I wasn’t in the guest room anymore, where I’d fallen asleep. Instead, I stood on the rug in the study, just where I’d been in my dream. And, downstairs, I could swear the piano was playing the same melody that had drifted through my living room, the night Tessa came over.

I blinked into the darkness, my heart stuttering. Get it together, Liv.

There was no smell of tobacco, no Great-Grandpa Charles. The hearth was ash. And as I sucked in one deep breath, then another, the sound of the piano died away.

It had just been a dream. So why did it feel so real? And why was I here, in the study?

I took a deep breath, feeling very alone. Giving the study one last unnerved glance, I went to the kitchen for a glass of water, glancing at the clock on the microwave. It was 3:00 a.m. The witching hour, I thought uneasily, remembering what Tessa had said about ghosts.

First the woman at Atomic. Then my piano. Now this.

I tried my best to go back to sleep, but after thirty minutes of tossing and turning, I was getting nowhere. I kept thinking about the piano playing, kept hearing Charles begging, forgive me. Forgive him for what? Stealing Lily? Killing James? And what was with those creepy red shadows? Were they meant to be James’s blood?

That was it. Intellectually, I was sure this was just my subconscious processing the past few weeks, but on a visceral level, I’d scared the crap out of myself. I picked up my phone and texted Theo. You awake?

As soon as I’d done it, I wished I could take it back. But too late: three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again. I am now. You okay?

Crap. Sorry. Go back to sleep. I just had a stupid dream.

The dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again. Calling you.

A second later, my phone rang. “Hey. Tell me.”

I found myself blurting the whole story, from seeing the woman at Atomic to my encounter with Great-Grandpa Charles. “Do you think I’m nuts?”

Theo exhaled, the sound heavy. “No. I had a weird dream of my own.”

He told me the story of his dream about May Dressler. About waking up to hear his own piano playing. About his grandma’s pictures, the ones that matched what May showed him.

A shiver crept over my body. “Holy cannoli, Theo.”

“I keep thinking there must be a logical explanation,” he said. “But I can’t think of a goddamn thing.”

I peered into the shadows of the guest room, half-expecting to see the ghosts of May and Elizabeth standing there. “Theo?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you come over? Because this is all a little much, and I’d rather not be alone.”

There was a moment of silence, as if he were making up his mind. And then he said, “I’ll be right there.”