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Irina sighs. “No, you couldn’t get to her at the party. That’s not my fault.”

A cold feeling moves through me.

Get to her. Who? Me? Anya?

Irina presses a hand to her forehead.

“I couldn’t do anything once Nikolai arrived,” she says. “You know how he is.”

I stay very still.

My first thought is the car. My second is the pool, then the party, then every strange thing that has happened since I came into this house.

Irina lowers her voice even more. “No. I didn’t tell him anything.”

My stomach turns. Tell him what?

“I’ll handle it,” she says. “Just stay away for now.”

She ends the call.

For a few seconds, she stands there with the phone in her hand, looking tense and angry. Then she turns slightly, and I move back before she can see me.

I walk away with Anya’s cardigan clutched against my side.

Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe it has nothing to do with Anya.

Maybe Irina is talking about some completely unrelated problem, and I am only hearing danger because I have been living inside this house long enough to expect it.

But the words stay in my head.

Then I really think about the events that had transpired since I got here. I lost track of the car after it hit me. I remember the engine, the impact, Anya crying, then pieces of the house and the hospital after that. Everyone else kept talking about evidence and cameras and drivers, but I was mostly trying not to throw up every time I moved my head.

Then came the pool.

Anya slipped. I went after her. I ended up under the water, and Nikolai carried me out as he had already lived through the worst version of that moment in his head.

Surely all of this cannot be a coincidence.

The car. The pool. The birthday party.

Maybe that’s why Nikolai was so furious when I took Anya out. Not only because I disobeyed him. Not only because I embarrassed him or lied to his people.

Because he thinks someone is after her.

The thought makes my stomach turn. Who would hurt Anya?

She’s eight. She likes puzzles, horses, and cake. She asks too many questions, cheats at Uno with alarming confidence, and still sleeps with a stuffed rabbit.

Not Irina.

Jealous, rude, territorial, yes. But she’s Anya’s aunt. It can’t be her.

Then I remember Kirill at the party.

Only for a second, because at the time I thought I had misunderstood what I was seeing. He had stepped away near the hallway after checking the house, phone held low, his body angled toward the back entrance. He was speaking quietly to someone, too quietly for me to hear, and when I came around the corner, he ended the call at once.

He looked at me after that. Not guilty exactly. But alert. Like I had caught him doing something he didn’t want explained.