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“Okay,” I whisper.
Calista leads me to the guest room and brings me a baggy T-shirt and cotton shorts to change into. The room is small and bright, the bed made neatly, the dresser bare. No clutter, just white walls and one antique painting of Jesus, browned with age, watching from across the bed.
The shower borders on scalding, but I let it burn. I stand beneath it until the dirt and blood are gone and the water runs clear.
The fear stays.
It’s almost seven in the morning when I collapse on the bed.
“You’re safe now,” Evelyn says from the doorway. “Get some rest.”
She holds my bloody and tattered nightgown. Part of Asher is pressed into the fabric. The sight makes me lose him all over again.
“Can I have that back?” I ask.
Pity softens her face. “Sweetie, it’s filthy. We’ll get you a new one.”
My fingers curl into the blanket. I nod.
She closes the door shut behind her.
I listen to her footsteps fade, letting the house go quiet. The medallion practically burns a hole through my hand, its chain rubbing against my neck. I press it to my lips before tucking it under the shirt.
It’s the only thing I have left.
This house is safer than the cemetery, but the walls feel too close.
I must find the Serpents before I disappear into this place.
CHAPTER 5
ZAIYA
It’s three in the afternoon when I wake from a solid, dreamless sleep, and my body is too heavy to rise from the bed. A warm breeze drifts through the screen, carrying the faint hum of a lawnmower and the scent of fresh-cut grass.
My eyelids resist opening, and I’m afraid to lose this feeling.
I remain still, adrift at the edge of consciousness, where nothing horrible has happened, nothing has been lost. But I know that when I open my eyes, I won’t be in my own bedroom, not even my own house. It’s like reading the first few pages of a new book I’m afraid to start, making the commitment to a world I’m not sure of.
I should get up. I should move, explore, decide what to do with this strange, unguarded freedom I’ve been handed. But I don’t.
Everything here is too quiet and gentle. Freedom waits beyond this house, but no one taught me how to walk through the front door. So I stay where I am, where I feel safe.
By now, my parents must know I’m gone. I can’t decide which is worse—to be found and returned, or to be forgotten.
A floorboard creaks outside the room, and everything in me freezes. My breath stops, my gaze locking on the worn brass knob, waiting for the familiar turn of a key that signals it’s time to start the day. My body refuses to move, instinct pulling me back into what I thought I had escaped.
The knob turns slowly. Silently.
Then Evelyn’s face appears in the narrow opening, her voice careful. “Sorry, sweetie, I wanted to check on you.”
She lingers at the threshold as if she’s the one intruding. I scramble upright before she can retreat.
“It’s okay,” I blurt out. “I’m awake.”
She steps inside, and some of my tension eases. Fully put together now in a vintage red dress with lipstick to match, her black hair falling to her chin in glossy waves that appear sculpted into place. She looks like she belongs to another era. A pin-up model from the 1940s.
The baggy T-shirt Calista loaned me hangs awkwardly on my frame. Mother would never have allowed me to be seen wearing something so uncouth. Beside Evelyn, I’m shapeless, a simple toad next to the queen.
