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I should scream for Gage. He's down the hall behind a wall thin enough that I heard him breathing at midnight.

I pull the curtain back instead.

She's standing at my window.

There's no roof under her. No ladder, no tree, no ledge. Just fourteen feet of cold black air between her shoes and the frozen grass, and she's standing on it the way you'd stand on a kitchen floor.

She's tiny. Round face, silver bun, reading glasses on a little beaded chain. A cardigan the color of oatmeal, buttoned to the throat against the weather.

She looks like someone's grandmother waiting for a bus.

In her arms, folded neat, she's holding my pillow.

The one I left on my own bed, because I packed my whole life in four minutes yesterday and forgot it.

"You left this behind." She pats it. "You'll never sleep on his."

My throat closes.

"Open the window, dear. It's cold out here."

"You can't come in." I don't know how I know to say that. I just know.

"No." She smiles, and it's a nice smile, and that's the worst part. "Not on my own."

The frost climbs. It spreads across the glass from her side and mine at once, feathering white over the panes until the only clear place left is the circle in front of her face.

"There are lines drawn around this house," she says. "The lantern woman's work. Tidy, for her. They hold out everything that wants in."

"Good."

"Lines are yours, sweetheart." She tips her head. "A door doesn't care who's outside. It just needs one person on the inside."

Cold air moves against my knuckles.

I look down.

My hand is on the latch.

I don't remember reaching for it. My fingers are curled around the metal and it's warm, warmer than my skin, and the frost has melted in five clean shapes where I'm touching it.

Maren.

Sid's voice lands in the middle of my skull like a dropped plate. No dryness in it. No superiority. My name, and under it something I've never heard from him.

Don't open it.

"I'm not." My voice comes out thin. "I'm not doing anything."

The latch turns under my palm.

A quarter inch. Slow and smooth, like a hand I can't see is helping.

I grab it with both hands and hold. The metal keeps rotating against my fingers and my arms shake with the effort of trying to stop something I'm apparently also doing.

"There now," the woman says, delighted. "You see?"

"Stop it."