Page 49

I walked slowly from room to room, trying to imagine her inside them.

Bedroom.

Another bedroom.

The bathroom with Bryce's defective window, which, because apparently the universe occasionally enjoyed consistency, really didn't shut.

Then the front room.

I stopped beside the bay window.

From there, I could see the porch roof, the faded green paint, the kid's bike chained to the railing. Beyond it stretched the same street I'd been standing on minutes earlier.

She would have stood here.

The thought had followed me from the sidewalk, but inside the apartment it became something else.

My mother had looked through this glass.

Maybe not this exact glass. Twenty-six years and Cleveland winters had probably taken care of that. But she had stood in this space and looked down at this street. Toward the end, she would have done it pregnant with me.

I put my fingertips against the windowsill.

Had she known what was coming?

Had she been afraid?

Had she ever stood here with one hand over her stomach and thought about me?

"Hazel." River's voice came from somewhere behind me.

I pulled my hand away.

He stood in the kitchen doorway, and whatever he'd found had wiped the last trace of amusement from his face.

"Come look at this."

The kitchen was older than everything else in the apartment. Someone had installed a built-in dresser along one wall back when houses were made for people who expected to live in them longer than a lease term. Layers of white paint had nearly swallowed the upper drawers, sealing some of them shut.

River was crouched near the floor where the cabinet met the wall.

By the time I reached him, he had already removed a square piece of baseboard.

I stared at it in his hand. "Please tell me you didn't just tear apart the apartment we've had the keys to for seven minutes."

"There were wards behind it."

That shut me up.

"I could feel them," he added.

I lowered myself beside him.

The square hadn't broken away. Someone had cut it deliberately, then fitted it back into place so carefully that beneath decades of paint and grime, no one would have noticed unless they knew exactly where to look.

My heartbeat climbed into my throat.

"What kind of wards?"