Page 23 of Home Before Dark

WHERE??

Such a terse question, which raises several more. Where is what? Why is someone looking for it? And, above all, who wrote this? Because it’s certainly not my father’s handwriting.

I hold the page close to my face, as if that will help me better make sense of it. I’m still staring at those emphatic question marks when I hear a noise.

A creak.

Coming from the room next door.

The Indigo Room.

I whirl around to the doorway that separates it from the parlor, and for a split second I expect to see Mister Shadow standing there. Stupid, I know. But growing up with the Book has trained me to think he’s real, even though he’s not. He can’t be.

Mister Shadow isn’t there, of course. Nothing is. Just beyond the doorway, the Indigo Room sits dark and silent and still.

It’s not until I turn back to the desk that I hear another creak.

Louder than the first.

I shoot a glance at the desk’s oval mirror. Reflected in the glass, just over my shoulder, is the doorway to the Indigo Room. Inside, it’s still dark, still silent.

Thensomethingmoves.

A pale blur passing the doorway.

There and gone in an instant.

I rush to the Indigo Room, trying not to think of Mister Shadow, when all I can do is think of Mister Shadow, even though three words echo through my head.

He. Doesn’t. Exist.

Which means it’s something else. An animal, most likely. Something that knows this place is unoccupied 364 days a year. Something I definitely don’t want hanging around now that I’m here.

Inside the Indigo Room, I hit the light switch by the door. Nothing happens to the chandelier dangling from the ceiling. Either the wiring is shot or the bulbs have all burned out. Still, the light spilling in from the parlor allows me to make out some of the room’s details. I notice kelly-green walls, parquet floors, more furniture dressed like ghosts.

What I don’t see is Indigo Garson’s portrait over the fireplace. Just like in the great room, the stone is painted gray.

I turn away from the fireplace, and something lurches at me from a pitch-black corner of the room.

Not an animal.

Not Mister Shadow.

An old woman, startlingly pale in the half-light.

A scream leaps from my throat as the woman draws near. She stumbles toward me, her arms outstretched, slippered feet threatening to trample the hem of her nightgown. Soon she’s upon me, her hands on my face, the palms pressing hard against my cheeks, my nose, my mouth. At first, I think she’s trying to smother me, but then her hands drop to my shoulders as she pulls me into a desperate embrace.

“Petra, my baby,” she says. “You’ve come back to me.”

JUNE 26

Day 1

Moving from the apartment in Burlington to Baneberry Hall was easy, mostly because there wasn’t much to move beyond my many books, our clothes, and a few assorted knickknacks we’d accumulated over the years. We decided to use most of the furniture that came with the house—more out of budgetary concerns than anything else. The only furnishings we didn’t keep were the bedroom sets.

“I will not force my daughter to sleep in a dead girl’s bed,” Jess insisted. “And I definitely won’t sleep in the bed of the man who killed her.”

Another thing she insisted on was burning a bundle of sage, which was supposed to clear the house of negative energy. So while Jess roamed around with a fistful of smoldering herbs, trailing smoke like a walking stick of incense, I stayed in the kitchen and unpacked the extensive set of dishes she had also inherited from her grandfather.

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