Now I’m even more stressed than I was when I woke up. I slip out from beneath Ophelia, drape a blanket over her sleeping form, tug on some sweatpants, and gently pull the door shut behind me.
Scrolling through a few work emails in the darkness, I pad down to the kitchen for a glass of water.
The house is quiet. Everything is eerily quiet, especially for a busy London borough. I’m tempted to check under all the beds, but I’m wary of giving in to paranoia. I don’t want to fall onto the same road my mother fell onto.
I flick the lights on in the ostentatious reception room, and in the home office. My father’s oversized poster of a Green Aviation helicopter behind the desk makes my stomach churn.
In the kitchen, I pull a pint glass from the cabinet, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. In the window above the sink, I glance overthe shoulder of my reflection to check no one is there, like when I’d stayed up too late watching horror movies as a kid.
I turn the cold tap on, and then the glass window in front of me shatters with a nauseatingcrack.
The whole house is drowned in a deafening alarm that’s so jarring, it sounds like it’s coming from inside my head, rattling the bones of my skull.
I snap my head to the side in an effort to avoid the thousands of glass shards that fly toward me. Light burns behind my closed eyelids, and when I swing them open and make a break for the door, the floodlights on the security system drown the small garden in a harsh white light.
At the far end, a black-clad figure is scrambling up the trellis on the brick wall.
I yank open the glass door, hurtling across the garden just as the hooded figure drops down the other side of the wall. I climb it with ease, but when I push myself up onto the cold brick, the overgrown alleyway beneath me is deserted and quiet.
Fury burns beneath my skin, chest rising and falling with badly contained frustration.
If Ophelia wasn’t in the house, I’d search the streets. I bite out a curse as I drop back into the garden, gaze snagging on the black glove that hangs on the trellis, tangled in the ivy.
I pluck it free from the inky green leaves and head back into the house with one person on my mind.
She’s pale and wide-eyed in the threshold to the kitchen, the security alarm so loud that it’s hard to form a thought. Her small feet are bare on the tile, too close to all the broken glass. I slip pasther and reset the system in the hallway, and the silence that follows has my ears ringing.
“This is my fault,” is what she eventually says, the two of us standing and staring at the glass that looks like a layer of snow all over the kitchen counter. There’s a brick in the kitchen sink.
“No,” I manage, but I’m too angry to say much else. I fire off a rapid string of texts to Mack and Brendan.
Whoever that was, they’ll die for scaring her.
I grab our jackets from the door and pocket my wallet, slipping my hoodie over her head. “Brendan is sorting us a room somewhere.”
She shakes her head. “I should get back to Sorrowsong.”
“No.”
“I was warned so many times.”
“Ophelia.”
“It’s not safe for you to be with me. Not until I’ve found whoever is doing this.”
“This was probably a teenager trying his luck with a burglary. This has nothing to do with you,” I say, though I’m not even convincing myself. Whoever this was clearly waited for me to be in the kitchen before … what? I don’t understand their motive.
They didn’t anticipate the security system. That much is clear.
“Let’s just get some sleep, let the cops search the place.”
There’s a distant look in her eye, her shoulders drawn up like she’s just waiting for something else to hit us. I exhale a slow, steadying breath, tugging her into my embrace. I bury my nose in her hair, and no matter how hard I hold her, it doesn’t feel hard enough. Her heart is a thundering, galloping beat in her chest. “You’re okay, Twist.”
“I wish I had a home to run to.”
It’s a whispered confession, perhaps not meant for me to hear, but it’s a red-hot poker to the chest, because she’s right.
I’ll get off the plane home, and the house will be busy and full. My mom will be waiting for me; my sisters will be ready to insult whatever public appearances I made this week. My bedroom will be warm, and Josie will be snoring in the room next door.
