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There is no scent. Nothing.

Not rot. Not smoke. Not a woman, not an animal, not one thing that was ever alive.

I've smelled every creature these people have thrown at us, and I've never once smelled nothing.

Behind me, upstairs, Maren's window slides open two inches, and her voice comes down through the cold, thin and wide awake.

"Gage. Did you make coffee, or is someone already in the kitchen?"

22

MAREN

SIX DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

Someone walked a full circle around Gage's house last night in bare feet.

He tells me before I've had coffee. Not a good sign.

"Show me."

"Maren."

"You came in here and told me. Don't hold back about it now."

So he shows me.

Prints run all the way around the house in one long unbroken loop. Past the fire pit. Under my window. Along the north side where the gutter drips.

They stop at the front step, point at the door, and they don't go back out.

I put my boot down next to one.

"They're smaller than mine."

"Half a size," he says. "Narrow through the heel. Old shoes, if any."

"And what do they smell like?"

"Nothing."

I look up at him. In six days I have watched this man scent a burned door, a stolen pillow, and a woman standing on air. His nose is the most reliable thing in my life right now, including the plumbing.

"Nothing at all?"

"I used my hunter’s nose to breathe it in." His jaw works. "Rot. Smoke. Blood. Rosemary. I know what all of that smells like now. This is the first thing I've come across that smells like nothing was ever there. No scent. Which means that there is something most likely masking the true scent."

The wind comes up the north side and I get cold all the way through in a way that has nothing to do with October.

I sealed the yard last night. I felt the seam close under my hand like a zipper going up.

But something was already on this side of it that stayed.

"You didn’t have to tell me," I say.

He looks at me like I suggested he eat the porch.

"That isn't an accusation. I'm saying you could have decided I'd sleep better. Everyone in my life has been deciding for me the last two weeks."