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My front door is standing open.

I locked it at nine o'clock this morning and I haven't touched it since.

32

GAGE

STILL FOUR DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

The door is standing open and there's nothing on the handle.

"Behind me."

"Gage."

"Get behind me."

She gets behind me. That's how I know how scared she is.

Cass takes the back of the house with two wolves. I take the front. For six minutes there's nothing in my ears but my own breathing and Maren's boots deliberately staying where I asked.

Nothing’s taken. Her purse is on the chair. Her earrings are in a dish by the sink where anyone could have lifted them.

The whole place smells like a house nobody has lived in for days.

Something opened a door that was locked at nine o'clock this morning and left not one molecule of itself behind doing it.

Twice tonight my nose has been useless. It was never useless before this week.

Then the spare room.

That door sticks. She's mentioned it to me twice and I've been meaning to plane it since August.

It's standing open.

Inside, one cardboard box has been pulled to the middle of the floor and the lid set down beside it, squared up, the corners lined with the corners of the box.

Nothing else in that room has been touched. There's dust on everything but this.

Maren comes in under my arm before I can stop her and goes very still.

"That's my mom's."

Block letters on the side in black marker, a woman's hand. MAREN. WINTER.

"someone broke into my house," she says, "and got my mother's winter clothes down."

"There's no scent on it. Same as the walk. Same as my frost."

Her mouth drops open. She looks up at me.

"You're telling me finally?"

"I'm telling you."

We carry the box twelve feet and set it on my kitchen table.

Sid is up on the counter at the far end, tail wrapped around his feet, watching the creature that has been in my kitchen since Saturday night.