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She laughs, and it breaks in the middle, and she puts her forehead against my collarbone and stands there breathing.

I hold on to her in my kitchen with a monster stopped in the air eight feet away and every ward on my property down, and I'm the happiest I’ve ever been in my adult life. I'll do anything for her. Including wait.

She's asleep on the couch under her grandmother's quilt by two.

I sit up with the lamp off, listening to the yard. Cass's truck. Someone laughing low out by the fence. The creature is still hanging still which isn't the same as it’s not moving.

At ten past four I look at the table.

Her mother's box is open where she left it. On top of the folded coats there's a folded sheet of paper there.

That wasn't there earlier. I carried the box across the grass myself and I looked into it twice.

I unfold it.

Four words. Block letters, black marker, the same hand that wrote MAREN. WINTER. on the side of the box.

DO NOT TRUST THE LANTERN.

I put my thumb down on the last letter before I think about it, and it smears.

Maren's mother has been dead for three years.

The ink on this paper is still wet.

33

MAREN

THREE DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

My mother's handwriting is still wet.

Gage holds the page level by two corners, the way you carry something full. Four words in black marker, pressed hard enough to dent the paper.

DO NOT TRUST THE LANTERN.

There's a smear through the last letter where his thumb came down.

"Say it again."

"I carried the box in myself." His voice has gone flat and careful. "I looked in it twice."

"And this wasn't in it."

"It wasn't in it."

Three of my shop candles burn on a saucer in the middle of his kitchen table, because the bulb over his sink is still dead. We really need to fix that.

Outside, someone in the yard laughs and someone else tells them to keep it down. Cass's wolves. Six of them since Friday, passing thermoses around in truck beds like this is a fishing trip.

Eight feet away, the creature still hangs where it's hung for two days. Mouth open. One arm reaching. Everything in it stopped. I haven’t figured out what to do with it yet.

It's facing me.

I put my finger on the ink before he can tell me not to.

It comes away black.