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“Mam,” Margo said impatiently. “Can you just listen? We have alotto talk about. It’s about my sleepwalking.”
The colour drained from her mother’s face. “No, it’s—”
“Come on,” her husband said gently. “Let’s hear what they have to say.” He shot Margo a pointed glance. “No more running away for any of us.”
Relief took the stress from Margo’s features. As the others headed into the living room, I held back with Nathan. “I have to tell them the truth about me. About us.”
Nathan ran his hands through his hair. “It’s not something you just go around sharing. Does Margo know?”
“Yes.” I made a concentrated effort to meet his gaze.
“All right,” he said after a moment. “I’ll trust you.”
That’s about the time I started to worry I was wrong, but it was too late to backtrack.
In the living room, Perdita explained what had been happening. Somehow, everything sounded worse in the retelling.
Margo’s parents exchanged looks.
“Is this a joke?” Mrs. Harding said after a long moment of silence. “We should leave.”
“No,” her husband said in a weary tone. “It’s about time we figured this out.”
“So you’re aware there’s something different about Margo?” Amelia asked. “Do you know what it is?”
“We know… some things,” Mrs. Harding said. “We just don’t understand it.”
“She’s always been different. Never been like other children,” her husband added. “That wasn’t… we didn’t care. We adopted her anyway.”
“What do you know about me?” Margo asked in a shaky voice. “Dad?”
He reached out and held her hand. “We found you in an orphanage in Romania. Alone. Separated from the other children. We were warned against taking you.”
Mrs. Harding looked at her daughter fondly. I didn’t doubt they loved her. “Of course, we fell in love and managed to take you home a month shy of your second birthday. The sleepwalking didn’t start for another few years, and then it happened only twice a year at most.”
“What would happen?” Amelia asked.
“There would be a death in the neighbourhood, usually. And after the funeral, we would find Margo at the grave, desperate to touch it, her eyes ice blue.”
“But how did I get there?” Margo asked.
Her mother shook her head. “We’d love to know that, too. You would escape the house, no matter how many locks we installed, and it was as though you didn’t see us, didn’t hear us, felt no cold or heat. It grew worse around the time you started trying to understand what death meant.”
“Weren’t you creeped out?” Margo whispered. “You could have just… sent me back.”
“No,” Mrs. Harding said sharply. “We loved you, still love you. We might have tried to find explanations, but we never once thought of letting you go. We’re a family, Margo. We weren’t scared of you. We just wanted to help you.”
“We were baffled,” Mr. Harding said. “We went to a doctor who prescribed medication for the sleepwalking. It did something to Margo, helped her, for a couple of years. We thought we were over the worst, and eventually, the doctor decided it was time to cut out the medication. There were no funerals, no triggers, and we got comfortable.”
“But then it happened again,” Margo said dully.
Her father squeezed her hand. “This time, we weren’t the ones who found her. The neighbour’s dog had been knocked down. Margo found him in her sleep.”
“That fits in with Dorian’s idea of her having a connection to the dead,” Amelia said.
“But how far does that connection reach?” Nathan asked. “This is too unpredictable.”
“I’ve done research on harbingers,” Amelia added. “I haven’t uncovered much that applies to us, bar them being omens of death.”
