Grandpa Gerard's name stared at me from the screen. Like a glass of water. Like a lifeline.

  For a second, I just stared at it.

  Then I thumbed accept.

  "Hey," I said, my voice already braced.

  "Kelsey," Gerard's voice boomed in my ear, warm and sharp all at once. "Finally. I was starting to think you had joined some hippie commune off the grid."

  Despite myself, my mouth twitched. "Hi, Grandpa."

  "How are you, kiddo," he went on without waiting, papers rustling in the background. "How is the little gremlin? You two settled in that middle-of-nowhere your father's dragged you into?"

  Hailey glanced over at me, catching only the tone, not the words. I forced a smile in her direction and mouthed it's okay.

  "We are…" I searched for a word between lying and truth. "We're managing."

  "Managing," Gerard repeated, suspicion already lacing the syllables. "Your father isn't picking up his phone. Not answering my emails either. Typical. I swear, that man treats technology like a personal enemy."

  Because he is currently feral in a forest, I thought, biting my tongue.

  "He's… busy," I said instead. "With work. With the house. With… things."

  Gerard snorted. "With things. Of course. Listen, I am sorry I haven't called sooner. It's been crazy at the firm. We're in the middle of a merger. You remember the Barcelona trip I mentioned? Just got back. I'm flying to Kyoto in forty-eight hours. Jet lag is going to murder me."

  The names of the cities sounded like something from another reality.

  "How are you?" he asked again, and this time the question landed deeper. "Honestly."

  I looked at Hailey, at Mr. Winkle surrounded by dolls. At the forest.

  "We're okay," I said. "It's different here. Quiet."

  "I suppose that's one word for it," Gerard muttered. "Listen, if this backwoods survival fantasy of your father's starts to bother you, you know you can always call me, right? You're nearly eighteen. He won't be able to tell you where to live much longer. You don't have to martyr yourself for his… choices."

  There it was. The old, familiar edge, something between worry and contempt.

  He'd never said outright that Mom had ruined her life by marrying Dad, but he hadn't had to. The little comments, the loaded pauses, the way he said your father like a diagnosis, had been enough.

  After the funeral, when Dad left us with him and vanished for a week, that edge had solidified into something colder.

  If he knew the truth now, about the woods, about eyes that reflected moonlight like water, about howls wrapping around the house at night, I had no idea whether he would burn Cold Creek to the ground or have us committed. Or both.

  The pocket knife, his gift that I have carried around like a talisman suddenly weighted against my thigh.

  "Grandpa," I said, picking at a splinter on the porch rail. "It is not… I mean, it is weird, but it is not bad. There is space. Fresh air. Hailey has a yard, a tire swing."

  Hailey, hearing her name, looked up and beamed, waving at the phone. "Hi, Grandpa," she chirped. I put the speaker on.

  Gerard's voice softened. "Hey, mouse. Are you taking care of your sister?"

  "She is taking care of me," Hailey announced proudly, then went back to pouring imaginary tea.

  "See," I said, putting the speaker off. "We're fine."

  He was quiet for a beat, and in that silence I could hear him not quite believing me.

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  "If you say so," he replied at last. "Just remember what I told you. That door is always open. You want to come back to the city, to civilized life, you call me. I can put you in a real school. Hailey in a proper program. Get you both out of there before you start howling at the moon with the locals."

  I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I could taste metal.

  I thought of Dad in the woods. Of Ethan on the boundary. Of my own scream stuck behind my teeth.

  "I'll remember," I said.

  "Good girl," he said, satisfied. "I have to go, there is a call from Tokyo coming in. Go eat something that isn't still kicking. Take care."

  "Sure," I said, and the line clicked dead.

  I lowered the phone and sat very still.

  A part of me wanted to grab Hailey, stuff Mr. Winkle into a backpack, and drive until Cold Creek was nothing but a smudge in the rearview mirror. Get on a bus. A plane. A train to anywhere with normal streetlights and people who didn't stop to sniff the air when you walked past.

  Another part of me saw Dad's eyes, black and wrong, reflecting the moon. Heard his voice cracking. Saw him disappear in the darkness because my legs had chosen to run.

  I couldn't leave. Not yet. Not while he was in there, lost and alone.

  At the edge of the porch, the screen door creaked.

  I looked up.

  Elise stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame, the other still holding a dish towel. She had changed into a clean blouse, hair braided neatly, face once again under control. Her gaze flicked from me to Hailey, then back.

  She had definitely heard enough of the conversation to know exactly what had just been offered.

  Her eyes met mine. For a moment, something unspoken stretched between us, tight as a wire.

  She didn't say anything.

  She started to turn away, to retreat into the house.

  Then she froze.

  It was a full-body stillness this time, a stop that made the air around her tighten. Her head tilted, nostrils flaring the slightest bit. Her gaze shifted past me, past the yard, toward the treeline.

  My muscles went rigid before I even knew why.

  I twisted in my seat.

  There, at the far edge of the property, just outside the place where the trimmed grass faded into wild, stood Nell Greystone.

  She was in jeans and a dark jacket, hair pulled back, shoulders squared. She didn't wave or say hi or anything. She simply stood there like an apparition.

  She was close enough that I could see the tension in her jaw, the way her hands were fisted at her sides, but she did not step forward.

  "Stay here with your dolls, darling," Elise said, her voice oddly gentle.

  Hailey, engrossed in arranging Barbie legs, barely glanced up. "Okay."

  Elise stepped off the porch, down the three wooden steps, and crossed the yard with the kind of unhurried, absolute stride she and Jack both had.

  She stopped several feet from Nell, at the line where the grass thinned and the first roots pushed through the soil. For a second, neither of them spoke.

  Even from the porch, I could feel something thickening in the air between them.

  "Ma'am," Nell said at last, inclining her head a fraction. The words were polite. The tone had an undertow. "I'm sorry to intrude."

  "You're at the boundary of our land," Elise replied, cool and precise. "You aren't intruding. Yet."

  Nell's gaze flicked past her, briefly, to me on the porch, then back. Her throat moved as she swallowed.

  "I need to speak with Kelsey," she said. "It's about school. And other things."

  Elise's shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly at the word other. "This is not a good time," she said.

  "It's very important," Nell answered, and although her voice stayed even, I heard something underneath. Urgency. A thread of something that might have been desperation. "Please."

  The please tasted strange in her mouth. She was not the type to say it lightly.

  They looked at each other for a few seconds that stretched long. Elise's nostrils flared again, testing the air, the wind, whatever it was they always tasted that I could not.

  At last, she inclined her head once, short. Permission, but grudging.

  "You may enter the yard," she said. "Do not step on the porch."

  Nell nodded, like that restriction made sense. Like it was a rule older than both of them.

  Elise turned, headed back toward me, scooping Hailey up in one smooth motion on the way. "Come on, darling," she murmured. "Let us find you some orange juice."

  Hailey wrapped her arms around her neck, Mr. Winkle dangling upside down from one hand. As they passed me, Elise's fingers brushed my shoulder, the slightest pressure, not quite a squeeze.

  You will be okay. Or do not make this worse. Or listen. I could not tell which.

  They disappeared into the house. The door clicked shut behind them.

  Nell walked forward slowly, boots sinking slightly into the soft grass. She didn't come all the way to the steps. She stopped about halfway between the porch and the boundary, like she was consciously measuring every inch.

  "Kelsey," she called. Her voice carried clearer than it should have in the still air. "Can you come here?"

  It would have been easy to stay where I was, to make her come to me, to insist on some kind of normal human etiquette. People walked up to porches. That was how it worked.

  But nothing about this was normal. And after the last few days, a lupine quirk about invisible circles of respect barely even registered on my list of weird.

  I stood, the boards creaking under my feet, and stepped down, each movement feeling more deliberate than it should.

  The grass was cold against my bare ankles. The distance between us felt like a bridge I had not agreed to build.

  "Hey," I said, stopping a couple of steps away from her. "I'm sorry I didn't answer your texts. Things have been… insane. My dad, he, I just…"

  Nell lifted her hand and shook her head once. "We don't have time for apologies," she said. "We need to talk."

  Something in her voice made the grass brushing my ankles feel colder.

  It wasn't just the words. It was the look in her eyes.

  I'd seen Nell annoyed. I'd seen her cool, controlled, mildly amused, exasperated, even, in a few rare moments, almost kind.

  I had never seen what was there now.

  Fear.