The wind changed today. Not the weather, not really, but the way it moved, the way it seemed to hesitate as though it were listening for something, like it remembered a song it had once known and was trying to hum it under its breath. I noticed it early, before breakfast, when the grass was still wet from the dew clinging to the blades like tiny secrets. I was barefoot, the ground cold enough to bite, and the scarf Davis gave me was still knotted snug around my neck, the wool worn soft from too many nights curled beneath it, pretending it meant more than it did. The breeze curled around my legs like it recognized me, like it was searching for something in me that I hadn't yet let out.
I stood there for a long time, longer than anyone would think a child had reason to, just watching the apple tree. The swing creaked gently in a way that had nothing to do with the wind; there wasn't enough for that, but it moved anyway, just slightly, the ropes swaying with the memory of weight. I didn't sit on it. I didn't touch the fraying ends. I just watched, and I thought about the hands that had tied those knots. Michael's hands. Big and rough with work, with old scabs and new scars, but careful in the way most people forgot how to be. He tied knots the way he did everything, like the world might fall apart if he didn't do it perfectly. He wrapped bandages that way. Stirred tea that way. Built trust that way.
But the world had fallen apart anyway.
Near the edge of the garden, the soil was darker than usual, rich and loamy, soaked from the storm that had passed two nights ago, so wet it stuck under my nails before my fingers even broke the surface. I didn't bring a shovel. I didn't need one. Hands are better for that kind of digging. Hands know when to stop, when the earth starts holding its breath because you're getting too close. Hands know when something's been buried.
And something had.
A jar.
Glass, with its lid chipped around the rim. Dirt had clung to the threads like it was trying to keep the jar sealed, to hold in whatever was trapped inside. I turned it over and felt something sharp prick my palm, not enough to cut, just enough to say be careful. Inside was paper, folded and tight, yellowed at the creases and soft with age but still holding shape. I wiped the jar on the corner of my scarf, the fabric already stained from so many other secrets, and forced it open. The scent was immediate. Dampness. Ink. And something else I didn't name because names made things real.
It was a list.
Not my list. Not Davis's. Not Michael's, either.
I didn't recognize the handwriting, but I knew what it meant. Each line was a name, and each name had been crossed out in thick black strokes that bled through the paper. Every one of them is gone. Everyone except the last.
Azriel.
My name.
Folded there like it was just waiting. Like I knew. I folded the paper again, tighter this time, until the corners bit into my fingers hard enough to leave a mark, and I pressed it back into the jar with hands that didn't tremble. I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I buried it again, deeper this time, packed the soil down until it looked untouched, and stood. I wiped my palms on my dress and walked back inside like nothing had happened, like I hadn't just found proof that someone wanted me gone.
At breakfast, I said nothing. I didn't eat. I didn't speak. I just watched Davis over the rim of my cup. He watched me, too, in that way he always did, like he was waiting for me to crack open and spill something I didn't want to share. But he didn't ask. He never asked
Carina didn't come down at all.
I counted steps that morning instead of bites. Four to the window. Ten to the door. Twenty-three from the table to the attic stairs. I memorized them like scripture, pacing them in my head until I could feel the rhythm in my bones. Later, I'd test it while running. I had to know the house like Michael knew his knife, not just where it was sharp, but where it could break. I needed to know every inch. Every shadow. Every place might hide something.
The next day, I went to the greenhouse again. I needed to check the violet, the one I'd been watching, the one I'd started to think of as mine, even though I never said it aloud.
It was gone.
Not wilted. Not rotted. Just… gone. No petals on the tile. No broken stem. No sign it had ever grown there at all. Just an empty square, cleaner than the rest, like something had scrubbed it down with bleach and memory. That was when I started digging again. Not just in the garden this time. In the walls. Behind the wardrobe upstairs, where the boards groaned differently beneath my hands. In the closet, beneath the shelf that sagged under its weight. In corners that should have been still, but weren't.
I found scratches. I found cracks. I found marks I didn't remember carving, but recognized all the same. Michael had taught me how to mark escape routes in case of an emergency. How to write in code. How to leave breadcrumbs that only someone who knew would see. These weren't his marks. They were newer. Sloppier. But there were too many of them. Someone else was mapping the house, and they weren't doing it to escape.
Carina caught me one afternoon. Dust streaked my fingers, and I was clutching a pry tool I'd stolen from Davis's drawer. She leaned against the doorframe like she was trying to look casual and raised one perfectly arched eyebrow.
"Looking for something?" she asked, her voice sugary-smooth.
"No," I said, meeting her eyes without blinking. "Just checking what someone else already found."
She didn't flinch. She just smiled and turned away, humming that lullaby again, the one she used to sing when I was too small to know better. The one I heard the night before I died.
Back then, it comforted me.
Now, it made my skin crawl.
That night, I left a note in the floorboards, the same place I used to hide drawings when I was little. It wasn't for me. It wasn't even for Davis.
It was for Michael.
I'm not afraid. I'm ready.
I pressed the wood down until it clicked back into place, and I went to bed with the knife Davis didn't know I took tucked under my pillow.
The next morning, the note was gone.
Nothing else disturbed. No footprints. No creaks out of place. Just gone.
So I left more. Small ones at first. Questions. Dates. Places only Michael and I would know. They disappeared too. One came back, etched into the wood in tiny strokes so careful they could only have come from a steady hand.
Soon.
Michael's knife work.
I didn't tell Davis.
I didn't tell anyone.
The next morning, I noticed the house had changed. Not in any way you could point to, not in anything a grown-up would believe, but in the feeling. The warmth was gone. Not from the air, but from the corners, the tucked-away places where it used to pool like leftover sunlight. It felt empty. Like something had come through and taken it all.
I walked slower. Steadier. I knew the floorboards too well to risk surprise. The attic called to me like it always had, quiet and cold, the one place no one else liked to go. I went up just as the sky started to turn gray.
Under the insulation, beneath old cloth that smelled of dust and time, I found a box. Metal. Rusted. Heavy enough to drag, but not locked. The latch was stuck, but I forced it. The lid groaned like it hadn't been opened in years.
Inside were photographs.
Not ours.
They were children. Boys and girls. Some sharp. Some blurred. None smiling. Every one of them had a name written on the back in that same spidery ink I'd seen before. Every one of those names was crossed out.
Except mine.
I stared at that one for a long time. Not because I didn't understand. But because I did.
This list hadn't started with me.
It had grown. It had waited. It had been watching.
Whoever began it never meant to stop.
But I would.
I burned the photographs in the fireplace, one by one, until there was nothing left but curling ash. All except mine.
I kept it, folded it into the scarf. Pressed it to my chest like a warning. Like a promise.
Carina passed me in the hallway later that night. She paused, and for a second, her eyes dropped to the scarf. Her mouth opened like she was about to speak. Then she smiled instead. The kind of smile that doesn't mean anything good. And she walked on.
I watched her shadow stretch along the wall. It moved before she did. It had never had before.
And I knew, as sure as the wind still whispered in the grass, that this time, someone else had started watching too.
I waited until her footsteps disappeared. Counted the seconds after. Listened for the creak on the fourth stair, the one she always avoided, the one that groaned too loudly in a quiet house. She skipped it this time. Deliberate. Careful. Like she knew I was listening. Like she wanted me to know she could be quiet too. That wasn't how Carina used to move. Before, she bounced down the halls like she owned them, like the world should announce her arrival. Now she slipped through it like a secret.
I crept to the wall and pressed my fingers to it. Cold. Solid. But I could feel something on the other side, a kind of humming, not sound exactly, more like pressure in the bones. I followed it with my hand, trailing it down the hall until it faded by the linen closet. The lock on it clicked softly as I turned it, though I wasn't sure who I expected to find inside. The shelves were normal towels, blankets, and old sheets. But the back wall was wrong. It was too smooth. Too new. Not like the rest of the house.
I knocked once. Then twice. Then pressed my ear to it.
Something knocked back.
Not loud. Just a tap. A single, soft sound. But it was time-mirrored. Like it was waiting for my signal. I didn't move. I didn't breathe. For a long time, I didn't even blink. The silence after was heavier than the sound. I stepped back and shut the door quietly, heart pounding in my throat, not because I was afraid, but because I wasn't sure anymore who was in the house with me.
That night, I wrote again. This time, not a note, but a map. Of the hallways. The sounds. The spaces that didn't belong. I marked the closet. The garden. The missing violet. I sketched the shadow, not Carina's, but the one that moved ahead of her, stretched too far, curved where it shouldn't have. I drew it the way I remembered it: wrong. I traced it three times, then tore the page out and placed it under my pillow. When I lay down, I didn't close my eyes. I listened for the creak of the fourth stair, for the whisper of cloth against cloth, for the shuffle of feet that weren't mine. And I waited for morning because in this house, morning meant I was still alive.
And when the morning came, soft and pale through the lace curtains, painting the floorboards in thin gold lines like bars, I rose without speaking, without stretching, without letting the cold touch me too long because I knew now that silence wasn't empty, that quiet wasn't safe, and that something inside this house was keeping score, was marking days and names and rooms, and I would not let it forget mine not yet, not while I still had breath to hold and matches to strike.