A knock on my door rouses me from sleep. I sit up and rub my eyes, confused for a moment. Memories of the night before come flooding back. The knock comes again and I know it can’t be Kill. He wouldn’t knock.

“Cilla?” It’s Helen.

“Come in.” I glance at the clock. It’s noon.

She opens the door and looks at me. She’s carrying a tray of coffee and some food that she sets down. “Are you not feeling well?”

No, not really, but not in the way she thinks. “Just a little stomach ache,” I lie.

“Do you want me to open the curtains?”

“No, thanks. I’ll just sleep a little while.” I don’t want to run into Kill so I plan on hiding out in here as long as possible.

“I brought some toast,” she starts.

“Thank you. Maybe later. Um…is Kill here?” I heard a car earlier and I’m hoping it was him leaving.

“No, he went to work. He said he’d send a driver to pick you up at nine o’clock this evening to take you into the city. You’ll have dinner at the club.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, dear.”

“So he’ll be gone all day?”

“Yes.”

“Helen, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“How often does he come here? To the house I mean? Does he spend weekends here or…” I trail off because I have a suspicion.

She looks straight at me. “It’s his first time since his sister’s death.” I’m surprised at her honesty. And I guessed right.

“What time do I need to be ready to go?” I remember what she said, I’m just thinking.

“Nine o’clock.”

“Okay. I’ll just sleep a little longer and I’ll be down later.”

“All right.” She pauses, sighs before she speaks. “He’s not a bad person. He just comes off…”

“Like one.”

She sucks in her lips. “I’ll check in on you later,” she says.

“No, I’m a light sleeper so probably best not to.”

She studies me for a minute, then nods, turns and leaves. I wait until I hear her go downstairs before I throw the covers back and get up.

I have a feeling I know where Kill was last night. There’s only one place he could have gone to. He’d been shaken up. Drunk too, but it wasn’t that. He’d mentioned ghosts. Twice. Said they were angry.

I go into the closet and get dressed, choosing a pair of jeans, a sweater and flat boots. It’s raining again, I can hear it on the window, so I anticipate mud.

I know what I’m going to do is wrong, but he didn’t leave me a choice last night. It’s like every time he touches me, he strips me bare. He reads me, sees me in a way I don’t like being seen.

He knows I’m damaged. But he doesn’t know why, because even if he digs, there’s nothing to be found. No files, no charges, no accusations. Judge Callahan, the man who took Jones and I in, made sure of that. Just like he made sure neither of us would talk by promising my freedom when Jones turned eighteen if he kept his end of the bargain. A devil’s bargain.

“A different sort of devil than Kill.” I mutter the words aloud but I realize it’s not true. Kill isn’t like the judge. Not even close, even considering everything.

But that doesn’t matter. I need to have leverage, something I can use to lay Kill bare, like he does me. I need to break him before he breaks me because what he said is true. He is greedy. And he won’t be satisfied with just having my body. If this was ever about sex, that’s changed. It’s about owning me, body and soul. Hell, sex he can get anywhere. All he probably has to do is snap his fingers. What he’s doing to me is something else, and I need to take back some control. To do that, I need to have something to hurt him with. And I know exactly what that something is.

Finding a raincoat, I slip it on and step out into the hallway. I noticed last night that the sliding glass door Kill came inside through doesn’t use a key to lock it. Not from the inside at least. I creep down the stairs, keeping an eye out for Helen, but the coast is clear and I move quickly through the living room and to the glass doors. They’re not even locked and I slide one open, step out, then close it behind me. A cold, fall wind gives me a chill as I glance around. It’s creepy here, with the leaves of the half bare trees rotting on the damp earth, the furniture covered over, and the torn tarp over the pool constantly, unceasingly whipped by the wind. I hug my arms to myself, rub them for warmth, then sprint as quickly as I can into the woods. If I remember correctly, the barn is at the farthest point and it’s an almost straight shot.

It’s colder beneath the trees. The sun can’t penetrate this dense forest. The ground is thick with mud and I think of him last night, trudging through this in socks. Was he even thinking? Was it a conscious decision? Or was he too drunk to think clearly? Too shaken up after seeing the place where she hanged herself. Because I know that’s where he went.

Why had she done it? And how was it linked to the uncle’s murder? I know it has to be. Too coincidental otherwise and if there’s one thing I don’t believe in, it’s coincidence.

It takes me much longer than I expect to get to the barn because of the ground being so wet, but also because the property is much larger than it seemed on paper. When the greenhouse, which was built on the front of the barn, finally comes into view, it’s much smaller than I expect. And for as well as the house has been maintained, this structure is the opposite. It’s dilapidated.

Much of the glass that makes up the walls and ceiling of the greenhouse has been broken. I imagine it’s due to time and disrepair rather than vandals. The property’s gated. The back third—the original barn—is built of wood. I walk around it, look at the ground for proof that Kill was here last night, but find none. The rain would have washed it all away.

The door is literally hanging by its hinges and I carefully push it open. If I thought it was cold outside, it’s frigid in here. I’m chilled the moment I step inside and hug my arms around myself, the creepiness of the place making me feel even colder.

It’s dark too, the only light being the little bit that’s coming in from the cracks between the planks of wood. I take a step in the direction of the greenhouse. Plants that never stopped growing have made this place into a dense jungle with green clinging to every surface, the smell of earth and mold overpowering. I can’t walk in there if I want to, it’s so overgrown.

But that’s not the part I’m interested in anyway. I want to see the barn.

Wind whistles through the cracks in glass and wood and I look around for a light source, but remember that Kill was carrying a flashlight last night. I step toward the back, where it’s darker, where the wooden roof has somehow remained mostly intact. Large beams support the structure and from one hangs a wire and from it, the broken remnants of a light bulb.

I walk deeper in while voices inside my head warn me to stop. To leave.

Tell me I have no business here.

Maybe they’re not in my head at all, though, these voices. Maybe these are the ghosts Kill warned me against. The angry ones.

I walk on though, drawn to the darkness. I wonder which of the beams she used. I try to imagine the young girl walking from the house to this dilapidated old barn—was it dilapidated then? Try to think of her state of mind. Did she carry the rope with her from the main house? Was it night time? Daytime? Did she have second thoughts?

How scared was she?

Because I know she would have been afraid. Terrified.

What could lead a fifteen-year-old girl to hang herself? The papers never said, but she was a minor. That wasn’t strange. Of course given what happened with the uncle, there was speculation. Some papers even painted Kill as the monster who pushed her to it. I don’t believe that though. I just don’t.

A noise behind me has me let out a small scream and I jump. A metal something crashing to the ground. But when I turn, there’s no one there. Kill’s not behind me. Neither is Helen. A ghost, maybe.

A moment later, a mouse scurries under the barn door, exiting this haunted place.

“Just a mouse, Cilla. Just a tiny, little mouse.”

But my heart doesn’t stop racing as I turn back to survey the space.

I look down. Mud does mark the places he was in here. And he was wearing his shoes from the look of the prints. I follow them deeper into darkness until I see it. See why he had no shoes on when he came back to the house. See the chair standing upright against one wall. It’s been cleaned off because it’s the only thing here that’s not covered in a thick layer of dust. And what’s underneath it—oh God—it’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.

I walk to it. To his shoes now caked in dried mud standing neatly against the wall. Between them a smaller shoe. A ballet flat.

With a shudder, I stare at it, noticing as I near it how the color has faded to palest pink. There’s a smudge of the magenta it once was along the side. It’s small, maybe a size six or seven at most. And between his giant ones, it looks like a young child’s shoe.

I know it’s Ginny’s. And I know why it’s here. There’s only one reason. She must have had them on when she did it, and one must have slipped off or the cleaners somehow missed this second shoe.

I wonder how long he was here last night. What he did. I imagine what he feels or felt. I know how Jones was when it was me. I know what extent he went to in order to protect me. And I know how I feel every day when I realize over and over again that I couldn’t protect him.

I wonder if that’s Kill’s hell. If that’s his demon. The knowledge that he could not protect his baby sister. Because at least my brother is alive.

Lightning strikes in the distance, animating me. I turn and walk to the barn door, in a hurry to leave. To get out of this place where the past lingers. This space that ghosts haunt. It’s a heavy place, like for the last few years air hasn’t penetrated and everything has grown stale and weighted. When I set foot outside, I run. I run back to the house, suddenly feeling like I’m being chased, needing to go back to the land of the living.

This was wrong. I shouldn’t have gone to the barn. Those warning voices were right. I had no business there. But it’s too late now. I’ve seen it and you can’t unsee what you’ve seen. It’s not how things work. I know. My God, do I know.

I’m crying by the time I walk up the steps toward the pool and when I spy movement behind the glass doors, I don’t try to hide. I’ll take my medicine. And I do feel sick now, sick to my stomach.

I push the glass doors open and step inside, take off my mud-covered boots, and carry them up to my room. If Helen has seen me, she doesn’t say a word, but in my room, I find the tray she’d left is gone, replaced by another with still warm tea and crackers. I strip off my wet clothes and climb back into the bed and close my eyes and when I sleep, all I can see are those shoes. Three of them. Lined up against the wall. A hangman’s rope beside them, lying in a pool of blood and urine, a stained kitchen knife at its center.