A/N This part of the book occurs in the present.

Black was Anjulie's best color, so if she had to be in mourning, at least she could do it in style. Thank God pink or beige or yellow wasn't the expectation at funerals.

Oh, but poor little Silas. The child had been absolutely torn apart at his father's death, even though he'd been spared the freakish details, just been told his father had suffered something like heart failure. And that hadn't exactly been a lie; the organ had definitely failed after being pulled from its cavity.

Suffice it to say the police were absolutely at a loss. Such bizarre scenes were the stuff of horror films, not Midwestern suburbs. They'd brought in investigators and a particularly well-regarded forensic pathologist from Chicago, and once Emmett's remains had been removed from the premises and the Aubert sisters interviewed an inordinate amount of times, Anjulie and Marie had faded into the background, the unsolved mystery taken entirely out of their hands. They'd closed the Inn for a week in order to clean and refurbish the Friendship Room (even the bioremediation team they'd called had been disturbed by the specifics of the job), but rather than damage business, the enigmatic and violent death had pushed reservations six months out. It was true that the Aubert Inn had always appealed to a certain sort of clientele, and that sort thrived on the macabre. The potential of an actual haunting, spirits of a malevolent nature, had all the allure of a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and the horrifying event had made national headlines, boosting publicity.

The specifics of Emmett's death hadn't been reported, and yet grotesque details had a way of leaking. Online forums for that sort of thing ran wild with speculation. But while Marie was thrilled with the business if not happy with the way it'd come about, Anjulie couldn't bear the attention.

Seeing Emmett's body (or its wrapper, anyway) had convinced her of two things. First, she hadn't loved him that much, anyway. Oh, she'd cared for him in the sense that he strove to please her, thought she was the best thing in the world. He'd have done everything for her, would always be loyal—that's what she'd loved about him. Her mother had once given her the advice to make sure she married someone who loved her just a bit more than she loved him; that way, Anjulie would always have the upper hand. As a young woman, she'd thought her mother's words crude, but it'd taken Emmett's death to prove how much she'd internalized them. She wasn't going to miss more than his physical presence, as callous as that was to admit.

The second thing she realized—the far worse thing—was that she'd never quite woken from the nightmare of years ago.

When she'd found the pile of gore, her screams had roused the other guests. They'd come running, but Anjulie had at least had the sangfroid to back out of the room and shut the door before anyone else could see what was in there. What'd happened after that was a blur, and yet somehow the police had arrived, her sister had returned, and she'd been moved to one of the bedrooms to lie down. Then had passed a murky several hours of intense paranoia, culminating in a panic attack so terrible she'd been hospitalized and medically sedated. While Anjulie was in the hospital, the police had begun their interviews. Fortunately for her, she really had little to tell. Hal had offered her an airtight alibi, as did the nature of the death itself—anyone who'd gone to so much work to pull a man's insides out through his mouth and eyeholes would have to be festooned in his remains (not to mention incredibly skilled and strong), and no one in the Inn that night fit such a profile. In fact, no one at all fit such a profile.

Though after satisfying themselves of the Aubert sisters' innocence the investigators had moved on to seek a culprit or cause, Anjulie knew exactly what they'd find: nothing. No DNA, no prints, no murder weapon, no persons of interest, no motive, no evidence of foul play or forced entry or anything at all—just as they'd found with Emily.

Shit shit shit. It couldn't be this, not again! Anjulie had done so well, this last decade. She'd never forgotten, but she'd begun to believe what they'd started all those years ago was over, part of the immutable but terminable past. Cutting the others out of her life had been instrumental in helping her move on; she'd very quickly realized she'd need to leave the girls behind, not only to separate herself from the trauma of that night but also because she knew they wanted to blame her for everything that had happened, just because of that stupid nonsensical summoning she'd entirely made up. But she hadn't been the one who'd hated Emily . . . she hadn't been the one to suggest—oh God. No. She wouldn't think of it now.

Her stomach swam as she re-envisioned the dark, damp mound so meticulously stacked up next to—

"Anj! Hey!"

Hands gripped Anjulie's waist and arm, and she managed to calm her nausea at the sound of her sister's voice.

"Come on, hon. You need to sit down."

Anjulie left the visitation room (closed casket, of course—God only knew what Emmett's leftovers looked like), where she'd been absently standing for the past fifteen minutes, and allowed Marie to pull her into another sitting area. The viewing and service didn't begin for another half hour, but they'd been there all morning, Anjulie mostly lost in morose and morbid wandering, downing an exorbitant amount of coffee, and Marie working out details with the staff and pastor.

Lowering her sister onto a somber paisley wingback, Marie seated herself on a nearby settee. "If this is going to be too much for you, I understand—"

"No, it's fine. I . . ." Anjulie put her face into her hands, pressed her fingertips against her pale forehead, and then looked back to her sister. "There's no one else to do it. His sister is active duty in Guam; she can't make it back. They weren't even close, anyway. And there's no one else except some ancient Great Uncle and Aunt. We visited them last . . . last spring," she sighed. "They're too old to travel."

"I know, Anj," Marie said gently. "You've already told me."

"I'm sorry. I forget, I . . ."

Marie's hand was on her shoulder. "It's all right. What I meant to say is I would completely understand if you'd rather just hide out in some side room while I take care of greeting everyone." She looked at her watch. "Bijou should be bringing Silas in the next few minutes. I'll have him stay with me."

"Thank God I made things official with Silas before we got married," Anjulie looked up at her sister, water lining the lids of her large, dark eyes. "Otherwise, his horrible mother's side could've taken him."

Marie smiled in a sad sort of way. "I know how you and Bijou love him."

The two sat in silence for a moment, their thoughts different yet of a similar mood. Both women were dressed in simple black ensembles, Marie in a sheath dress and Anjulie in slacks and a silk shirt. The elder sister's dark hair was in a tight bun, while the younger's was down her back as it usually was. Emmett had always preferred it long and flowing.

"Thank you," she said at last, taking Marie's hands in her own and squeezing them. "I'll just sit here by myself a while longer, if that's all right."

"Of course," Marie nodded, then rose and left the anachronistically Baroque room.

Shame flared within Anjulie, a physical discomfort somewhere in her core. Marie believed her sister mourned her fiancé, but Anjulie instead could focus only on the madness she'd been trying to contain for the last few days. She'd been prescribed Valium after her brief hospitalization, and she was most definitely using it, but even so, the buzz of mania was ever-present, humming steadily beneath her mien of composure, threatening to break through if she let down her guard. Kitty was fully back. Kitty! Oh, that wasn't what it was called, really, but it was the only name they had for it, a name she'd wholly invented and somehow—brought into being? She didn't know; they'd never known. What had happened in that month after the horror at Emily's house hadn't made any sense, and though it'd lasted only several weeks, those had been the longest weeks of Anjulie's life. She couldn't do it again, pass each moment not knowing what and where and when—she had her children, now! How could she protect them? And what were the thing's intentions? What had they ever been? Why was it back, and how could she make it go away?

She'd rather be dead than go through more of that.

A rainbow tie-dyed kimono was suddenly swishing into her vision, and Anjulie looked up to find her daughter standing before her in a summery mist of bare, browned shoulders, jean cutoffs with a crochet top, hemp jewelry, and glitter across her cheeks.

"Wha . . . what are you doing?" Anjulie queried, her own spiraling momentarily pushed aside as she took in her daughter head-to-toe.

Bijou shrugged. "What do you mean? I'm here for the service. Silas is with Aunt Marie—"

"You look like you're going to a goddamned music festival. This is a funeral, Bijou."

"'Come as you are,' right? Nirvana, mom. Emmett wouldn't have cared."

Anjulie stood up slowly, threateningly. Her body felt empty and weak, and she was trembling. Inability to sleep and eat for five days did that to a person. But she had to be a mother in this moment, try to be bigger than her daughter, even though she was a good few inches shorter than Bijou. "Go home," she seethed between clenched teeth. "Put on something black, or at least dark, respectful."

"But we're supposed to celebrate his life," the girl flippantly pressed. "When I die, I want everyone to party and get high, technicolor lights and—"

"I don't fucking care what you want!"

Bijou stepped back. For a moment, she just stared at her infuriated mother. "All right," she said at length, "fine. If I don't make it back in time, don't bother waiting for me or anything."

She made to spin away, but Anjulie suddenly caught hold of the girl's arm. "Wait, Bijou," she tried, regaining some composure. "I'm sorry. I—it's all been . . . so terrible. I'm struggling." She released her hold on her daughter. "I shouldn't take it out on you. I know you've been worried about your friend, and . . . Well, you've got a lot going on, too."

Cocking her head at an angle, the nineteen-year-old calmly drew her arm back toward her body, placed her hands on the oversized bag she held. A tight, disingenuous smile stretched her lips, and something entirely unsettling gleamed in her eyes. "Everything's fine, mom," she promised. "Don't you worry about him."

The way her daughter looked at her brought Anjulie's anxiety thrumming against her heart. The lights—surely the lights had just flickered, all of them, though they'd done it faintly, almost as if to confuse her, to make her think her eyes played tricks. Anjulie's breath caught in her throat, but Bijou had turned and left the room before her mother could do or say anything else, and when she was alone again, Anjulie sank back into the chair, unable to stay on her feet for fear the floor might fall away beneath them.

Shortly before Emmett's death, a young local man had gone missing; the story hadn't been particularly unsettling as he'd been old enough (and apparently derelict enough) to take off on his own for a while. Bijou hadn't even mentioned knowing him; Anjulie had found out only when one of her daughter's friends had come by rather distraught. Apparently, Bijou had even attended parties at his home a day or so prior to his disappearance. But before she'd been able to make much of it, to have a real conversation with her daughter, Anjulie had been reminded of the horror from her adolescence. That doll—that damned glitching doll . . . the guest in the room . . . the inhuman method of Emmett's demise . . . none of it was a coincidence. She knew it, now.

The thing was back. She had to find the others.