Gavin walked through the big, old house. It was midnight, and very dark and quiet. Too dark and quiet for him, but he had nowhere else to be. The roads were somewhat cleared, but he didn’t want to go out looking for trouble. Hell, half the time he never even had to look—trouble always just found him.

Piper and Winnie were sleeping, and he’d planned to do the same. But he’d long ago learned that he had to be exhausted first, or the dreams hit. There’d been far too many nights he’d bolted awake after an ugly nightmare to find himself curled up on the floor in the fetal position, rocking himself.

It was his second night home, and he’d slept like the dead last night, which had been a miracle. And yet he was afraid to hope that would be the norm here. Mostly, he was afraid to hope for anything at all.

He’d spent the past two days moving mud away from the foundation of the house and the cottages with Piper and Winnie. Both he and Piper had been stunned when Winnie had put in time, actually getting her hands dirty.

Winnie was a lot of things, most of them pretty great, like crazy fun, crazy wild, and . . . well, just plain crazy. But she’d never been big on putting forth a lot of effort. Into anything.

So when Piper and Gavin had stared in shock at Winnie showing up to help, it’d of course started a fight. Winnie had been insulted, reminding them both that she’d always preferred dirt and bugs to dolls and playing dress-up.

In turn, Gavin had reminded her that she’d spent the years between age three and eighteen both causing and raising holy hell on the world.

That was when she had “accidentally” thrown mud at him.

Naturally, a mud fight had ensued, and Piper, covered in mud and with steam coming out of her ears, had yelled at them to help or, better yet, get the hell out.

That was when Gavin had first realized that he wasn’t the only one standing on the very edge of a cliff looking down . . .

Restless now, he moved around the house. He didn’t need lights to make his way through the only home he remembered.

Except that wasn’t quite true.

He’d been ten when he, Piper, and Winnie had been sent home from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the middle of that storm from hell, back to Wildstone to live with their grandparents. Whenever he’d been asked, he’d told people he couldn’t remember much before that.

But he could. He could, and did, and even now, alone in the dark with the nightmare of that time ringing in his head, playing like a movie he couldn’t pause, he could feel the shudder of horror and grief go through him.