He caressed her back, rocking her on his lap. “You don’t have to do anything, honey. There’s nothing you can do.”

“But what if there is? If we can feel each other’s pain, why won’t it read my thoughts? I keep telling it to go away, but it can’t hear me.”

“You’ve been telling it to go away?”

“Yes. In my mind. I keep thinking it over and over, picturing it walking into the lake and never coming up.”

Looking at the covered door, Andrew asked, “Can you sense what it’s thinking?”

She shook her head against his chest.

But had it heard her? It was no longer at the back door. Had Kate managed to open up a way to control it?

“Just keep thinking about it going away,” he said. “Meditate on that. I want you to change one thing, though. Instead of imagining it drowning in the lake, just have it disappear. Or find a hole or cave and crawl inside, never to come out again.”

“What if that’s not enough?”

“Think to yourself that it will be enough.”

“I…I don’t know.”

If Kate was in charge of the horror now, the last thing he wanted was for it to drown itself. When it took its last breath, wouldn’t Kate as well? How far would their physical connection go? Would it stretch into the final throes of death, snapping only when both were gone?

He couldn’t take that chance.

“You can do it, honey,” he said. “Promise me you’ll keep thinking it, but stay away from the lake.”

When she tilted her face to him, the yellowing of her eyes stunned him. They were starting to look like—

“Put your big girl panties on and just fucking do what he says,” Nikki blurted. She slammed the wine bottle on the counter, blood-red liquid sloshing on her arm. “Do it! Do it!”

Kate shivered, closing her eyes.

“Do you think shouting at her is going to help?” Andrew said.

“Piss off, Dandy Andy.”

He forced himself to turn away from her. Kate trembled in his arms like a newborn kitten. She seemed lighter than ever, as if the thread between her and the beast was taking bits of her along with it, tug by tug, until there’d be nothing left.

Chapter Thirty-Four