A closed house. A dead house.

She approached the couch, the end table, the calendar.

She heard a crack upstairs. Wood contracting, or expanding. Wind through an open window. But she hadn’t seen any open windows. “Mara?” As the echoes died she cursed herself for a fool. If someone else, something else, was here, now they knew her voice.

She picked up the calendar. Two neat lines crossed each day save for the last—yesterday’s X was half-complete, one diagonal slash. Mara marked the first half of the day in the morning, the second half returning, a weird habit, morbid, something she’d picked up from her mother. So she hadn’t come home last night. After meeting Ms. Kevarian. After framing Kai.

A carriage passed down the street outside. Wheels growled over gravel, and the horse’s tack jangled and rang.

Kai set the calendar down, and turned to leave.

The harness chimes receded, but the growl stayed. And the growl was nearer than the carriage wheels.

Kai looked up.

Two red eyes glimmered on the second floor. A great gold shape hunched on the banister, bared yellow teeth, and leapt.

Kai stumbled back, ran for the kitchen. The creature landed behind her, heavy and precise, four sharp taps on the carpet. Claws ripped over shag.

She skidded onto kitchen tile, grabbing for her shoes. The creature leapt. Kai swung her cane in a desperate arc, and struck something that yowled in pain. She scrambled for the door, halfrunning, half-falling. She’d left it open, thank whatever gods watched out for dumb burglars—she ran onto the empty porch, and spun to see red eyes and bared teeth and muscle under gold fur gathering again to leap. The growl rose to a cry like an angry child’s. She flailed for the door handle, found it, slammed the glass shut so hard she feared at first she might have broken the pane. But the glass did not break. The door closed, the child’s cry cut off, and the eyes’ red glow died.

The yard around Kai was carved gray, highlighted purple and orange by sunset through the trees. She did not move. She watched her own reflection in the glass, surrounded by porch furniture. The world throbbed. No. That was her.

A statue crouched on the kitchen floor: a cat the size of a foal, broad shouldered and detail perfect, fur distended by rippling muscles, dagger teeth bared. Stone claws pressed against the ceramic tile.

“Shit,” she said, and swore again, because she felt better swearing. “Ebenezer.” My security, Mara had joked. The perfect pet. There when I’m home, stone when I’m out. More loyal than most people I know, of any species.

Which solved the mystery of the open back door. If Kai had a pet lion, she might stop triple-checking her locks before she left, too.

Or not. Even Ebenezer could only do so much.