She squirmed. The knowledge that something was coming beat at her mind. It was impossible to think of anything else.

The bedroom door’s barricaded. The windows are all sealed. I have my light. I have an axe.

They were all defenses that had seemed good in the light of day. At night, they felt like nothing. Margot began to believe she’d be trapped like that until morning, stuck in a limbo of suspense, waiting for something that might not ever arrive.

There’s nothing you can do about it right now. The bells have rung before, and you’ve been fine. Think of something else. Anything else.

Her mind flitted across a dozen subjects in a heartbeat. Nora and Ray’s smiling evasion of her questions. Witchety and her withered hands holding the talisman. The disk-light eyes staring at her through the darkness.

She pressed a hand across her face, so tired and broken that she felt as though her body could crumble like a sand sculpture.

And then she heard it.

A quiet sound coming from far away. Something at the walls. Fingertips prying at the doors.

She bit her tongue as she waited. The doors were locked. She’d sealed the only entrances she’d used during her time at Gallows Hill, and she’d trusted her parents to have kept everything else locked.

They couldn’t get in.

Could they?

Her heart throbbed in her throat as she waited. Slow, shuffling footsteps moved outside, beneath her window. She pictured bare feet slapping into the cold stones, impervious to the cuts and bruises being inflicted on them.

If she went to the window, she might be able to see—

No! Stay where you are. Wait for dawn.

Her light was still on. It had seemed like the wisest choice when she’d gone to bed: keep the room lit, keep the fear at bay. Now, though, she realized there were only two lights left on in the house: the kitchen’s and her room’s. It was like a beacon drawing attention to where she was.

One hand twitched out, preparing to reach over the bed’s edge to turn the light off, but she caught herself. That would be worse. It would confirm that the room was occupied to anyone who was looking.

Instead, she held as still as she could, making no noises, waiting. The footsteps passed along the side of the house. They were slow. Heavy. Each step was punctuated by a pause, and Margot tried to visualize it, the figure below her room, its blank face and wide eyes staring into the darkness, maybe staring up at her window, as it followed its circle along the house’s edge.

She listened until the noise had faded beyond hearing.

The doors are locked. The windows are shut. There’s no way in.