Her feet were moving faster, though, the soft taps of each footfall growing louder as her steps turned uncoordinated. She bit down on her lip, using the spike of pain to pull some focus back, but her mind was still running out of control, and her muscles still twitched in response to every jittering shadow and creaking floorboard as she flew through the house.

The stairwell appeared ahead. Margot was on it before she could even question if this was a good idea. It put her farther from the front door. Farther from escape. From help. Placed her behind two staircase bottlenecks. But in that second, all her mind knew was that the corpses were all on the ground floor, and the stairs would put some distance between her and them.

She didn’t stop moving when she reached the landing. Cold air burned her lungs with each low, gasping breath. The old floorboards groaned beneath her feet, and Margot flinched, knowing it would be drawing attention to her, but unable to make it stop.

She rounded a corner and then another, no longer conscious of where she was or with any plan about where to go. It was only when she turned one more corner and saw a familiar door at the top of the second stairwell that she let her frantic dash slow.

The master bedroom door was still closed. It was only when that thought registered that she realized so many of the downstairs doors had been open, when they shouldn’t have been. The dining room door. The entrance to the hallway. When she’d explored the house earlier that night, she’d been excruciatingly careful to shut the doors behind her.

Locks don’t hold them back. Closed doors wouldn’t either.

A sharp, achingly harsh chime broke through the cold night air. Margot flinched. An unseen bell farther down the hall began to dance, and it was quickly followed by the one in Margot’s own bedroom, and then another somewhere on the floor below, and within seconds the house was alive with the ringing, sharply discordant alarms.

Margot darted forward, her movements disguised under the furious assault of noise, and shoved through the door to her parents’ room. She shut it harshly behind herself and pressed her back to the wood, her jaws clenched until the teeth ached.

The master bedroom had its own bell. It danced on its hook, adding its voice to the cacophony. Margot stared at it, willing it to be silent, but it only moved faster.

Cool moonlight came through the open window. It streamed over her parents’ bed. She crossed to it, crawling onto the mattress, and pulled her knees up to cover her face as she folded her arms over her head to muffle the noise. The cast was heavy and uncomfortably hard.