There was a sound that might have been a sigh. Margot slipped along the hallway, rolling her feet, heel to toe, to keep each step as close to silent as she could make it. Her chest was tight, her breathing low, her headache pulsing in time with each heartbeat. She craned forward to see around the corner.

The stairs were ahead. The same staircase she’d come down the night before. The one where the light had burst and where she’d become convinced that she could see cold lights on the lower landing, like a pair of eyes staring up at her.

She flexed her grip around the knife, feeling the handle heat beneath her hot grasp.

Something was at the top of the stairs. The light was bad. All of the infused courage from the kitchen had been strained and strangled in these deeper parts of the house, its closed doors and drawn curtains smothering the rooms in darkness. Margot squinted against the shadows, trying to understand what she was seeing.

The shape was broadest at its base. From her angle, she couldn’t see its top, but it appeared unnaturally tall. Her first thought was that Witchety’s Watcher had moved. That it had peeled itself off the living room floor and dragged its way along the hall, the bones and spoons and pebbles chiming against one another as it changed locations. So little else made sense that she might have believed it if she hadn’t passed the Watcher just seconds before.

Margot took a step nearer. The knife’s blade trembled against her thigh, her skin shielded by the skirt’s fabric. She swallowed, wetting her throat in case she needed to cry out, even scream, though there was no one to hear her in the isolated house.

The shape began to move. The higher part of it lowered, like it was folding in on itself. Two heavy feet hit the floor. Then there was the click of a switch, and the upper landing was bathed in light.

“Margot,” Kant said. He stood next to a stepladder, a small box in his hand. “Didn’t hear you come home.”

“Oh,” she said, though it came out more like a gasp.

“I came to fix the light. Saw your car was gone and wasn’t sure whether I should come in or not.” He folded the stepladder and lifted it under his arm. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

He moved down the steps, his limp heavy, and Margot took the second of distraction to slip the knife into her pocket where he wouldn’t see it. Her heart still thundered.

Kant reached the hallway and set the stepladder down. “It works now at least,” he added, nodding up to the bulb that glowed above them. “Call me if any others go bad.”

“Thanks for that.” She hesitated, fidgeting, then said, “I just went into town.”

“Hm.”