He could sense her hesitation as she pulled a stack of files out of her backpack. When he asked, “Our suspects?” she nodded, flipping through the stack. Slowly, as if it weighed more than all the other files combined, she procured one from the bottom.

“Did you know your dad was going to see Evelyn before your mom died? It looks like he was one of her clients from—”

“Give me that.” Raven yanked the file from her hand, flipping through it in a panic. He had that discordant feeling of being in a nightmare, where the walls are closing in on you and the monsters are advancing, but a part of you senses that it isn’t real. If you squeeze your eyes shut tightly enough, and shake your head violently, you can wake yourself up.

Raven didn’t wake. Not when he turned page after page with a trembling hand, uncovering the secret his father had been keeping from him. He’d been seeing Evelyn for a year. He’d been locked up in that office with her, where no one could see them. Maybe they’d used that time to talk. Maybe they’d used that desk to spread out pictures and jot down revelations about his broken marriage.

Or maybe not.

A terrible feeling was unfolding in the pit of Raven’s stomach, and it felt so much more dangerous than fear. It felt like knowing. Suddenly, so many things made sense. His father had become distant in the year leading up to his mother’s death. Fidgety. He could be caught staring off into space halfway through dinner, or sitting in his study in the middle of the night, watching the walls. Raven hadn’t been able to understand it, but then his mother had died in his arms, and his heart hadn’t had room for anything but memories of her. The way her hair tickled his neck when she embraced him. The way her warm brown eyes mirrored his own, and when the light went out of them, his world didn’t simply fade to darkness.

He sank into it.

All that year Belle had tried to pull him back into the light, and when she realized she couldn’t, she’d stayed in that dark place for him. They’d lived in his nightmare together. Raven hadn’t even realized it until the night Jack stood over him in a glass coffin, her cheeks flushed at the thought of waking him with a kiss. The moonlight had been filtering through the trees and he’d looked up at her through slits in his eyes, pretending to be asleep but desperately, desperately wanting to wake up.

Wanting Jack to wake him.