Tick, tock, tick, tock.

Tilting one ear toward the sound, I leaned in, certain of what I was hearing but equally sure it couldn’t be real.

“Charlie,” I whispered to my sister. “Do you hear the—?”

Wham!

I yelped, spinning away from the mantel to face the pocket doors that had slammed themselves closed, shutting me in.

On the other side of them, Charlie screamed.

THIRTY-SIX

Zedok

The child’s shriek—it ripped clear and sharp through the night, coming from the house.

“Charlie?”

“Your turn now, Valor!” chortled Guile as he unleashed his deck at me.

Panicked, I charged through the flurry of cards—all faces—shoving aside Guile as I did. He laughed and staggered out of my way, putting up no fight whatsoever—something that terrified me almost as much as Charlie’s cry.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Stephanie

“Charlie!” I hurried to the doors but halted in my tracks when, just as swiftly as they’d come crashing together, they flung themselves apart.

My breath caught at the sight of the foyer that lay before me. Even in the midnight dark, I could tell it wasn’t ours. Not with its beautiful wood paneling that gleamed in the cold glow of soft silver moonlight. What was happening?

I switched from foot to foot, fighting with the impulse to rush through those doors again, because that’s where I’d left Charlie. But Charlie wasn’t there anymore.

“Charlie?” I called into the foreign foyer, my voice ringing through the house-within-a-house that Charlie had already tried to tell me about. She had seen it, too. Through the doorway of her closet.

“Steph-nie?” rang Charlie’s petrified voice from right in front of me, but as muffled and distant as the repeated piano note and the ticking clock had been. Instinct taking over, I surged forward, straight across the threshold and into the house that was not ours.

Unthinking, I dashed across the foyer and into an opulent dining room with walls swathed in smooth and seamless scarlet and gilt-leaf paper. Four high-backed chairs surrounded a cleared and polished table. One long enough to hold a body. A mummy.

Dazed, I retreated from the room with a whimper. Panic then nipped at my sanity, threatening to devour my whole mind the moment I found myself once again facing the closed pocket doors. I went to them, throwing them apart myself this time.

But our parlor was gone—changed to mirror, in every detail, the lavish one from my dream with Erik. All except for the bay window, which, instead of showing a world of nothing, now displayed one of whiteness. Snow blanketed the grounds, huge tufts of it falling at a breakneck pace to fill the sill.

Tick, tock, tick went the black clock now situated centermost on the mantel.

The parlor. If . . . if I went back inside. If I shut the doors and opened them again, would that take me back? Desperation rising to shunt my fear aside, I moved to cross the threshold.