Thanks to the dreams with Erik, though, the house didn’t feel as empty as it should have.

I shook my head at myself. Because this—loitering in the foyer of my own house, harkening to my nonexistent ESP—was stupid.

Kicking the door shut behind me, I tucked the basket of linens under one arm and started for the kitchen. But at the entryway to the parlor, a tug in my gut caused me to look inside.

Though my gaze first zigged to the uncovered piano, it immediately zagged to the mantel.

To my angel.

I dropped the basket onto a nearby antique corner chair. Unlooping my purse strap from over my head, I let the bag fall to the floor. Next, I strode up to the mantel and stared right at my angel.

This marked the second time it had moved. Seemingly on its own.

Yet there were only two people who could have moved it in either instance. Dad, knowing how much the figurine meant to me, wouldn’t have touched it. Unless he’d found it lying around somewhere. And hadn’t it been on my nightstand last night? A place well within Charlie’s reach. She could have taken it and left it somewhere. In that case, Dad would have moved it someplace where it wouldn’t get broken or smashed.

Like the mantel.

And there you have it, my dear Watson. Mystery sol—

Booooooooooonnnnnggggg.

Yelping, I retracted my hand from the figurine and spun to face the room.

The low and out-of-tune note, issued from the enormous grand piano, resounded around me—through me—as my eyes took in its un-sheeted form.

I held my breath and scanned the vacant room, my blood pumping hard and fast through my veins, propelled by the eerie sensation that, though there wasn’t anyone in sight . . . there was someone there.

The same someone—the same something—I’d felt before.

No. No, there wasn’t.

I tried to take my mind down the first rational route I saw—that I must have imagined the note being played. But my logic refused to follow. Not when I could still hear the fading reverberations of the note as it slowly died out.

I grabbed my angel from the mantel, then forced myself to trudge past the piano that Dad must have uncovered because he was planning on dismantling it soon. I returned to the basket of clean laundry and, willing myself to stop shaking, laid my angel atop the bedsheets, next to the roses.

Basket in hand, I left the parlor quickly, and with a determination I was still waiting to feel, I marched into the kitchen, where I found a note from Dad on the counter.

All four smoke alarms were beeping when I got back from picking up Charlie.

Couldn’t find any 9Vs, so we went to Wally World. Shouldn’t be gone long. Tacos for dinner.

—Señor Dad

All four smoke detectors? At the same time?

Still no reason to get psyched out. Whoever had last replaced the alarm batteries would have done so all at once. It made sense they’d all go out together, too.