She was listening. To . . . music.

The fact that she could hear it and I could not provoked within me a soundless echo of envy. The emotion fled as quickly as it had come, though, replaced by a more horrible sense of curiosity. Horrible because, unlike envy, curiosity was something I knew better than to entertain.

And yet, from this near a distance, a dullard could not have missed the pain that briefly knitted Stephanie’s brow.

I glanced back to Charlie, as if she might provide me with some clue to its source.

But then Stephanie severed the moment by tossing the piano’s dustcover back into place.

“Let’s get you some breakfast,” she said to Charlie, turning away from the instrument, and from me. “You’re looking a little pale.”

With that, Stephanie took her sister’s hand and led her from the parlor with Charlie watching me until they both vanished.

And then abruptly, I was no longer the only hidden thing present in this parlor. This house.

Just now. What music had resounded through Stephanie’s memory?

Whose music?

Dangerous questions I had no business pondering. Especially when a certain vow made to a certain nuisance obliged me to remain out of the affairs of any living person I encountered.

Regardless of what Stephanie had heard, my only concern should be that she had not heard me.

Perhaps, though, after this latest interaction, Charlie would say something that would begin to change that.

For today, I would have to use my invisibility and my silence to my advantage and plan a subtle yet less deniable strike to augment my efforts.

For how much larger did shadows loom when you were not watching them lengthen? When you’d convinced yourself they were not even there?

Large enough to swallow you whole before you were ever aware night had fallen.

A truth I wagered no one in the world understood better than I.

THREE

Stephanie

This guy. This. Guy.

I glanced up from the calculus that, thanks to Charlie, I hadn’t finished last night.

It should have been easy enough to knock out, if only I hadn’t, somewhere along the way, managed to pick up a super-distracting shadow.

He sat two tables away in the otherwise empty school library, his face half hidden behind a thick novel. He hadn’t turned a single page.

Occasionally, I would catch his eyes flicking my way, the lenses of his black, thick-rimmed glasses reflecting the fluorescents overhead, making it impossible to read his expression.

Hipster Glasses, I’d taken to calling him, had made his first appearance yesterday—same bat time, same bat channel. For that reason, I might not have been so paranoid. Thing was, he had also made his second and third appearance yesterday, too.

At lunch, he’d twice passed my table, gripping his tray and slow-walking by, like he couldn’t figure out how to get to wherever he usually sat. Then, after last bell, I’d found him leaning against a row of lockers near mine, pretending to read that same book.