This family has the answers. They beat the odds. They’ll help her find him.

“Vera! Vera, wake up!” a voice shouts.

Vera? Who’s Vera? Where is her husband?

“Come on, Vera, wake up!”

I know that voice. He is mine. He belongs to me.

Then she feels a sting on her hand, like she’s been slapped. All at once, she starts shaking.

Shaking, shaking, shaking.

“Wake! Up!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Max

Okay. I’m sleeping in Vera Martinez’s house. And there’s a bunch of demonic shit a few feet below me in the basement, and I’m supposed to act like that’s totally normal. Max stretched his long limbs on the flowered sofa, all dusty pink and baby blue.

It wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t even a pullout. But at least it was a sectional, so his feet sort of fit. Also, the room wasn’t smoking, or located down the hall from a demon, so it had its perks.

God, my mom…that was my mom.

He rolled onto his side, his arm hanging off the edge of the cushions, skimming the shag area rug. He was lying on top of what he assumed were Vera’s childhood sheets—pink polka dots—with a pink plush blanket. It was nearly July, and he sweated when he slept, so the fuzzy blanket was in a ball on the floor, but he appreciated the gesture. Aunt Tilda also bought Chloe a night-light and read her three books before bed. She was the first real parent Chloe had in a while.

I should get up. There’s no way I’m sleeping. He popped to his feet, shaggy beige fibers slipping between his toes. He should check on Chloe, or maybe sleep on her floor. If she woke up not knowing where she was, she’d be hysterical. He should call Alexis’s mother tomorrow and see if Chloe could sleep there again. That was probably safer, away from all of this. He could tell Mrs. Tenn that he’d caught the same virus as his mom, drop the whole “it takes a village” line that parents love so much. That might work.

He trudged toward the kitchen, adjusting the hem of the Florida Keys T-shirt he was wearing. It was Vera’s dad’s. They ran out of his house so fast, he obviously never stopped to pack a bag, so Aunt Tilda put his and Chloe’s clothes in the washer. Now he was creeptastically wearing the shirt of a man he’d never met, and Chloe was sleeping in Vera’s nightgown. That wasn’t awkward at all.

He padded to the fridge, not remotely hungry after Aunt Tilda’s beef stew, but needing something to do. He couldn’t lie on that couch anymore. He’d get a glass of water.

He opened the fridge, looking for a Brita, and let the cool gust of air wash over him. All of their fruits and vegetables were organized in little Tupperware containers and the orange juice was in a glass pitcher. Everything looked so cared for. He dug his fingers into a cardboard box holding fizzy lime water and pulled out a can, the sound of the crack like a shotgun blast in the silent house. He hated the quiet; it made his brain think too loudly.