“We have to find a way to get out of here, Mary. We don't have much time.” I look back to the door to the porch. It's still closed.

“Have you spoken with Harry?” I ask.

“Just to let him know we're still alive,” he says. I can tell that the fear is eating away at his patience.

I stand and walk to the door. When I open it I see that it's covered in arrows and a breeze blows through the attic, sending the papers into flight again. I look past the edge of the porch to where Harry and Jed stand and they wave frantically at me. They've watched as our house was breached. Watched and wondered what happened to me and Travis.

I turn back to Travis and an arrow whizzes past my head into the attic. I hear a sharp yelp and Travis storms out of the dark inside, his hand on his arm, blood seeping through his fingers.

He glares across the gap to where Harry still holds the crossbow. Harry shrugs with a sheepish look. “It's too bad that Argos is over here,” Travis says, gritting his teeth. “I would feel much safer with him at the crossbow.”

I try to pull his hand away and look at the wound. “Only a scratch,” he says, batting me away.

He goes back to sorting the clothes and I can't help but smile when he rips a strip of fabric from a frilly pink dress and wraps it around his arm to stanch the blood.

I pluck the arrow from the floor and unwind its note. What now? it asks in shaky handwriting.

I don't know the answer and so I cast the arrow aside and join Travis by the trunks. I kneel next to him, place my hand on his shoulder.

His sits back on his heels and rubs at his thigh as if it hurts. When he raises his head to meet my eyes I can see the weight of his sorrow there.

“We will make it,” I reassure him. But we both know that we may not. That this attic may be our tomb.

Argos yelps as another arrow careens into the attic and sticks into the flooring. “I should have closed the door while Harry was still trying to send his messages,” he says.

“They're worried,” I say. “They want to help.”

Travis plucks the arrow from the floor and tosses it into a dark corner without bothering to read the note. “We don't have time to deal with them. We must get ourselves out of here.” All at once he slumps against the trunks and I catch a glimpse of his profile, of the strain that he's been trying to keep from me.

“Mary.” He looks down at his hands clenched into fists, the knuckles a bright white. “Can you tell anything? I mean …” I watch his throat convulse as he swallows. “Can you feel it?” He is terrified of the question and it hangs in the air like a horrid smell.