She did not know where to go. The barn fire had not spread as she’d expected but seemed to have gone out, and that seemed ominous. Laurie ran unthinkingly, away from the barn, away from the house. Part of her wanted to find Mr. Billington, but another part of her, a deeper truer part, knew that he was somehow involved in this, so she did not call his name, did not call out anything, but simply ran.

She could not go into the woods—Laurie knew that much—but she was afraid to stay near the house, so she headed through the trees that paralleled the drive, heading toward the road. She heard Mr. Billington call her name, from somewhere far behind her, but she kept running.

She slept that night in a ditch by the side of the road, and the next day made it into Pine Creek, where she stumbled into the police station and blurted out everything that had happened.

No one believed her, of course. Or at least they didn’t believe all of it, but they found the bodies of her parents—her father’s charred corpse, her mother’s gutted form—and Laurie spent several weeks in a foster home until one day, somehow, some way, Josh’s parents showed up and took her away to live permanently with them.

Laurie glanced over at Josh and, not for the first time, she was grateful that she’d been adopted. What had happened to her real parents was terrible, horrifying, but as emotionally scarring as it had been, she was aware of the fact that she’d been better off without them, better off away from the house, better off with Josh and his parents.

Their parents.

Yes. Their parents. No matter who had sired her, they had raised her and it was their love, their values, their influence that had shaped her into the woman she was today.

“Are you all right?” Josh asked, looking over at her.

Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded.

Josh parked the car in front of the garage. Laurie got out silently, looked to her right at the barn, to her left at the house. Nothing had changed in all those years. It was as if the place had remained frozen in time, waiting for her return.

She thought of Dawn. Shivered.

“Where do we start?” Josh asked, squinting against the early afternoon sun. He stared up at the house. “Damn. This place is as creepy as I remember it.”

Laurie smiled wryly. “Tell me about it.”

She walked toward the front of the house, saw in real life the angle they’d seen in the photograph.

“It is a place of power,” Josh said.

She ignored him. She wasn’t in the mood for metaphysical chats, and though she wasn’t exactly sure what she hoped to find here or what she hoped to accomplish, she knew she wanted to get it all done this afternoon.