“Not somebody. Him.” Kincaid sounds unperturbed, reaching down to smooth the peeling corner of duct tape wrapped around his board. “I know the signs. He was checking us out. Trying to tell if we were ripe.”

“That’s bad, Clarabelle. Really bad.” Hazel shakes her head. “The Mumbler knows who you are now. Maybe he put his mark on you. You’d better stay home on Halloween. And be super nice to the trick-or-treaters, too—don’t give out anything sucky like root beer barrels, or he’ll probably kill you.”

Kincaid laughs, and the fact that I could strangle him right now kind of blurs behind how clean the lines of his jaw and throat are when he tips his head back like that. “I like you, helper elf. You can stay.”

Hazel smiles hesitantly. I aim a kick at him but don’t follow through, letting him skate off because I’m afraid it’ll look like cutesy couple fighting. Because Bree. Of course.

I don’t know which comes first, the dream or the sounds. Maybe they grow together. One moment I’m on the verge of sleep, then I’m standing at the foot of my bed, feeling very much awake, very here, the carpet beneath my bare feet and the closet door before me. The light is on inside.

Faint sounds—tickaticktick. Better make sure nothing’s in there. Because closets are not to be trusted.

Behind the door stands Kincaid. He takes up the doorway, silhouetted by light, head tilted at a slight angle, looking down at me, gaze steady, no smile, which isn’t like him. “Hi,” I say, vaguely registering the muffled, distant quality of my voice. Anxiety begins to constrict my chest. Something’s wrong about all this. “What were you doing in there?”

He keeps looking, staring so deeply into my eyes that I’m compelled to look back. I’m missing it, whatever it is, whatever he’s imploring me to see. A rush of emotion, the warm tangle of everything I feel for him all at once, and, “Come here,” I whisper, reaching out, just wanting to heal it, whatever it is. He stoops to me, letting me slide my arms around him.

Tick. Tickaticktick. Those sounds, right by my ear. Moth. The word’s in my head, on my lips. His back is hot and moving, not the rise and fall of breathing, but squirming. Alive. I pull back, disbelief rendering me slow, stupid, as his coat slides open.

I see them, hundreds of them, lace-border moths, crawling and twitching and fluttering, nothing inside but moths.

I scream, and they explode, a whirlwind of moths pounding through me, my hair, my clothes, battering my eyes and mouth with papery fury, my ears full of the roar of their wind until—

—my brain throws some internal overload switch, and I’m out of it, awake, the storm of moths fading, trickling to the faintest tickticktick. Ticka-tick.