Tick-tick, tick-tick. Yes, this was exactly how it had happened. She remembered everything now. That’s why she felt so small, so frightened. Like a child. She had been a child. Four or five years old. She had gone down the stairs. Like this. Tick-tick. Calling for her mother. Following that sound. The house was silent except for that, silent and sleeping as it was now. And she had reached the front hall and turned. Left? Yes. She turned left and kept on walking, swiping her wet cheeks with the heel of her palm, tugging at her running nose.

Another long corridor, a corridor of doors. Paintings and side tables in between; clocks, candlesticks, empty chairs. An arras at the end with a many-headed dragon rampant, its tail up among the stars. Tick-tick. She had come calling for her mother. To the last doorway. Her father’s study. On her left.

She pushed inside. Closed the door behind her. Turned on the lights. Two dim, yellowish bulbs in shaded wall lamps: they only served to make the place more shadowy, forbidding, gloomy. Shelves of hulking volumes were to her left and right. Before her was her father’s desk, stern and mammoth. Its carved mahogany ram’s heads brooded at her from the tops of their pilasters. Behind it, the tall leather chair, framed by green velvet drapery, was tilted back slightly from long use. It seemed to regard her suspiciously, as from under lowered lids.

She knew it was stupid, but she really did feel afraid. She wished the curtains had been drawn. She knew the ruined chapel was out there in the darkness. The old graveyard. She stared at her own reflection on the pane, and was half fearful something would drift out of the night, press itself through her own image to the other side of the glass. Black Annie …

Tick-tick, tick-tick. It was coming from her right, from behind one of the shelves. That’s what had happened. She had heard it. She had called for her mother. She had reached for the secret door. She felt the books beneath her fingers now. The ribbed bindings. Leather, fleshly. There was a click, and the shelves were coming to life beneath her hand. Pivoting from the wall. Swinging outward. Tick-tick.

Suddenly, the shelves flew open on a hidden room and there stood her father, covered in blood.

Sophia cried out, “Are you a murderer, Daddy?”

“Yes,” he panted hoarsely. “I’m rather afraid I am.”

It was only another of her dreams, of course. But it was terrifying, and when she awoke, there was still the sickening memory of her father in the garden. Buy The Magi. Buy it—no matter what.

She sat up under her mother’s tender gaze, trying to blot out the memory, the dream, the whole thing. Lifting her knees beneath the duvet, resting her elbows on them, screwing her palms against her brow.