There was a terrible familiarity to the story she was recording—oh, not the setting, not the details, but the overarching structure of it, the theme.… It reminded her of the memory she most wanted to forget. And after reading the other stories Sam had recorded, she didn’t think it was a coincidence.

Which meant the ghost hadn’t just been in her head. It had been rooting around, looking for secrets it could turn into fodder for its terror.

And she was going to have to share this memory, this thing that she wished she could have buried with Alain’s body, not because she felt safe doing so, but because she had to. Because something had made itself at home amongst her deepest terrors.

She closed her eyes against the weakness trembling through her, whispering that she could ignore the similarities. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it didn’t matter.…

No. It wasn’t a coincidence. And she wasn’t a coward. She’d tell Sam everything, open up her guts for him to look through, to see the grisly truth inside.

She just wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to look at her the same again.

A few minutes after she finished writing she heard the knock at the door and came down the stairs as Liza admitted Sam into the house. He’d shaved and changed into less rumpled—although, this being Sam, not entirely unrumpled—clothing, his eyes were bright again, and he was carrying a large stack of books.

“I stopped at Liefdehuis to get some of my research materials,” he said, pushing his still-damp hair away from his eyes with one hand and almost losing the top part of the stack. “Where do you want to do this?”

“The dining room,” she said as he stamped the rest of the snow from his boots and handed Liza his overcoat. His presence filled the entry hall.

They settled around the dining table, Sam stacking the books haphazardly in the middle of it.

“Are you sure you’re feeling well enough for this?” he asked.

“I think I have to be,” she replied.

“In that case, I’m ready whenever you are.”

“You never told me how you confirmed its presence,” she said. “Did you … did you see anything? When it made contact?”

“No,” he said, sitting down at the table. “It did sums, in my head.”

“What?”

“I had posed her—it—a mathematical problem, the day before. She sort of borrowed my brain to answer me.”

Alva sat down across from him. “That’s horrifying.”

“I was in raptures at the time,” he said.

She nodded. That conformed to one of her budding theories. “I think it preys on people’s fears,” she said. “I think … the more afraid you are, or upset, the more it has to work with.”