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Dedication

For Grandma. From whom I inherited my love of books.

1 MORGAN

The key was a blackened talisman, tucked into her leather cuff. She’d gotten in the habit of keeping it there since it had become the only tangible thing she owned when, three months ago, her entire life was reduced to ash and ruin. The fire department had already come and gone by the time she arrived, her boots crunching on caramelized glass and stepping over hissing metal. Everything was wet and charred—mannequins with their faces melted in, the once larger-than-life Mylar tree shriveled to a root—which meant that whoever had left the key had watched and waited, like a tiger stalking its prey. But Morgan knew better. Only humans tortured their food before eating it.

A red balloon floated in the sulfurous haze, tethered to a small, coffin-shaped box set on a step of the smoldering staircase. A simple note scratched on the back of an envelope revealed it was for her: My Ruin: All roads lead back to home.

A puff of vapor escaped her lips—a silent scream, perhaps, at the omen from beyond the grave. The only person who would have used that moniker was dead. The last image Morgan had of her aunt Bern was of her lying faceup with her skull shattered on the concrete, mouth open to catch snowflakes. It was one of few childhood memories she hadn’t overwritten. Rather, she kept it sequestered in a safe place so she could recall it at will, the way normal people preserved memories of their wedding day or the moment their first child was born.

Now, standing on the Reynoldses’ back porch, she turned her wrist and pressed her thumb to the key, tempted to free it from its holster. The iron stung. The key would not fit, she determined, as she considered the aperture in the ornate metal plate.

All roads lead back to home.