The stair groaned as she put pressure on it. Gripping her camera tightly, Morgan skipped up the last three steps and squared up with the yawning doorway.

It was dark inside but for a ray of silvery light streaming in from a window. Her heart was in her throat, threatening to abandon ship if she didn’t turn back now. But she couldn’t. She’d come all this way with only the clothes on her back and a key that had become her everything—a hint, a hope, a promise—that there was life for her beyond Black Harbor. Whatever it opened could mean escape, the end of her sentence in this stark, coal-dusted prison.

And it was Christmas Day. Nothing bad happened on Christmas, right?

The wind whistled, rocked her back on her heels. A piece of hair cut across her face. Morgan pushed it away and, biting down on the studs in her lip, walked into the house that had shown her that Hell existed right here in Black Harbor.

Silence.

She’d wandered into a crypt. It was so quiet, the walls might as well have been poured concrete, marked by old graffiti. Drawings of pot leaves and pentagrams. Spent candles lay on the floor, their wax melted and hardened next to soggy pizza boxes, the remains of a seance.

The more Morgan looked around, the more her hope diminished. The cabinets were all opened and emptied, even the ones Bern had kept locked. The pantry had been pried open, the fridge lying faceup like a coffin. Her boots crunched on the pieces of a shattered crack pipe as she ventured farther in, toward Bern’s bedroom.

The door was closed. Morgan drew in a breath before setting her hand on the cold brass knob and pushing it inward. She’d never stepped foot in this room before. It was smaller than she’d always imagined it would be. A full-size mattress lay on the floor, scantily covered by a stained sheet. The dresser drawers were pulled out. Someone had stolen all the clothes and knickknacks, whatever they had been. She didn’t know what kinds of things Bern held dear, if anything at all.

The key was in her hand now. She tried it in anything that had a lock, seeing if she’d somehow overlooked the great mystery she’d been lured to discover. The bedroom door, the shallow closet, the top dresser drawer.

All empty.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the fogged mirror. She looked sad, on Christmas of all days, and small. Her glasses were too big for her face. Her jacket hung off her like a shirt on a scarecrow and her legs were stick thin, not even touching. Who did she think she was, honestly? That she could come in here and conquer her fears? She was nothing. Nobody. Just a scared little girl the world rejected over and over and over again.