I pushed myself up, slowly, Emma at my side. I was still dressed from last night, so that would do. Remembering my knife, I looked for it briefly on the floor before spotting it sitting neatly on the side table as if it had never been used last night. Careful not to use my left hand too much, I strapped my knife on my waist without bothering to hide it.

I looked at her, but had no strength to manage a smile. “Let’s go find him.”

Emma hooked her arm through mine to help me down the stairs. As much as my head was still throbbing, movement was helping my body adjust, as if working the drug out of my body. By the time we reached the bottom of the stairs I had enough autonomy to grab her shoulder.

“Let’s split up,” I said, and her eyes widened in horror. “It’ll take hours if we don’t.”

“This house scares me,” she whimpered.

How could I tell her that the image she might see if she went with me would scare her more?

“Open the windows, let the sun in as you go to make you feel better,” I said. “Half an hour we’ll meet back here.”

She nodded, and rushed in the direction where I knew she’d find nothing. I went the opposite way, to the room where it happened.

It looked off. I tried to think back to how it looked last night, and every day before. Yes. The large tapestry had fallen off the wall and was lying in the middle of the floor. No … not fallen. It was arranged like a rug.

I pushed the small table on top aside with my shoulder and good hand, and then stepped off and threw the woven thing aside. Instantly, I recoiled.

Tom was where I had left him, but he wasn’t. His body had sunk partway into the floor, as if resting in a shallow pool—only glimpses of his thigh, his hand, his face, surfacing. Except the medium wasn’t water, it was solid stone and cracked hardwood, and his body was like a fossil, petrified within. His skin was grey with death or hardening, his expression frozen in that blank stare to God.

I quickly covered him back up where he had been hidden, but for a moment after I couldn’t move. That tapestry had been purposely moved from the wall to the floor to cover up the evidence of what the Evil Eye had done.