We’re going to die out here.

Grant struggled up, half-standing, hands braced on his knees.

It felt like his brain was peeling away from the walls of his skull.

“Can you stand?” he asked.

No answer.

Grant pushed Paige onto her back and grabbed her wrists.

Her eyes threatening to roll up into her head.

“Push with your feet,” he groaned.

They made it six inches on the first pull, Grant lunging back toward the steps while Paige kicked at the slick stones.

Even less the second.

It went on like this, their progress measured in inches, Grant pausing between each effort to catch his breath and wince through the pain.

The rain added what felt like pounds to her body. He could hear the thin fabric of her pajama bottoms tearing as her legs slid across the concrete.

By the time he reached the first step, their clothes were soaked and hanging like lead drapes.

“Almost there, Paige.”

He dragged her up the steps.

The last pull sent him sprawling back onto the porch, where he lay for a minute, staring up at the light, trying to catch his breath.

“Paige, you okay?”

She coughed and rolled over to face him.

“Better,” she said.

The pain in Grant’s head had relented, but the fog lingered. It suddenly occurred to him that he’d just dragged what looked like a dead body across the front yard in a crowded neighborhood at God knows what time of night. The thought was enough to give him the final shock of adrenaline he needed to throw Paige’s shivering body over his shoulder again and haul her inside.

Grant shut the door behind them and stumbled into the living room.

Fell to his knees, lay Paige on the warm hardwood in front of the fire.

He sprawled across the floor beside her.

They lay shivering in a silence broken only by the crackling logs and the ticking of rain against the windowglass.

In the stillness, Grant noticed the same pressure in his head that he’d felt at the beginning of the evening as he walked up the steps to Paige’s front door—a stuffy tightness, like sitting in the canned atmosphere of a fuselage at cruising altitude. He held his nose and tried to pop his ears but nothing happened.

Paige said, “I wanted so bad to be crazy.”

“I thought you were.”

“I know.”

“When I walked in here tonight it looked like you hadn’t left this house in a long time.”

Grant’s pulse rate was dropping out of the red.

“Not in two weeks.”

“Is that when this started?”

“No, it started a month ago, every day intensifying until I couldn’t even go beyond the front steps. Until I was confined to my house like a prisoner. You went in my room, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me, Grant.”

“I swear.”

“Then why is it affecting you?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know. Don’s really dead?”

“He is.”

“How?”

“He broke the mirror in the guest bathroom and used it to cut his throat. He was a great man, Paige.” Grant could feel the emotion pressing in. “A great friend. Oh God, his wife.” A tidal wave of grief was bearing down, but he pushed it back.

Not the time. Need to think.

Grant shuffled closer to the fire. His cold, drenched clothing still clung to him, but waves of heat were washing over his face.

“I woke up one night,” Paige said, her voice barely more than a whisper, “and it was just there.”

“What was?”

“A presence.”

“In your room?”

“Under the bed. Remember tag? How when you were it you’d sneak up on me while I was hiding? Get real close. Scare the shit out of me.”

“Sure.”

“Whenever you did that, a split second before you grabbed me, I’d get this premonition that you were there. That’s what it feels like everywhere I go in this house.” She was becoming emotional again. “Like something is right behind me all the time. I swear I can almost feel its breath on the back of my neck. I dream about it constantly.”

“You’re certain this isn’t just in your mind?”

“Are you imagining this? Was Don?”

“And you sleep down here now?”

“When I’m able to sleep at all. Whatever it is, it’s made my bedroom home.”

“You’ve never seen it?”

“No.”

“And all those leftovers in your fridge?”

“I’ve been living off delivery for two week. I’d have starved to death if I didn’t run a cash business.”

“How often do you try to leave?”

“I test it every day.”

“And the same thing always happens?”

“Yeah. In the beginning, I could make it to the street. Tonight, the pain started the moment I stepped out on the porch.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s worse than that, Grant.”

“This seems pretty bad all by itself.”

“I don’t know what it is, but I know what it wants.”

“What’s that?”

“People. My clients. And the longer I hold out, the sicker I get.”

“Are you telling me there’s more than one dead man upstairs?”

“I don’t know what happens to them.” Paige rolled over and faced him. “I tried not to. Tried to resist. But the longer I did, the sicker I got. I was dying.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I take a client upstairs. While we’re doing our thing, I black out. When I wake up, they’re gone. I have no idea what it does with them.”

“How many men have you taken up there?” Grant asked.

“Two.”

Two.

“But it wants another one. It wants it now. You’re the first appointment I took in three days, and I took it with no referral because I’m desperate and couldn’t reach any of my core clients. I didn’t want to, but this thing … it’s killing me.”

Are these Sophie’s and my missing men?

Seymour and Talbert?

The cases that brought me to Paige’s doorstep in the first place?

Maybe better to sit on that piece of news for the time being.

Grant forced himself to sit up. “I should make some calls.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Do you understand what’s happening here?” she asked.

“No.”

“So what makes you think someone else will? You’ll just get them, or us, or everyone killed.”

Paige struggled to her feet.

“Where are you going?” Grant asked.

“My little black book.”

Grant managed to stand. He reached into his inner pocket, took out his phone.

“Are you crazy?” Paige said.

He was already scrolling contacts for Sophie’s cell.

“Grant, did you hear what I said?”

“What exactly do you propose we do here, Paige? ‘Cause I’m at a loss.”

“Call a client.”

“Come on.”

“It doesn’t kill them.”

“You don’t know what it does. Taking more people into your room isn’t a solution.”

“I’m not looking for a solution, Grant. I’m just looking to survive the night. I just want this pain to stop.”

“Paige—”

“Do I look well to you? If I don’t get someone upstairs tonight, I won’t be alive in the—”

Paige bent over cradling her stomach.

“Paige?”

As Grant moved toward her, she turned and ran.

He limped after her, shouting her name, and as he passed under the archway into the kitchen, he spotted her hunched over the toilet in the bathroom, puking her guts out.

He stepped inside and stood behind her, holding her hair back as she retched into the toilet.

Wasn’t the first time.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re gonna feel better after this.”

She shook her head. She was spitting now, her back heaving up and down as she clambered for a decent breath.

She said, “Hit the light.”

Grant did.

The inside of the toilet bowl and everything in the vicinity was dotted with specks of deep burgundy, and over the pungent reek of bile, Grant caught another smell.

Copper.

Blood.

“I’m calling nine-one-one,” he said.

“No.” Her face was still in the bowl. “They’ll try to take me to the hospital. I can’t leave the house.”