“Someone’s down there,” he said. “Watching for us.”

“Third building across the road, right? I noticed a faint light.”

He shook his head. “Too obvious. That’s a decoy. Same as the building beside this one where the door’s cracked open. Both are staged. He’s in the one to the right of it. Second story. Left front corner room.”

“What’s the giveaway?”

“I drew him out, standing in the road like that. He knows you’re not alone now, which should put him on notice. If the girl’s over there—” he pointed at the three-story building “—he can’t get to her without us seeing. You can go look for her while I keep an eye on him.”

“Thank you.”

Keeping an eye on our mystery man didn’t mean staying where we were. There was no need, now that he’d spotted Ricky. So we darted to the car, using that for cover, before dashing to the three-story building across the road.

The open front door was plastered with more No Trespassing and Private Property signs, along with warnings that the building was in unsafe condition and trespassing could result in serious injury or death. Judging by the number of jimmy marks in the frame, the warnings hadn’t stopped urban explorers intent on taking a look.

The door opened into a reception room. It seemed tiny, given the size of the building. I guess they hadn’t expected many visitors. A counter extended across the room, with mail cubbies behind it. Bits of crumbled concrete and blown-in leaves littered the floor. My footsteps crunched across the debris as we walked.

I took out my phone, for both the flashlight and the directions I’d jotted down from Macy’s instructions.

“I need to go that way,” I said, pointing. There were doorways at either end of the reception area, the doors long gone.

“And I’ll go that way.” Ricky pointed opposite. “Upstairs, where I have a better vantage point. Can you stand watch while I do that? I’ll text when I’m in place.”

I nodded.

“Be careful in here,” he whispered. “Just because I know where the girl’s kidnapper is doesn’t mean he’s alone.”

“I know.”

It took Ricky a few minutes to get upstairs. Then he texted to say he could still see the guy, and I set out.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

The open doorway led to a hall. The exit I wanted was on my left, with its door hanging by the top hinge. I walked through it into another hall, this one so short I wondered why they bothered making it a hall at all. It was really more of an entranceway, leading into a cavernous room. I stepped inside.

Huge windows let in enough moonlight for me to look around. The room took up two stories, with rows of pipes hanging from the ceiling. Were they pipes? Or had they once held lighting? I couldn’t tell from down here. As for what the room had been used for, there was little doubt of that. There were still a few metal bed frames, bolted to the floor.

As I moved through the ward, movement flickered above. Rotting rafters showed through chunks of missing ceiling. A black shape took form on one of the suspended pipes. I lifted my flashlight to see a perched raven watching me.

“Ewch i ffwrdd, bran,” I muttered.

The raven lifted its wings, ruffling its feathers as if offended. Then it settled back into silent watching. At another flash of motion, I noticed a hole in the roof. Moonlight streamed through it. Then the moon vanished as an owl glided past.

Ravens and owls. That’s no coincidence. They’re here for a reason.

Watching me.

I kept going with one eye on the raven. It didn’t move. I passed through the left doorway at the end of the ward and came out into …

A bathroom.

Not a restroom, but an actual room of baths. Four deep tubs, built right into the floor of the narrow room. For hydrotherapy, I presumed. Writing covered the walls. Not the “AJ was here!” – style graffiti I’d seen elsewhere, but lines like “a clean body is not a clean mind” and “out, damned spot” and “water cannot wash away the sins of the soul.”

A squeak sounded from the farthest tub. When I walked over, I could see it was filled with water. Bits of paper floated on top.

No, not paper. Petals. Red poppy petals.

I looked back at the doorway, but there was no sign of the raven or the owls. Just me, alone in this room, seeing poppies. I forced myself forward. Filthy water reached almost to the brim. The petals floated on it.

With the gun in my right hand, I reached out my left and touched the water. As I scooped petals, my fingers brushed something under the surface. I stumbled back, but fingers grabbed my wrist. A shape shot up from the filthy water. The bloated corpse of a dark-haired woman. Her mouth opened, a horrible, twisted, swollen mouth, skin sloughing off, teeth hanging loose.

“Your fault,” she said. “All yours.”

I wrenched away and my hand came free, her skin still clinging to it, as if I’d yanked the bloated flesh from her bones. I fell back, hitting the floor, a scream clogged in my throat, looking up to see—

I was alone in an empty room.

I stuffed my gun in my pocket, and without thinking I pulled out something else. The boar’s tusk. I gripped it tight and pushed to my feet and looked into the tub. It was empty. I reached down to see if the sides were wet. As I did, I realized I was still clutching something in my left hand. I opened it and a trio of damp poppy petals fell into the dry tub. I stared at them. Then I picked them up, fingers rubbing the petals to reassure myself they were real. I put them into my pocket and continued on.

The next room was a lavatory, with a row of toilets along one wall. Only low walls divided them, and if there had ever been doors, I couldn’t see any remnants of them.

I checked each stall as I moved through the room. Only when I reached the last did I notice writing on the opposite wall. Three words. Written in foot-high block letters.

I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

I swallowed and rubbed my arms. I tried to pull my gaze away, but it kept returning to those words, somehow more haunting than any that had come before.

I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

I didn’t understand. Not any of it. Not the ravens, not the owls, not the hallucinations and the poppies, not even what the hell I was doing here, walking through an abandoned psychiatric hospital, clutching a gun and a boar’s tusk. Part of me wanted to just stop and scream, “I don’t understand!” and demand that the universe reply. That it give me answers. It wouldn’t. Those were up to me.

As I pulled my gaze from the words, a shadow darted past the next doorway. I dashed to it just in time to see a figure run into yet another room in this labyrinth of decay.

I raced in to find the next room empty, with no sign of what it had been used for. According to the directions, the door to Macy was on my left. The figure had darted through the door to my right. I went right. I told myself I chose that because it might have been Macy, but I knew it wasn’t. Someone else was here.

I jogged through that doorway and through another, following the dark figure. Then I stopped short. I was in an empty room with only one entrance. The door slapped shut behind me.

I swung my gun on the figure standing by the now-closed door. It was the guy I’d caught trying to break into Ricky’s apartment.

“Oh.” He looked at the gun, a faint smile on his lips. “Does that mean you’d like to leave?” He opened the door. “By all means. Go rescue the girl. We don’t really need to talk.”

I stayed where I was, my gun trained on him.

He laughed. “That’s what I thought. Poor Macy. You aren’t here for her at all, are you? You’re here to find out why Ciara Conway died. Why her body turned up in your car. Why I would use Macy to lure you in. Those answers are far, far more important than Macy herself, aren’t they?”