GROWL OF A STOLEN BLOODLINE

‎POV: Marlowe Reyes "You're gripping the door handle like it's going to fly open," my mother said. I let go of it. "I wasn't gripping anything." "Marlowe." "I wasn't." The car turned up a driveway that didn't seem to end. Trees lined both sides of it, tall and black against the evening sky, and somewhere past them I caught the first glimpse of the house. It didn't look like a house. It looked like something built to be photographed, all pale stone and glass, lit up gold from the inside like it was daring the dark to come closer. "It's a lot," my mother said, and I heard the nerves under her voice even though she was smiling. "It's fine." "You keep saying that." "Because it's the only thing I've got, Mom." She reached over and squeezed my knee. Her hand was cold. I didn't say anything about that either. The car stopped in front of the entrance, and before the driver had even cut the engine, the front doors opened and light spilled out onto the steps. A woman in a gray dress came down first, hands folded in front of her, her face arranged into something polite that didn't reach her eyes. "Mrs. Bane," she said to my mother. "Welcome home." My mother flinched at the name. Just barely. I don't think anyone else caught it. "Thank you," she said. "This is my daughter, Marlowe." The woman looked at me the way you'd look at a stain you hadn't decided how to deal with yet. "Of course," she said. "Right this way." I grabbed my bag before anyone could offer to take it from me and followed them inside. The entryway alone was bigger than our old apartment. Marble floors, a staircase that curved up into shadow, a chandelier that looked like it cost more than my mother had made in the last five years combined. Two more staff appeared out of nowhere to deal with the luggage, and I caught one of them, a younger guy in a black jacket, glance at me and then quickly look away like he'd been told not to stare. "This way to the dining room," the woman in gray said. "Mr. Bane is expecting you." "Is Matteo joining us?" my mother asked. Something moved behind the woman's face. Fast. Gone before I could name it. "Not this evening," she said. My mother's shoulders dropped, just slightly, like she'd been braced for a different answer and was relieved not to have gotten it. I filed that away. I'd been filing a lot away since we pulled up. The dining room had a table long enough to seat sixteen, set for three. A man stood up from the head of it the moment we walked in, and I understood instantly why my mother had fallen for him. He was handsome in an effortless, unbothered way, silver starting at his temples, a smile that reached his whole face. He came around the table like he couldn't wait one more second to close the distance. "There she is," he said, and for a second I thought he meant my mother, but his eyes were on me. "Marlowe. I've heard so much about you I feel like I already know you." "Hi," I said. "Dave," he said, holding out his hand. "Please, sit. You must be starving after that drive." I shook his hand because it seemed rude not to, and it was warm, and firm, and completely normal, and I hated how disarming that was. "Thank you for having us," my mother said, sliding into the chair beside him, and he touched the small of her back like it was the easiest thing in the world. "Having you," he repeated, laughing softly. "This is your home now. Both of you." I sat down across from them. A plate was already in front of me, food I didn't recognize the name of but that smelled better than anything I'd eaten in months. "So," Dave said, unfolding his napkin. "Tell me about yourself, Marlowe. Your mother says you're starting at the university this fall." "Literature," I said. "Maybe art history too." "A reader." He looked pleased, like I'd passed some kind of test. "We have a library here that's criminally underused. You'll have to make use of it." "I might," I said, and I heard how flat my own voice sounded, how careful. My mother shot me a look. I ignored it. "She's being polite," my mother said to Dave, a little too brightly. "She warms up." "I don't need her to warm up," Dave said, and reached over to refill my water glass himself, which felt like a strange thing for a man like him to do, a man with staff for exactly that. "I remember what it's like to walk into someone else's life and be expected to feel at home immediately. It doesn't work that way. Take your time." I looked at him for a second too long. "Thank you," I said, because I didn't know what else to say to that. Dinner went on like that, easy on the surface. He asked about my classes, about my mother's new position managing his household accounts, about whether I liked the drive up. He laughed at things that weren't especially funny, and he was so warm, so attentive, that I found myself waiting the entire meal for something to go wrong. For the mask to slip. It didn't. "Will I meet your son?" I asked, mostly to see what would happen. The table went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with the food. "Matteo keeps his own hours," Dave said, and his voice didn't change, not exactly, but something underneath it tightened. "He's finishing his final year. Very driven. You'll cross paths eventually, I'm sure." "Is he away?" I asked. "He's around," Dave said. "He just isn't always easy to pin down." My mother's hand found her wine glass and held it without drinking. "He's a good boy," Dave added, like he needed to say it out loud. "Complicated. But good." I nodded like that answered anything. After dinner, the woman in gray, whose name I still didn't have, walked me up to my room. It was on the third floor, at the end of a hallway with windows on one side that looked out over dark grounds I couldn't see the edges of. "If you need anything, there's a line to the staff wing," she said, gesturing at a small panel by the door. "Breakfast is at eight, but you're not required to attend." "Thanks," I said. She paused in the doorway like she wanted to say something else. Then she didn't. "Goodnight, Miss Reyes," she said, and left. The room was beautiful. Too beautiful. A bed big enough for four people, a window seat, a desk already stocked with pens and a lamp that looked like it belonged in a museum. I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time without moving, listening to a house that was too quiet in a way our old apartment never had been. No traffic outside. No neighbors through the walls. Just my own heartbeat and the occasional groan of old wood settling. I thought about Dave's hand refilling my water glass. I thought about how easy it would be to let myself believe this was real, that a man like that could actually want a stranger's daughter under his roof for no reason at all. I thought about every time in my life someone had been kind to me right before they left. If I don't need him, I told myself, he can't hurt me. If I don't need any of them. It had gotten me through sixteen years without a father. It could get me through this. I got up eventually and started unpacking, if only to have something to do with my hands. I hung my clothes in a closet bigger than my old bedroom. I lined my books up on the desk in the order I always kept them, spine color first, then alphabetical, something steady in a house that felt anything but. It was close to midnight when I went to check the window, mostly out of habit. I always checked windows. My mother used to joke that I'd been a security guard in a past life. The latch wouldn't sit flush. I frowned and pushed harder, and it still wouldn't catch, like something was warping the frame just enough to keep it from closing all the way. I flipped on the little reading lamp by the window and leaned in to look. The wood around the latch was torn. Not painted over, not old damage from years of weather. Torn, deep, four ragged grooves raked into the frame from the outside in, splinters still curling up pale and fresh where they'd been gouged loose. I sat frozen for a second, my hand hovering over the marks before I made myself touch them. They were still rough. New. Whatever had made them had done it recently enough that the wood hadn't even had time to darken at the edges. My pulse picked up. I told myself it was an animal. A branch. Something ordinary that I hadn't thought of yet, some explanation that would make my hand stop shaking against the sill. Then I heard it. Very faint. Very close. Coming from somewhere below my window, low and slow and unmistakably alive. Something down there was breathing.