The knock wasn’t a polite one. It rattled the old front door of the Guthrie house on its swollen hinges, shook dust from the rafters, made the salt lines flicker like nervous candles. Rowan felt it in her bones first — the way a coming storm hums up your spine before thunder ever cracks the sky.
Maisie stirred in her arms, her small hand fisting the collar of Rowan’s old sweater. She didn’t wake. Even half-asleep, her tiny mouth murmured a word Rowan hated more every time she heard it whispered in the shadows: blood.
Lucien stood by the window, watching the night beyond the warped glass. His eyes glowed faintly in the candlelight, silver and endless. She knew he’d already counted the shapes moving just beyond the edge of the porch — five, no, seven now. Shadows too tall, too thin to be w
