Chapter 3
The car hadn't moved in five minutes. I sat in the back seat with my hand clamped around my left wrist and told myself it was nothing.
We were parked on the shoulder just past the mansion gates. The driver had pulled over when I told him to stop. Through the tinted window I could see the stone pillars and the ironwork and the long driveway curving up toward the house. From here the place looked quiet. Like nothing was happening inside.
My wrist burned.
I'd felt it first in the bedroom hallway upstairs, but I hadn't been upstairs. I was in the car. I told myself that didn't make sense and rubbed harder. The skin was unmarked at first, just hot. Then when I turned my hand over under the daylight coming through the window, I saw it.
A faint tracery right under the skin. Gold, not red. Thin branching lines starting at the base of my palm and feathering up toward the inside of my wrist. Like a river system lit from underneath. It pulsed once, dimmed, then came back a little brighter when I breathed.
I stared at it. I hadn't hit it on anything. There was no cut, no bruise. Just that light and a low, deep ache that didn't feel like a surface injury at all.
The driver glanced in the rearview. "You alright back there?"
I didn't answer right away. The ache spiked.
It wasn't gradual. One second it was a dull throb, the next it was sharp, like someone had pressed a thumb hard into a fresh wound. I sucked air through my teeth and doubled forward a little, my other hand coming up to cover it completely. My eyes watered before I could stop them.
For a half second I wasn't thinking about my wrist at all. I was thinking about a shoulder. I didn't know why. I had this clear, stupidly precise image of white bandage and lace and a hand pulling away, and a jolt of pain right on the left side, high up near the shoulder. It was so specific it made my stomach turn.
"Hey," the driver said, louder now. "You need a hospital? You're white as paper."
I shook my head. "No."
"You sure? You been rubbing that wrist since we left the circle. You get burned?"
"No," I said. I flexed my fingers. The golden lines were still there, but fainter now, like they'd sunk back down. The sharp spike eased off into that hot itch again. "Just — cramp. Old sprain."
He didn't look convinced. He kept watching me in the mirror. He was older, county-guy kind of older, Braves cap on the dash, a to-go coffee in the cupholder that had gone cold.
"That house got something to do with it?" he asked. He tipped his chin toward the gates. "You left in a hurry."
I had. I'd been supposed to leave. The plan had been simple: get dropped off, wait for the call, get picked up, drive back to town and pretend I hadn't been there. That's what I'd told myself on the way in. Don't get involved. Don't look back.
The itch flared again, stronger this time. I hissed and pressed my thumb into the center of it, and the light answered, flashing just enough that I could see it through my fingers.
That was real. That wasn't a cramp.
I thought about turning my hand over and showing the driver, just to prove I wasn't crazy, but I knew how it would look. A guy in a brown suede coat seeing lights under his skin on a sunny afternoon on a private road. He'd call someone.
"Can you turn around?" I asked.
He frowned. "Turn around where? Back to the house?"
"Yeah."
"I thought you wanted out of there."
"I did," I said. My wrist throbbed in time with my pulse. It wasn't letting up. It was pulling. Every time the light brightened, it felt less like pain and more like direction, like a string tied just under the skin tugging me uphill toward that big chandelier and that marble hall. "Change of plans."
He hesitated, hand on the gearshift. "Son, those gates don't open unless someone inside buzzes you. You got someone expecting you?"
"I'll get buzzed," I said, and I wasn't sure if that was true, but I couldn't stay parked here while that ache kept syncing to something I couldn't see. I sat back and held my wrist tight against my knee to keep my hand from shaking. "Just get me back to the entrance. I'll figure the rest out."
He checked the mirror once more, then flipped the turn signal. The car eased off the shoulder and made a slow U-turn across the empty road, gravel popping under the tires. Through the back window the gates got bigger again.
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The glow under my skin dimmed to a faint itch as we moved forward, like it knew I was finally going the right way.
I kept holding my wrist and didn't let go.
