Arlee didn't know how long she was gone.
It could have been seconds. It could have been years. Time inside memory didn't move the way it did in the living world. It folded. It looped. It hunted.
When her eyes finally opened, the kitchen looked the same—but it no longer felt like a simple room. The air had depth now, like there were layers to it she'd never noticed before. Shadows weren't just shadows. They had edges. Intent. The corners of the ceiling felt crowded with possibilities.
Arlee gasped and lurched forward, gripping the table as if the wood could keep her from falling out of reality.
Her mother caught her by the shoulders immediately, steadying her with a grip that was both gentle and unyielding. "Arlee," she said, voice tight. "Stay with me. Look at me."
Arlee tried. Her gaze landed on her mother's face, but even that looked different now. Not monstrous. Not inhuman. Just… layered. As if the woman in front of her had been wearing a version of herself Arlee had never been allowed to see.
"I—" Arlee's throat worked around the word. "I saw him."
Her mother's expression changed at once—pain and fear sliding together. "What did he say?"
Arlee swallowed. Her mouth tasted like metal and stormwater. The memory was still in her, bright and sharp, like a shard embedded too deep to remove.
"In the memory," Arlee whispered, "he looked right at me. Like he knew I was watching."
Her mother's fingers tightened. "That's not possible."
"It is," Arlee said, voice breaking. "It happened."
The kitchen light flickered once—subtle, almost polite—then held steady again. Arlee felt her skin prickle. The sensation that had haunted her room the night before was still present, but farther now, hovering at the edge of hearing the way a distant siren hovers at the edge of night.
Her mother noticed too. She didn't look toward the corners. She didn't give the darkness attention. She simply reached into her pocket and pulled out a thin chain with a small tarnished charm at the end—an eye etched with curved lines.
She placed it in Arlee's palm.
The metal was cold enough to bite.
"Hold that," her mother said. "Don't let go."
Arlee's fingers closed around it instinctively. The air around her seemed to tighten and then… settle. Like something had been pushed back without a word being spoken.
"What is this?" Arlee asked.
"A lock," her mother replied. "Or a warning. Depends on who's looking."
Arlee stared down at it. The symbol scratched at something in her mind. Familiar. Like a song she'd once known by heart.
"It's the same one," she said slowly. "The one I drew as a kid."
Her mother nodded once, grim. "Because you were remembering before you were supposed to."
Arlee's pulse thundered. "Tell me what he said," her mother insisted, quieter now but sharper. "Tell me exactly."
Arlee shut her eyes. The memory surged, vivid and unbearable—the dim room, the candlelight, her father's face cut with fear. The phone pressed to his ear.
And then him turning, looking straight toward Arlee through the impossible distance, as if he could see her standing in the future.
His lips had moved.
Arlee opened her eyes.
"He said…" Her voice came out raw. "He said, Don't trust what wears your face."
Her mother went still.
So still the room seemed to pause with her.
Arlee's breath hitched. "What does that mean?"
Her mother's gaze flicked to the hallway, then back to Arlee, as if weighing how much truth the house could tolerate. "It means your father learned something too late," she said softly.
Arlee shook her head. "No. No, he—he told me to go with you. He said you'd keep me safe."
"Yes," her mother said, and something flickered behind her eyes—hurt, fierce and old. "And I will."
"Then why would he say—"
"Because he was warning you about it," her mother interrupted, voice tightening. "And about what it can do."
Arlee's stomach turned. "What it can do… like mimic people?"
Her mother didn't answer right away. She crossed to the cabinet again and opened it. The same cloth bundles lay inside—old objects tucked in darkness like secrets. She pulled one free and set it on the table.
Her hands hesitated over the knot before she untied it. When the cloth fell away, it revealed a thin book with a cracked leather cover and pages edged in gold that had dulled with time. Not new. Not even close. The kind of thing that should have lived in a locked trunk, not a kitchen cabinet.
Arlee stared. "Where did you get that?"
Her mother's voice dropped. "From the only place I trusted to keep it hidden."
Arlee frowned. "Where?"
Her mother met her gaze. "Your father."
Arlee felt the floor tilt again. "He had that?"
"He had more than that," her mother said. "He had a whole life you didn't know about, Arlee."
Arlee's chest tightened with something that wasn't just grief anymore. It was betrayal's cousin—confusion, sharp and restless.
"He would've told me."
"He tried," her mother said quietly. "In pieces. In gentle lies. In distractions. In letting you believe the world was smaller than it is."
Arlee's fingers curled around the charm harder. "Then tell me the truth."
Her mother opened the book, careful, like the pages might cut. Symbols covered the inside—sketches of circles and eyes, notes written in a hand that didn't look like hers.
"Your father wasn't like us," she said. "Not fully. He didn't have the same sight. But he had proximity. And proximity can be dangerous."
Arlee swallowed. "So what is 'us'?"
Her mother's gaze softened, just for a moment. "We're what happens when the world forgets it's not alone," she said. "Some call it gifted. Some call it cursed. All I know is this: we can see what's hidden. We can sense what's hungry."
Arlee's voice shook. "And the thing that found me—what is it?"
Her mother hesitated.
The kitchen light flickered again, longer this time, and the air seemed to draw tight as if listening.
Her mother's eyes narrowed. "Don't say its name yet," she warned, almost under her breath.
Arlee's skin prickled. "It has a name."
"Everything that matters has a name," her mother replied. "Names are hooks. You speak one, and you risk being heard."
Arlee's mouth went dry. "So we can't even talk about it?"
"We can," her mother said. "But carefully. And not like you're alone."
Arlee glanced around the kitchen. The quiet felt suddenly crowded.
Her mother tapped the charm in Arlee's hand. "That will help. It doesn't block everything, but it blurs you. It makes you… less clear."
Arlee's heart pounded. "Less clear to what?"
"To the ones who hunt by recognition," her mother said.
Arlee swallowed. "My father said it wears faces."
Her mother nodded once, grim. "It learns people," she said. "It studies the things we love because love makes the easiest door."
Arlee's lungs refused to expand fully. She thought of the gentle brush through her hair. Not violent. Not cruel.
Almost loving.
A chill crawled up her spine.
Her mother's voice softened, but it didn't lose its steel. "That's why your father told you to come with me," she said. "Because I know how to hold the door shut."
Arlee's eyes burned. "But you weren't here. You left."
Her mother flinched as if struck.
"I didn't leave you," she said, voice cracking in a way that sounded dangerously human. "I was forced away."
Arlee stared. "Forced by who?"
Her mother looked down at her hands as if they carried stains. "By the same kind of thing that came to your room," she said. "By the rules. By fear. By the choices I made so you could grow without being hunted."
Arlee's voice rose despite herself. "And my memories?"
Her mother nodded slowly. "Sealing them was the only way to quiet your sight," she said. "You were too young. You were opening doors with your dreams."
Arlee's hands shook. "I remember pieces now."
"I know," her mother whispered. "I can see it in your eyes."
Arlee swallowed. "So what did you just do to me? Just now."
Her mother's gaze held hers, unwavering. "I didn't give you new memories," she said. "I removed the locks."
Arlee felt sick. "Why?"
"Because your father is dead," her mother said, voice tightening. "And whatever he was doing didn't stop when he died. If it found him, it found a path through him. And if he opened something—if he made a deal, spoke a name, touched a door—then you are standing in the aftermath."
Arlee's throat tightened around the grief that surged again. "He wouldn't make a deal."
Her mother's eyes glistened. "I don't think he meant to," she said softly. "I think he was trying to save you."
The words hit Arlee harder than anything else. She thought of the last call. The urgency. The fear.
Safe from who. Safe from what.
Arlee's voice dropped to a whisper. "So he died because of me."
Her mother stepped closer quickly, firm. "No," she said. "He died because he loved you. And love makes people brave. And bravery makes them reckless."
Arlee flinched, tears blurring her vision.
Her mother set a hand on the book, holding it closed like she was holding something alive. "We're going to find out what he was doing," she said. "We're going to find out who he spoke to, what he touched, what he opened."
Arlee's chest tightened. "How?"
Her mother turned the book toward her. "Because he left tracks," she said. "And because there's something you haven't seen yet."
Arlee's breath caught. "What?"
Her mother reached beneath the book and pulled out a folded piece of paper Arlee hadn't noticed—creased, worn, like it had been opened and shut too many times. She set it on the table between them.
Arlee stared at it. The handwriting was familiar.
Her father's.
The sight of it knocked the air from her lungs.
Her mother didn't touch it again. "He gave this to me," she said quietly. "Before he died."
Arlee's fingers hovered, trembling, before she unfolded it.
Inside were only a few lines.
Not long.
Not poetic.
But every word felt carved.
ARLEE—
IF YOU ARE READING THIS, IT MEANS I FAILED.
DON'T TRUST WHAT WEARS YOUR FACE.
DON'T FOLLOW ME INTO THE DARK.
AND IF SHE COMES BACK WITH SILVER IN HER HAIR—LET HER IN.
Arlee's vision swam.
Her mother inhaled sharply, like she'd been holding that last line in her mouth for days and it had finally cut her.
Arlee looked up slowly. "He knew," she whispered. "He knew you'd—"
Her mother's voice barely held together. "He hoped," she said. "He hoped I'd get to you in time."
Arlee's hands clenched around the note. "But why would he say don't follow him into the dark?"
Her mother's face tightened. "Because I think he left something behind," she said. "And it wants you to come looking."
Arlee's pulse spiked. "Where?"
Her mother's gaze slid toward the hallway—toward Arlee's bedroom filled with boxes, toward the hidden cabinet, toward the parts of the house that now felt like they had ears.
Then she looked back at Arlee, voice low and urgent.
"In the one place you keep returning to," she said. "The cemetery."
Arlee's stomach dropped. "Dad's grave."
Her mother nodded. "Not just his grave," she said. "The ground around it. The space between there and home. Thin places. Places where grief makes the veil weak."
Arlee's skin prickled. She thought of the fog. The presence. The brush through her hair.
Her mother reached for Arlee's hand and closed her fingers over the charm. "You don't go back alone," she said. "Do you understand me?"
Arlee's voice shook. "You're coming with me."
Her mother's eyes hardened. "Yes."
Arlee stared at her mother—the stranger who wasn't a stranger, the woman who had screamed into nothingness and made the house obey, the woman with a hidden book and a cabinet of old tools and the kind of fear that only comes from knowing too much.
Arlee nodded, slow.
For the first time since her father died, the ache in her chest shifted—still pain, still grief, but threaded now with something else.
Purpose.
And something even more dangerous.
Hope.
Outside, the wind pressed against the windows as if eavesdropping. The kitchen light flickered once, then steadied—like an eye blinking.
And in the quiet that followed, Arlee realized something with chilling clarity:
Whatever had touched her hair hadn't done it to frighten her.
It had done it to remind her—
that it knew exactly where she was. That it had been close enough to breathe her in.
And now that her memories were unsealed, now that her sight was waking…
the hunt had changed.
It wasn't waiting for her to turn eighteen anymore.
It had decided to start early.