Chapter Two

Nobody reacted to the breathing.

At least not immediately.

The sound vanished so quickly I almost convinced myself I imagined it. The others kept moving around the house, dragging bags across the wooden floor, arguing over rooms, laughing too loudly to cover the strange tension sitting in the air.

But I stayed frozen near the entrance.

Listening.

The house listened back.

“You coming or are you planning to live there?” Blanco called from upstairs.

That snapped me out of it.

I picked up my bag and followed the noise toward the staircase. The wood groaned softly beneath every step like the house was counting us.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

The upstairs hallway stretched longer than it looked from outside. Framed paintings lined the walls, old enough for the eyes inside them to feel unsettling. Most of them were landscapes. Forests. Rivers. Empty roads disappearing into fog.

One painting was different.

A woman dressed in white stood beside a lake with her back turned.

Something about it made me stop walking.

“You like creepy dead Victorian women now?” Terry’s voice came from behind me.

I turned sharply.

He stood there holding two bags over his shoulder like the last year between us never happened.

“I like people who don’t sneak up on me,” I replied.

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You used to.”

There it was.

That annoying softness in his voice that used to disarm me before I remembered I was supposed to be angry.

I looked away first.

“Which room are you taking?” he asked.

“Whichever one is furthest from yours.”

“Ouch.”

“Live with it.”

He laughed quietly under his breath.

God, I hated that laugh.

Mostly because a part of me still remembered what it felt like hearing it against my neck at two in the morning when everything between us was easy.

I grabbed the nearest room before the conversation could become dangerous.

The bedroom was surprisingly warm compared to the hallway outside. Dust floated lazily through strips of evening sunlight. The walls were painted deep green and the curtains smelled faintly like lavender.

Old-fashioned.

Comforting.

Wrong.

There was already a mirror facing the bed.

I hated mirrors facing beds.

Something about waking up half asleep and seeing movement before your brain catches up always unsettled me.

I dropped my bag near the dresser.

The mirror reflected the room perfectly.

The bed.

The curtains.

The doorway.

Me.

And for the briefest second...

Someone standing behind me.

I spun around so fast my shoulder hit the dresser.

Nobody.

The room was empty.

My breathing turned uneven.

“You’re doing this to yourself,” I whispered aloud.

Grief messes with people. Lack of sleep messes with people. Smoking every night definitely messes with people.

That’s what I told myself anyway.

A knock came at the door before I could spiral further.

Tori walked in holding snacks against her chest.

“You disappeared,” she said.

“I came to unpack.”

“You came to brood dramatically in dim lighting.”

“That too.”

She grinned and dropped onto the bed beside me.

For a few seconds neither of us spoke.

Then she looked around the room slowly.

“Do you feel weird here?”

I looked at her immediately. “Weird how?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Like the house is watching us.”

A chill crawled up my arms.

Before I could answer, shouting exploded downstairs.

Blanco.

“YO WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?”

The entire house seemed to jolt awake.

Tori and I rushed downstairs almost immediately, meeting the others halfway. Blanco stood near the living room archway staring at the floor.

“What happened?” Mike asked.

Blanco pointed silently.

Wet footprints.

Everyone went quiet.

They stretched across the wooden floor in uneven patterns, as if someone had walked through water before wandering barefoot through the house.

Except the footprints stopped in the middle of the room.

Just stopped.

No trail leading outside.

No trail continuing forward.

Only silence.

“That’s not funny,” Eve muttered immediately.

“I didn’t do this,” Blanco said. “Why would I even do this?”

Chloe wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “Mike, is there someone else here?”

“No,” Mike answered too quickly.

The room grew tense.

Tori stepped closer to the footprints carefully. “Maybe it’s leaking from somewhere?”

“Up?” Gabe asked quietly. “The footprints are going toward the windows, not away from them.”

Nobody answered him.

I stared at the water on the floor.

A strange smell drifted upward from it.

Rain.

Not fresh rain.

The smell clothes carry after being left wet too long.

My stomach tightened instantly.

My brother smelled like that the day they brought his body home.

Without thinking, I took a step backward.

Then another.

Terry noticed first.

“You okay?”

I nodded immediately even though my body was screaming otherwise.

“Yeah,” I lied.

But the house had started feeling different now.

Less empty.

And somewhere upstairs...

Something moved.