4. Elara

Chapter 4

Elara

T he moon is a thin crescent, barely casting a glow on Farrow Estate as Sasha and I make our way through the small garden path on the west side. Farrow Manor, my mother's sanctuary and prison, looms like a sleeping dragon, its silhouette an ominous cut against the starless night sky. Sasha and I slip through the wrought-iron gates, our presence nothing more than whispers, fully committed to sneaking in.

I unlock the towering oak door, then inch it open. My racing mind juggles apprehension and courage while I scan the unlit corners for any sign of my mother's notorious traps.

"Remember that time your mom set up fishing line at ankle level?" Sasha whispers behind me as we creep in. "I'm pretty sure I still have a scar from tripping into her ‘intruder alert' system."

I warn, my own voice barely above a breath, "She's gotten more creative since then."

"Booby traps by Elara's Mom: because who needs home security systems when you've got yarn and bells?" Sasha replies with a grin that I can feel rather than see.

I stifle the need to admonish Sasha for talking about my mother that way. "She doesn't trust any security installations or the people who install it."

Sasha has always had this knack for slicing through tension with her humor, even in the most harrowing situations, and I know she's doing it to help, not to insult. It's absurd, the lengths my mother will go to protect herself. Paranoia paints her world in bright colors of danger—every shadow a potential threat, every silence a harbinger of death—but I will always want to defend her, even as she peels off a bit of my soul every day she doesn't get better.

"Seriously, though," Sasha adds, her voice dropping an octave. "Yell out if you spot anything that looks like it came out of a spy movie."

"Will do." I keep my focus sharp, aware that one wrong step could send a homemade noisemaker blaring throughout the house. We navigate the hallway, a maze designed by a mind that sees enemies in every corner. It's a strange duality, living with someone who crafts fortresses out of fear, yet here we are, tiptoeing through the latest iteration of her makeshift security.

"Elara," Sasha says, her hand gripping my arm. "Stop."

I freeze. "What? What is it?"

"Look." She points at the floor where a nearly invisible thread stretches across our path, glinting faintly in the scarce moonlight filtering through a distant window.

"So she's kept the fishing line after all," I breathe out, stepping carefully over the tripwire. We continue, each of us hyperaware that one misstep could mean disaster—or, at the very least, waking the banshee that is my mother by springing her traps.

Sasha's presence is a constant comfort, even as adrenaline gets me up the stairs, through the winding hallway, and in front of Maverick's door.

I take the time to use my phone and illuminate the doorframe, well aware that out of all the rooms in the manor, my mother's and Maverick's are her top priority to protect. Finding nothing yet , I inspect the door's handle.

"There," I whisper. "You see it?"

Sasha peers over my shoulder, adding her phone's light to mine. "Nope."

"A piece of her hair." I motion to the subtle shine of a hair strand, wavy and long, laid over the lever. "We have to make sure we put it back when we leave."

Sasha nods. "Got it."

After carefully laying the strand of hair on the neck of the handle where we won't disturb it, I push the door open.

We slip inside, the moonlight casting a ghostly glow across a life cut tragically short. I can almost hear Maverick's laughter, a lost sound from a happier time that now feels like a distant dream.

Sasha lets out a low whistle, her gaze sweeping over the motley collection of posters and gamer trophies. "Do we have to worry about any traps in here?"

"No. Mom wouldn't disturb Maverick's stuff. This is like a shrine to her now. We have to return anything we touch or move exactly as it was."

A pang of sadness clogs my throat at seeing my brother's world exactly as he left it the day he died. It's as if he could walk through the door at any moment, flashing that quiet smile before burying his head in his computer or comics.

"Hey, check this out," Sasha says.

She's holding up a CD stacked with others on his desk, the cover emblazoned with the bright, grinning faces of a once-famous boy band. "Maverick had a thing for these guys?"

"Shut up," I retort half-heartedly, the corner of my mouth twitching upward despite myself. "They were popular back then, even to him."

"Sure, sure." Sasha laughs under her breath, carefully placing the CD back onto the shelf.

My fingers glide over the spines of books, tracing the faded titles and worn edges of his fantasy series collection that line his shelves. Holding them creates a physical connection to him. Mavvy was always such a book nerd, reading on his beach chair during our rare family vacations while I splashed him from the pool, begging him to join me.

Sasha picks through his desk drawers, her forehead wrinkled in concentration as she hunts. The reverent hush of the room is broken only by the soft shuffling of papers and the occasional creak of the floorboards beneath our feet.

I slowly straighten the sheets of Maverick's mattress after checking under it, ensuring they're as crease-free as they were before.

Glancing at his closed laptop, I remember Maverick's obsession with Warcraft and his deep involvement with the online gaming community. Maverick was smart, levelheaded, and popular. He avoided trouble, yet attracted the most popular kids in school, who'd invite him to underage parties and offer him drugs, sex, and trips on their private jets. My middle school friends told me that Maverick's hotness overrode any geek in him, including his love for elves, castles, and dragons. Girls found it adorable.

Sasha and I search the room meticulously. Our hands glide over the surfaces of Maverick's belongings, and our eyes scan for any clue that might lead us to the answers we seek, my heart twisting as our disturbance causes the last remnants of his cologne to waft into the air. I resist the urge to bring one of his shirts to my face and inhale deeply because of the risk that I'll break down.

I was never allowed in Maverick's room after he died. The one time I tried, Mom collapsed at the threshold and wailed so terribly, I didn't do it again.

A loud creak from the hallway snaps my head toward the door. Sasha and I freeze, ears cocked.

Silence.

Sasha mouths, What was that?

I shake my head, straining to detect any sound. When I hear none, I gesture for her to keep looking.

It's when I turn back to Maverick's bed, one side shoved up against the wall, that I see…

There—almost hidden in the everyday—is something odd. A pattern on the wallpaper that doesn't quite belong.

Farrow Manor came to my mother in its original state when she inherited it from her parents, including the ancient, yellowed wallpaper in almost all the rooms. Renovation was prohibited in both the wills and testaments of my ancestors and historical home laws unless necessary. Mavvy and I tried to get around living like 15th-century children by asking for modern items, but the clashing of state-of-the-art furniture against the traditional furnishings upset my mother so much that we took down our posters, matched our sheets to the wallpaper, and chose wooden bed sets.

Maverick's room has arabesque wallpaper, and I only know that because it creeped me out so much, I had to reverse-image search it on the internet. It's a mixture of flowers, foliage, fruit, and animals, coming together in intricate lines, almost appearing like lace from far away. The complicated pattern causes the eye to skim over small details until I catch the pen marks.

"Look at this," I murmur to Sasha as I crawl on to the bed, my fingertips brushing over my brother's … drawings?

A series of dots and dashes, so small you'd miss them unless you knew where to look.

"Whoa." Sasha leans in beside me, squinting at the deliberate marks. "Was Maverick known to doodle on his wallpaper before drifting off to sleep?"

"Definitely not." I angle my phone to illuminate it better. "Do you think he's trying to tell me something? Maverick knew how much I hated this wallpaper, which meant I had to learn everything about it to make sure it wasn't haunted. He laughed at me while I did it, but … maybe he figured I'd notice the difference one day if something happened to him."

Because the Maverick of my memories is no longer the brother I thought he was. Maverick got himself involved in something evil, a situation requiring coded messages and secret enclaves and death.

I swallow.

"Do you think we can look it up?" I ask Sasha, leaning away to give her space.

Sasha whips out her phone, the screen flooding the dim room with bluish light. She snaps a picture, taps furiously, and waits. Whatever app she chose churns, grinding through possibilities until?—

"Got something," Sasha exclaims. She holds the phone out to me, and I lean in to see the screen. "It's Morse code."

Sasha's app translated the code and spat out numbers and degrees.

"Coordinates," I murmur. "Latitude and longitude."

"Yep." Sasha bites her lip as her thumbs fly across her screen. "Whoa. Look where it leads."

I read the screen when she flips it my way. My chin jerks back in surprise. "Gram's house?"

A headache blooms, my brain cramping with the possibilities. We played at Wraithwood Manor all the time, hide-and-seek being one of my favorites. And Maverick held parties to impress girls there whenever he could get away with it. We were both incredibly familiar with the layout, the best rooms to hide in, the places that?—

"Oh shit," I whisper.

"What?"

"I found a hidden room a few weeks ago. An old office. Like old old. From the 1700s. I figured I was the first person to find it in decades, hundreds of years even, but maybe Maverick found it first." My heart speeds up. "That would be the perfect place to hide important, evil things."

Sasha slowly lowers her phone to her lap. "You Wraithwoods are a weird-ass family, you know that? Lovable but … weird."

"Tell me about it."

"So I take it we're breaking in there next?"

I nod. "I won't be able to sleep until we do."

Sasha slips off Maverick's bed. "Onward, Agent."

We perfect Maverick's room, ensuring nothing is out of place or will disturb my mother when she visits next, until I open Maverick's door, the coordinates burning a hole in my head.

"Ready?" Sasha says.

I nod, tucking my phone into my back pocket. But before we can move, a creak echoes down the hallway like a warning shot. Instinctively, we stiffen, our eyes locking.

Another step makes the wooden floorboards groan, closer, louder.

"Hide!" Sasha hisses, and we shut Maverick's door and scramble for his closet, throwing ourselves inside just as the bedroom's door handle turns with an ominous click. The closet is cramped, the musky scent of leather and moth-bitten clothing wrapping around us.

Sasha's hand finds mine in the dark, squeezing tight. "It's just your mom, I'm sure. We have nothing to worry about."

Through the narrow slits of the closet's panels, a black-clad figure, disguised from head-to-toe, tears through Maverick's things without any regard or respect.

No .

I don't realize I've stepped forward until Sasha jerks me back.

His silhouette is jittery, movements erratic, like a marionette being yanked by unseen strings. I can tell it's a man from the broad set of shoulders, the tapered waist and thick thighs. He wears gloves and a ski mask, the eyeholes flashing the whites of his eyes as he turns and walks through the slit of moonlight through the window.

I don't recognize him.

"Come on, come on," he mutters to himself, fingers combing through Maverick's desk drawers with frantic urgency. Papers rustle, and objects clatter.

He's searching for something—desperate, obsessed.

"Elara..." Sasha breathes, so quiet it's almost part of the stuffy closet.

"Shh." I press my finger to my lips even though I know Sasha can't see it. My heart thuds against my ribs, so loud I'm sure it's threatening to give us away.

The man upends a vintage wooden box Maverick stuffed his knickknacks in, its contents spilling across the floor—a cascade of memories, trinkets, and pictures frozen in time. He moves to Maverick's bookshelf next, pulling out his beloved books one by one, flipping through pages, then tossing them aside without care.

The sight snares my breath and tears at my heart; these are sacred leftovers of my brother's life, treated as nothing more than obstacles in a frenzied quest.

"Please," he whispers to no one, or perhaps to Maverick himself. "Where is it?"

His voice is too low. I can't link it to anyone I know.

The air in the closet is getting thicker, heavier. I dare not blink, dare not breathe too loud. Beside me, Sasha's grip is a lifeline.

The man pauses, his head cocked, listening for something we can't hear. For a moment, I think he's sensed us. It's only a matter of time before he decides to search the closet. I wish I'd picked up a weapon on my sprint here. Even Maverick's NYC snow globe from 2004 currently rolling across the floor would do.

My pulse hammers in my ears, but he resumes his search, tearing through Maverick's belongings with renewed fervor.

What is he looking for? Will he notice the wallpaper, the message hidden in plain sight?

"Elara," Sasha whispers again, a question laced in her tone. What the fuck do we do?

Keep still , I mouth soundlessly, my gaze never leaving the sliver of space that allows me to witness this man's unraveling.

Eventually, the frenzy subsides, his shoulders slump, and he stands at the center of the mess he's created. A low, pained sigh escapes him, and I feel it—a sharp twist in my chest.

This is pain, raw and unfiltered.

He turns slowly to the closet.

" Elara... " Sasha says once more, her voice a stretched thread close to snapping.

The truth is, other than scream and scratch our way through him once we're revealed, I don't know what we can do. I clench my phone in my hand, ready to use it as a mallet against his head.

A distant thump, like something heavy hitting the floor, sounds out in the hallway. We share a concerned glance at the same time the man whips his head toward Maverick's door, his leatherclad hands fisting.

Moving with silent precision, the man slinks out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind him.

Sasha jerks forward, but I stop her by clamping my hand around her arm.

I mime, Wait.

After five minutes of hearing nothing out of the ordinary, I inch the closet door open, wincing at every unwilling sound we make.

But my mother is alone in this house. Her fears are realized by a man rifling through our things. If she stumbles upon him, or worse, if he seeks her out...

"God, El," Sasha exhales as we step out of the closet and into the aftermath.

I can't think of cleaning up right now. We have to get to my mother.

"Did you see his face?" I ask as I creep toward the bedroom door, lending half an eye and all my fear to the hallway beyond.

Sasha shakes her head, her eyes clouded with concern.

"Do you think he's complicit, or a victim in all this?"

Sasha's question makes my shoulders tense.

"Both? Neither?" I answer while battling a sobering thought. The intruder could be like us—pawns thrown to the mercy of a merciless Court, scrambling for answers in desperate places.

Those answers still elude me, but one truth stands out—that man is not welcome in our home.

The hallway stretches dark and still. I motion for Sasha to follow as I slip out, eyes roving for any tripwires, other traps, or more men in black ready to jump us.

At the end of the hall, a door hangs open a crack.

My mother's room. She always shuts and locks her door.

I dart forward, the dread of something happening to her thick in my mind.

Sasha's hand finds my arm, pulling me back. She shakes her head minutely, mouthing, We need to call the police.

I shake my head in return. The police, with their blinding lights and chaotic storm of authority, would only push my mother further into her madness. The man wasn't after her; he was looking for something.

Sasha hisses a warning breath as I near Mom's door, where a faint rustling becomes audible. I grip the door handle, heart thundering in my ears. With a deep inhalation to steady myself, I push it all the way open.

My mother cowers in a corner. She's tangled in bedsheets she tore off her bed and muttering unintelligibly. Bottles of medication and supplies litter the floor around her. She doesn't seem to register our presence.

I carefully enter the room, sidestepping the debris. "Mom? It's just me, Elara. We need to get you to safety."

Mom's eyes, lost and feverish, clash against mine.

" Stay back! " she shrieks. " You're not real! You're not my daughter! "

Sasha moves to my side, hands raised in a calming gesture. "Hi, Mrs. Wraithwood, remember me? I'm Sasha, Elara's roommate. We're not going to hurt you."

"Lies! Liar! You're shapeshifters, you can't fool me!"

The accusation flies from her lips with venomous certainty. Mom grabs blindly at the clutter around her, seizing an antiquated revolver.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck ."

Sasha's panicked whisper hisses through her clenched teeth.

Mom levels it at us with trembling hands and a deranged look in her eyes.