Chapter Six

That was a nice day, wasn't it?

Katie remembered her family going to see her father's first shop. After toiling for years in the garage, he had been able to rent a small unit in Barton Mill on the outskirts of the city, close to the countryside. Katie was thirteen then; Chris, eleven. The old mill was situated on the bend of a curving hill, with a river churning away below. It appeared impossibly precarious to her: a huge stone edifice half supported by thick, black wooden struts that stretched almost endlessly down to the muddy banks below. When they got out of the car, she walked over to the fence and leaned over the railing, peering down at the water. It was so far below her that for a second she felt dizzy.

"Wow," she said. "Come and look at this, Chris."

She heard the chit of his sneakers behind her as he walked across to join her.

"Chris, don't," her mother called sharply. "It's dangerous."

Katie looked over her shoulder and saw Chris frozen halfway between her and her parents at the car, pulled equally in two directions at once. There was a slightly helpless look on his face, as though he wanted to be brave but knew deep down that he shouldn't. That he should do as he was told.

Katie watched him deflate a little.

He turned and walked back to their parents.

By then, she was used to them being overprotective of Chris. On one level, she understood it, because she often had the same impulse. Her brother was small, but there was a vulnerability to him that wasn't simply down to his size. It was something more innate. A sense that he was desperate to find his place in the world but was perpetually at odds with it, like a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit.

Even so, it didn't escape her attention that her mother hadn't called to her just then. That it had been Chris she was concerned about, not Katie.

Never her.

She followed her family inside.

The Mill was a new conversion. Everything smelled of sawed wood and floor polish. A corridor led between units with glass walls, many dark and empty but several already occupied. Their parents wandered farther, but Chris stopped by a unit. This shop was closed and dark, and her brother formed binoculars with his hands and peered in through the window. Katie stopped beside him. Close to the glass, she could see a display of elaborately decorated boxes painted with beautiful, swirling imagery. Dungeons Dragons; Space Explorer; Dark Knight. There were racks of dice: regular ones, of course, but also ones with ten and twenty and a hundred sides. A little farther in, battalions of tiny, intricately painted figurines were arranged on a sculpted table.

She looked up at the sign above the door.

GODS PLAY DICE.

"What is this?" Chris said.

"Role-playing games," she guessed.

"What's that?"

"It's when people pretend to be elves or soldiers, or whatever, and then they roll dice, and stuff happens depending on the number. A fantasy game. Make believe."

He was silent for a moment. "It all looks so cool, doesn't it?"

Katie considered that. She had never played anything like it herself but had a vague conception of the kind of person who did, and cool wasn't the first word that sprang to mind. But it would have been unfair to say so. Chris seemed hypnotized by the sight in front of him now, and if it turned out he was going to be that type of person, then she didn't want to be mean about it.

"Yeah," she said. "It looks really cool."

He looked at her hopefully. "Maybe we could play it together sometime?"

"Yeah," she said. "Your birthday's coming up."

He smiled at her, and any resentment she'd felt outside disappeared for now. Their mother and father had been arguing a great deal recently—about work; about money; about who did what and who didn't do enough—and even though they always tried to keep it from them, the atmosphere at home had been tense. Chris was more sensitive than Katie, and had spent more time clinging to her than she was comfortable with. There had been a fair few moments over the last year or so when he'd bugged the hell out of her. But that smile of his always undid the damage. It made him look about half his age, and had the kind of purity that made him seem like a small flame you wanted to cup your hands around and protect.

Of course I'll play a game with you, she thought.

Because I love you.

"Come on, loser," she said.

The unit her father had rented was a couple of shops along. A plain sign above the door read WICK'S END, which was a joke she'd had to explain to Chris after having it explained to her first. Her father was unlocking the door as they caught up. When the lights came on, she almost gasped in shock. An enormous rainbow filled the window before her. The plywood shelves within were lined with candles of different shapes and sizes, all arranged by color in a bright, beautiful display that covered almost every square inch of the glass. At first glance, it was impossible to take in the sheer intricacy of it—how each candle came together to build the whole display—and for a moment she was transfixed by it.

"Voilà," her father said quietly.

Katie looked away from the window and toward her mother.

She was standing by the doorway, one hand cupped under her other elbow, her gaze moving over the sight before her. It was hard to work out what she was thinking.

Inside, the unit was small, but her father had worked hard to maximize the available space. There were the racks and shelves around the walls, and against the window, and the effect of the colors was even more impressive in the shop. Outside, Katie had felt like she was observing a rainbow; in there, it was more like she was standing inside one. To her right was a counter with an old cash register and thin sheets of packing paper. Behind that, a sink unit and counter, the latter covered with pots and pans she recognized from the now-empty garage back home. They looked battered and out of place, but it was equipment that had served her father well over the years.

She looked at him. He had a strange expression on his face, as though he wanted to be proud but wasn't quite sure if he was allowed to be.

"What do you think?" he asked them.

"It's amazing," Katie said.

"Really?" He beamed at her for a moment—but then corrected himself. "I know it needs a lot of work. But it's a start."

Chris was looking around with the same sense of wonder he'd had outside the role-playing game shop. It would occur to Katie years later that he often approached the world that way—that it was as much a part of him as the vulnerability. It was another thing Michael Hyde would take from him.

"Do people really buy this many candles?" Chris said.

"Not all at once," her mother told him.

She had been silent until then, still hugging herself and looking around, as though she wasn't sure what to make of what she was seeing. But then she stepped over to her husband, put her arms around him, and hugged him tightly. After a moment's hesitation, he embraced her back. Even though Katie didn't fully understand everything that had gone on between them, she felt it in the air anyway: some kind of tension dissipating.

"It's perfect," her mother said.

"No, it needs a lot of work."

She rubbed his back.

"Not all at once," she repeated quietly.

As well as a phone number for Chris, Katie's mother had an address for him. He had even left her a spare key. But her mother no longer drove, and she wanted Katie to see if he was all right. The idea of doing so filled her with dread. Despite her mother's assurances he was no longer using, her mind immediately conjured up an image of Chris lying dead in his apartment, and she couldn't imagine how it would feel to find him like that. And even if he was fine, what would it be like to see him again after all this time?

"If you're that worried about him," Katie said, "we should call the police."

Her mother shook her head.

"He would never want the police involved."

Once again, her mother was gracious enough not to mention what had happened the last time Katie had seen Chris.

But it hung in the air anyway.

And so, back in the car, Katie texted Sam to let him know she was going to be a little longer than she'd expected, and then drove south into the whorl of the highway that circled the city center. The streetlights filled the car with alternating waves of amber and shadow, and they washed over her in time with the anxiety that was throbbing inside her. Along with the familiar feeling that what she wanted was always less important than her brother.

Of always being second best.

The GPS took her past the city's floodlit prison, which sat on the crest of a hill like a castle, and then along streets lined with flat, hard-edged houses. A single main road ran through the village in which Chris had made his home. She drove past shuttered convenience stores and charity shops, interspersed with the bright windows of intermittent fast-food restaurants. She caught sight of a few shapes huddled in the doorways, and a couple sitting hunched together in the shadows of a bus shelter, but the street was otherwise almost eerily deserted.

She signaled and pulled in.

At first glance, the address Chris had given her mother looked like a bust. Number fifty-three was a real estate agent, while the windows of number fifty-five beside it were filled with rolls of carpet and squares of dull-colored fabric. Both were closed. She was beginning to think her brother must have lied once again, but then she noticed an unmarked door between the two businesses.

She leaned forward and peered up through the windshield. There was a second story above the fabric shop, almost invisible against the night sky. Its windows were dark.

Okay, then.

Katie checked her cell phone.

No reply from Sam.

She wasn't sure what to read into that silence. Maybe he was pissed off at having to put Siena to bed himself. More likely, though, he was concerned about her. He would be worried about what her brother coming back into their lives meant. Certainly, if he knew where she was right now, he would very much want her to turn around and drive away.

She looked up at the dark apartment again and wondered if perhaps she should do exactly that. Her mother might have felt it was her job to be here, but if there was something terrible waiting inside the apartment, she had no obligation to see it. And if Chris was in some kind of trouble, it wasn't her duty to risk her own safety by getting involved. Especially when he had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her.

For a moment she felt torn between what Sam and her mother wanted from her, in the same way she remembered her brother being caught between her and their parents outside the Mill.

Forget about them for a minute, she told herself.

What doyou want to do?

She thought back to that day at the Mill again—how her brother's smile had made the resentment waft away, like the sun cutting through a cold morning's mist. And then she remembered, a few years later, crying at the sight of him in the hospital when they had been finally allowed to visit. While her brother had survived the attack, Michael Hyde had left him with so many scars. The one that ran prominently down his face; the ones on his body that were less visible; the ones in his mind that only he could see. And while nothing is ever so clear-cut and simple, it had always seemed to her that their paths colliding that day had knocked Chris off course and set him on the path he had followed since.

The guilt from that had never left her.

She remembered how she had felt as she ran toward the police cordon, and it seemed to her now that what she wanted to do was the wrong question. What mattered far more was what she would be able to live with herself for not doing.

So she took a deep breath.

Then slipped the phone into her jacket pocket and got out of the car.