Aurelia leaned in the doorway, arms crossed. “Just watching. Not wandering.”

“Good. I’ve seen the way that storm’s moving. It’s not going to be kind.”

Corinne had that voice. The kind that could soothe a crying child and shut down a bar fight, depending on the tone. She’d taken Aurelia in after her sister vanished ten years ago, and she’d never once asked for thanks. But she had rules. Chief among them: No woods. No weirdness. No bringing up the past.

“I’m on shift tonight,” Corinne continued. “Midnight to eight. You lock up, and don’t open that door for anything. Understand?”

“Got it,” Aurelia said, though she didn’t mean it. She hadn’t truly meant it in months.

There was something in her bones tonight, something loud and wild and ready. The dreams had been back again—worse this time. Dreams of spirals and trees that breathed, of voices that knew her name, of a woman’s hand reaching through mist.

Of her mother.

Dinner was soup from a can and crackers she didn’t touch. Corinne left just before ten, her keys jangling like bells in the silence Aurelia didn’t try to fill.

By midnight, the storm was fully awake.