Before Trisha’s scream had fully faded, I was halfway down the stairs. Bliss and Michael were right behind me, their footsteps pounding as fast as my heart. I didn’t know what I’d find in the dining room. My brain hadn’t hurdled as far ahead as my instincts, which were shrieking at me to shield Trisha no matter what. Without a weapon, the only thing I had was myself, and as I cleared the stairs and raced down the front hall, I was fully prepared, no matter what was making Trisha scream, to jump onto its back and squeeze its neck as hard as I could.
Unless it was Noah.
If I found Noah hurting his mom, I didn’t know what I would do.
But it wasn’t Noah standing in the middle of the dining room with his back to me. The man was taller, with the broad shoulders of a football player.
And he was lifting Trisha off the ground, his huge arms swallowing her small frame. Memories of the Watcher flooded my mind. I wanted to scream, but I was too terrified. Michael pushed past me, but he wasn’t throwing punches or trying to free Trisha from the man’s fierce embrace. He didn’t even look scared. If he was the Protector, why wasn’t he doing anything to help?
The man lowered Trisha to the ground but kept one arm around her so she couldn’t run away. I could see her tear-streaked face as she turned from the man to look at Michael.
“Who are you?” she asked, wiping at her cheeks.
“He’s with me,” Bliss announced. Both Trisha and the man turned around, allowing me the chance to finally see the stranger’s face. He was younger than I had guessed, maybe in his early twenties. And he was smiling. So was Trisha.
“I didn’t know you had friends over,” Trisha said to me.
I was still recovering from the shock of hearing her scream and the instant panic it had induced. “They’re from school,” I explained weakly. “We’re working on a project.”
She wasn’t listening. “Charlotte, this is my oldest son, Ryan. He has a terrible habit of scaring me.”
Ryan shrugged. “I thought you’d like a surprise visit. But hey, if you want me to leave…” He pulled away a little and Trisha gave him a playful punch on the arm.
“Don’t you dare. You’re not going anywhere until after the wedding.”
There was a mild resemblance between Noah and his big brother. I studied Ryan’s face, trying to determine which features they had in common. The nose was similar, and maybe the chin. But Ryan’s eyes were brown, whereas Noah’s were green.
Trisha hugged her son again. “How did you know I was here?”
“I stopped by the apartment first. Noah told me where to find you.”
“You saw Noah?” I gave Bliss a hopeful glance. If Noah was at home, then it was unlikely he had been the one trashing my room a half hour earlier. He didn’t have a car, and there was no way he could have walked from my house to his in such a short amount of time.
“You’re his girlfriend, right?” Ryan held out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Hi.” I wanted to be polite, but I was more interested in news about Noah.
“I’m going to make some coffee,” Trisha announced. “Would anyone else like some?”
Bliss declined, and Michael said he needed to go out to his car. I knew he was using the opportunity to retrieve my bedroom window.
I cornered Ryan while Trisha was in the kitchen. “So you saw Noah?”
“Yeah. I woke him up.” He laughed, and it was similar to the way Noah laughed. “He was so confused to see me. Thought he was still dreaming. I got a better reaction from him than I did from Mom.”
“When was this?”
“About ten minutes ago.” Ryan frowned. “You always ask a lot of questions?”
“Yes. I’m very annoying that way.”
He shrugged. “Mom likes you. My brother likes you. You’re fine by me.”
I excused myself from the room. Bliss and I grabbed some supplies from under the kitchen sink and went upstairs to continue cleaning while we waited for Michael. I sprayed carpet cleaner and scrubbed at the marks while she straightened up my books and pictures.
“You knew that Ryan wasn’t the Watcher,” I said.
“Actually, I didn’t. But Michael seemed to know, so I didn’t freak out.”
I set down the spray bottle. “Why are you with Michael? I don’t understand.”
“He’s helping me with something. Something important.”
It would be nice, I thought, if people could stop being so vague. Just once, I wanted a clear, concise answer with absolutely no room for interpretation.
Michael called up to us from outside. Bliss and I went to the space where my window used to be and looked out. “I’m going to need some help! It’s too big to get my arms around.”
I grabbed a couple of the full garbage bags on my way downstairs, then helped Michael carry the window back to my room. Trisha and Ryan were having coffee in the kitchen, so they didn’t see us come through the front door. Once in my room, I realized there was no way to put the window back without a professional. “We can’t just prop it up there,” I said. “And there’s no way I can explain this to my dad.”
But maybe, I thought, there was someone else I could explain it to. I waited until Trisha was on the phone to ask Ryan to come upstairs. “I need your help,” I said. He followed me into my room. When he saw the mess, he grimaced.
“You’re not going to ask me to help clean, are you?”
I showed him the window. “I need this fixed, and I don’t want to worry my dad or stress out your mom. Can you help?”
He whistled. “How’d you do that?”
“Science experiment gone wrong,” Bliss said.
“I’ll say.” Ryan inspected the window frame. “I have a buddy who can take care of this. Might be a couple days, though.”
“That would be great. Thank you.”
He smiled. “No problem. I’m with you—no need to get my mom any more stressed than she is.” He lowered his voice. “Has she been crazy?”
“A little. Not too bad.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve never seen her in hyperdrive. It’s about to get a whole lot worse.”
I almost laughed. Ryan had no idea how bad it was already. I thanked him profusely, and he said he’d check out the garage for some plastic sheeting. “Gotta keep it covered,” he said. “You don’t want squirrels getting in.”
“Right. That would be bad.”
Ryan located a thick, opaque sheet of plastic and stapled it to the frame. When everything was done, my room didn’t look half-bad. Not good, but not like a tornado had ripped through it, either.
“Now what?” I asked Michael. Ryan was downstairs with Trisha, the garbage bags had been taken out to the can, and the carpet fizzed with spots of foaming cleaner.
“We need to take a little field trip. Is that okay with you?”
I wanted out of my room. “Only if it means you’re going to answer every single question I ask.”
Michael held out his hand and I shook it. “Deal.” Then he turned to Bliss. “Is it okay with you?”
She tied up the last garbage bag full of bedding. “It’s time, I guess.” She looked at me. “I need you to promise not to judge me.”
“I don’t understand.”
Bliss sighed. “You will.”
THE GNOMES WERE arranged single file in a straight line that stretched from the front door of Bliss’s house all the way to the street. “Wow.” I tried to do a quick count. “Are there more?”
Bliss shook her head as she took out her key. “Yep. Someone brought back a dozen.”
“And they set them up like that?”
“It’s better than what they did last week. Our yard looked like the set of a gnome porno.” She unlocked the door, but didn’t open it. Michael came up behind us. “I don’t know if I want her to see this,” Bliss said to him.
“It’s fine. Charlotte can handle it.”
I didn’t know what they were talking about, but as long as the house wasn’t stuffed with dead bodies or crawling with a thousand rats, I was pretty sure that yes, I could handle it. Bliss took a deep breath and pushed open the door. “Watch your step.”
Despite the bright afternoon light, it was dark inside the house. The sharp smell of lemon cleaner and mothballs reminded me that this had been Bliss’s grandfather’s house. It definitely had that old-person aroma. I stood in the entry with Michael at my side while Bliss moved slowly forward into the next room. She bumped against something, and a second later, a lamp glowed from across the hall.
I gasped. “Oh.”
Now I understood why Bliss had been so reluctant to let me inside. This wasn’t a house—it was a storage facility. Nearly every inch was covered with boxes, stacked in uneven columns that grazed the ceiling. A narrow path revealed patches of carpet. I followed the path into what I guessed was the living room, where more boxes blocked out the windows and a single recliner rested in the corner, surrounded by even more stuff.
Bliss stood against one of the stacks, her face blank. She was waiting for my reaction, and I remembered what she had said about not judging her. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say, what would be appropriate. I’m sorry didn’t seem right. But I was sorry. I knew her living situation was not her fault. The Bliss I knew would not choose to live this way. No one I knew would choose to live this way.
“When I said I was helping Bliss with something, this is what I meant,” Michael said. “Her grandfather left a lot be hind when he died.”
“Okay.” I wanted to make sure that I didn’t say anything that could possibly be construed as judgmental. I wanted to be kind and supportive, the same way Bliss had been when I had melted into a panic attack or asked to talk with her about my problems. “So these are all your grandfather’s belongings.”
“Yes.” Bliss ran a hand over one of the stacks. “He saved everything, from newspapers to sugar packets. And now my mom and I have to deal with it.”
My first question—why not just throw it all away—was answered by Michael before I could say the words out loud.
“Every time they try to remove his belongings from the house, something happens. Something paranormal.”
“About a month after he passed, we tried to get rid of all the magazines,” Bliss said. “The entire dining room is filled with them. But as soon as we began taking them out to the garbage, things started happening.” She kept her gaze on the boxes nearest to her. “Lights went off, piles tipped over. It was like he was trying to block us from the room. Every time we attempted to clean, something would happen.” She paused. “That’s part of the reason I believed you when you told me about the Watcher. I had experienced some strange things myself.”
It was a case my parents would have been interested in. Maybe I would have tagged along and helped Shane set up the cameras and unroll the cable. I could picture our black van, with “Doubt” painted across it, parked in the driveway and all of us descending on the house, dressed in our khaki pants and matching T-shirts, ready to record and debunk the happenings.
I missed that part of my life. Investigations had helped form my personality, defined my family. I missed it so much I could feel it within me, like bruises buried inside my bones.
I wanted to help Bliss, but I wasn’t sure that I could. My fancy equipment was gone, and the Watcher was the likely thief. How many problems could I tackle in a day? Or in a lifetime, for that matter?
“We didn’t bring you here to deal with this,” Michael said. “Bliss and I are handling it.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
Bliss stepped away from the boxes. “Because it’s a place Noah’s never been to.”
The worn recliner across the room suddenly looked very inviting. I just wanted to sit down. “He’s the next Watcher.” I whispered the horrible truth, but they still heard me.
“We’re not sure yet.” Bliss touched my arm. “He’s a candidate, but that doesn’t mean he’s the one.” She guided me to the chair and I slumped into it.
“Did he destroy my room?”
“We don’t think so,” Bliss said.
“Okay, you have to stop with the ‘we.’ I don’t get it. How are you involved with this?” It came out more bitterly than I had intended. I wasn’t upset with Bliss. She had been a good friend to me. But I was confused and hurt and struggling to put together the pieces of an increasingly awful puzzle.
“She’s special,” Michael said.
“Please be more specific.” When he hesitated, I pointed at him. “You promised me answers. Now, spill.”
“You already know that there are many Watchers.” Michael sat on the floor by the recliner. Bliss sat on the other side. It made me feel like a queen perched on top of a shabby throne. “There are also many Protectors,” he said.
“One for every Watcher, right?”
Bliss nodded. “That’s right. It’s the balance principle.”
“Beth explained that to me. But what does it have to do with you?”
She looked at Michael, who nodded, before she spoke. “Because, Charlotte. I’m a Protector, too.”