Chapter 3 Chapter Three

Maren

The first thing I notice when Piper and I get home is the silver necklace lying in the exact center of my pillow. I stop in my bedroom doorway so fast Piper walks into my back and mutters something rude before looking over my shoulder. Then she stops too. Neither of us says anything for several seconds because I know exactly where that necklace should be. It has lived zipped inside a little jewelry case in the top drawer of my dresser for months, mostly because I never wear it anymore and partly because the cheap clasp catches my hair.

"Did you put that there?" Piper asks quietly. I turn my head enough to look at her. "Why would I ask myself that question by standing here looking terrified?" Her eyes stay on the necklace. "I needed to hear you say no." That answer lands badly enough that I step back into the hallway instead of going farther into the room. "No. I didn't put it there. It was in my dresser when we left."

Piper takes out her phone immediately. "Don't touch anything." I stare at her. "You went from mysterious dream interrogator to crime-scene supervisor in under twelve hours. It's been a really weird day." She doesn't smile. "Maren, somebody was in here." The obviousness of it makes my stomach turn harder than the necklace itself. There is nothing missing that I can see. My laptop is on the desk. The television is still there. My purse is with me. Whoever came inside did it to open a drawer, take out one personal thing, and put it somewhere I couldn't miss.

That realization is what makes me step fully back into the living room and call the police without arguing with Piper first.

Detective Rosa Delgado arrives with two officers and an evidence technician, and thankfully none of them talks to me in the careful voice adults used when I was a foster kid and they had already made a decision before asking what I wanted. Delgado is direct. She asks where the necklace belonged, who knows I keep it there, who has keys, whether I've been threatened, whether I've rejected anyone recently, whether an ex might have a reason to scare me, and whether anything else has happened that felt invasive. I tell her no to almost all of it, because "my roommate recognized the names of two men from a sex dream" doesn't seem useful to an Idaho stalking investigation.

"The necklace came from one of my foster homes," I explain when Delgado asks whether it matters to me. "Kathy McBride gave it to me. It's not expensive. I probably haven't worn it in a year." Delgado writes that down and looks back toward the bedroom. "That may be exactly why it matters. If someone wanted money, they ignored easier things to take. If they wanted you frightened, choosing something personal tells you they know more than where you live." The words make my skin go cold because until she says it, I have been concentrating so hard on how somebody got inside that I hadn't stopped to think about why they chose that necklace.

Lisa Nguyen, the property manager, arrives with the electronic access logs open on her tablet and looks personally offended by what she finds. "There was no maintenance entry, no management override, and no vendor access today," she tells Delgado, then turns the screen toward us. "Maren's code was used when you left this morning and again when you came back. That's it." I glance at Piper because her face has gone too still again, the same way it did when I said Alaric and Aldric's names. She catches me looking and immediately looks away.

"What?" I ask. Piper shakes her head. "Nothing yet." My patience, already in poor condition, gives up entirely. "No. We're not doing 'nothing yet' again while police are standing in my apartment because somebody walked through a locked door. Whatever you think is happening, this is the part where you stop protecting me from information." Delgado's eyes move between us, and I can practically hear the detective part of her brain opening a new folder labeled Roommate Knows Something.

Before Piper can answer, Tori Benson from across the hall appears at our open front door in scrubs, looking exhausted and uncertain. "I don't know if this matters," she says, glancing at Delgado, "but I saw a guy out here earlier." Delgado moves toward her without crowding her and asks when, what he looked like, whether he touched the door. Tori thinks it was a little after two. She remembers a tall man in a dark coat with silver at his temples, pale gray eyes, a folder under one arm, and the kind of calm expression that made her assume he belonged in the building.

"He was standing near Maren's door," Tori says, twisting the strap of her bag around one hand. "I had groceries and asked if I needed to move around him. He smiled and told me I was fine. I figured he was management or an insurance guy or something." Lisa immediately says nobody matching that description works for the property, and Piper makes a sound behind me so quiet nobody else would probably notice it. I do. I turn toward her. "You know him too?"

"No," she says quickly. Then, because she has apparently learned something from this morning, she corrects herself. "I don't know who Tori saw. I know what kind of thing could explain some of this, and I hate that possibility." Delgado looks directly at her. "Then I need the part that could help identify who entered this apartment." Piper nods but doesn't get the chance to answer because the evidence technician calls us into the bedroom.

Beneath the window, cut faintly into the painted wood where the sill meets the wall, is a narrow circular symbol crossed by three angled lines. I have never seen it before. Piper has. She doesn't say anything, but all the color drains from her face, and suddenly the dream conversation from this morning isn't the strangest part of my day anymore.

"What is it?" I ask. Piper's gaze stays fixed on the mark. "An old route sign." Delgado asks what kind of route, and Piper finally looks at me instead of the detective. The guilt on her face makes my stomach hurt. "Not a road. Not here." I wait, and when she doesn't keep going, I snap, "Piper, if the next words out of your mouth are 'give me until tonight,' I swear to God I'm going to lose my shit."

"There is another world," she says.

For a second I genuinely think I heard her wrong. "What?" Piper closes her eyes briefly, then opens them again. "I know how insane that sounds. I know. But there's another world, and the men you dreamed about are from it. I believe this symbol is from an old order that maintained passages between that world and this one." Nobody in the room says anything. Even Delgado goes very still, which is fair because my roommate has just introduced another dimension into a burglary investigation.

I laugh once because my brain has no idea what else to do. "No. Try again." Piper's expression breaks. "I wish I could." I point toward my bedroom. "Somebody broke into my apartment. That is real. There is an actual man Tori saw standing outside my door. Don't use this moment to tell me a fairy story because you don't know how else to explain why you recognized two names from my dream."

"I'm not," she says, stepping closer but stopping before she touches me. "The man is real. The break-in is real. That's why I'm telling you now. I was hoping I could confirm what happened in your dream before I dragged you into any of this, but whoever left that mark already knows enough to make waiting more dangerous than telling you." Her voice is shaking by the end, and I realize with a jolt that Piper isn't excited to reveal some secret magical life. She's terrified.

Delgado clears her throat, bringing the room back to the fact that there are law-enforcement officers in it. "I can't investigate another world," she says flatly, "but I can investigate a man who entered this apartment. Piper, anything physical you know about the person or group associated with that symbol becomes relevant if it can lead to a human identity. Everything else can wait until we're done preserving the scene." It is possibly the most reasonable sentence anyone has said all day.

Piper nods, then steps close enough to the mark to study it without touching. "It's High-Hinge notation. Very old. Whoever carved it wanted someone who knows those symbols to recognize it." Delgado asks, "You?" Piper swallows. "Probably." That scares me more than the words another world did because it means the necklace wasn't only for me. Someone entered my home and left separate messages for two different people living inside it.

The next hour is painfully ordinary in the way emergencies usually are. Lisa changes the lock even though there is no damage. Delgado photographs everything. The evidence tech finds a deep heel impression in the carpet near my bedroom and a black wool fiber caught against the baseboard, which at least proves the intruder had weight and clothing and wasn't some invisible ghost. Tori gives a full statement. I call Kathy McBride and ask, without telling her why yet, whether she remembers the necklace. She does. She also remembers that it went missing briefly when I was thirteen and then turned up again in my room, something I had completely forgotten.

That small detail makes me sit down hard on the edge of the couch. Piper crouches in front of me. "Maren?" I look at her and ask, "How long have you known there was something weird about me?" Her face crumples just enough that I already hate the answer. "A long time." The old foster-kid anger hits immediately, hot and familiar. Another adult. Another person who knew something about my life and decided I could wait.

"Then tonight starts now," I tell her. "You wanted time to confirm things. Somebody just broke into my apartment and left you a symbol. You don't get more time." Piper nods without arguing. "You're right." She takes out her phone, opens a screen I've never seen before, and presses her thumb against what looks like a blank black square. When she murmurs a string of unfamiliar words under her breath, the screen flashes once and goes completely dark.

I stare at it. "What the hell was that?"

"An emergency route call," she answers, already standing. "To who?" I ask, even though I have a feeling I know before she says it.

Piper looks at me. "Alaric and Aldric."

And just like that, the dream stops feeling harmless.