Elodie stepped back into the dining room, her phone still warm against her palm. She had expected to see Maisie chattering animatedly while Sloane smiled along, playing the role of the attentive,

"Maisie!" Elodie shrieked, sprinting toward the stairs before the sentence had even fully left her throat.

"Elodie, stop!" Julian lunged forward, grabbing her by the waist just as a sickening, heavy smell swept up through the floor vents—the unmistakable, pungent stench of raw natural gas.

"Let me go! My baby is upstairs!" Elodie fought him with hysterical strength, hitting his chest, her nails digging into his shoulders. "Maisie!"

"I'm getting her! Stay down here by the front door!" Julian roared, shoving her toward the fresh air of the open porch before dashing up the stairs two at a time.

The house was filling with gas at a terrifying speed. Up on the second floor, the air was already heavy and thick. Julian burst into Maisie's room, scooping the sleeping four-year-old into his arms.

"Daddy?" Maisie whimpered, rubbing her eyes, disoriented by the commotion. "What's wrong?"

"Hold on to me, baby! Hold on tight!" Julian wrapped his arms around her, turning to run back toward the stairs.

CLICK.

A tiny, mechanical spark sounded from the hallway wall heater.

The world exploded into a wall of blinding, yellow fire.

The shockwave blasted through the second-floor corridor, throwing Julian off his feet. He twisted his body in mid-air, shielding Maisie with his back as they slammed heavily onto the hardwood floor of the master bedroom.

Downstairs, the front windows blew outward in a shower of glass and flame.

Elodie was thrown clear off the porch, landing hard on the damp lawn. Coughing frantically, blood streaming from a cut on her forehead, she scrambled to her feet and looked back at her home.

The entire second floor was engulfed in a roaring, angry sheet of orange fire. Smoke billowed into the evening sky like a dark tower.

"Julian! Maisie!" Elodie shrieked, rushing back toward the burning porch.

Out of the smoke on the side of the house, a shadow stepped forward.

Sloane—her face scarred on one side by jagged white lines from the boathouse glass, her hair chopped short and dyed ash-white—was standing by the garden gate. She was wearing a heavy black coat, holding a remote detonator in one leather-gloved hand and a heavy, steel-tipped flare gun in the other.

"It took me six months to find you, Elodie," Sloane said, her voice raspy and ruined from the icy lake water that had nearly taken her life. "Six months of skin grafts, six months of swimming through the sewage of fake documents. But I told you... illusions shatter so easily."

"You monster!" Elodie screamed, picking up a heavy garden stone from the flowerbed. "Where are they?!"

Sloane raised the flare gun, pointing it directly at Elodie’s chest. Her eyes were completely void of sanity, wild and vacant.

"They're burning, Elodie. Just like my heart burned when he chose you." Sloane smiled, a horrific, twisted grimace across her scarred face. "And now, you get to join them."

Before Sloane could pull the trigger, a blood-curdling roar echoed from the burning house.

Julian smashed through the ground-floor side window, wrapped in a blanket, clutching Maisie tight against his chest. He tumbled onto the grass, rolling over to absorb the impact, completely protecting the child.

"Mommy!" Maisie sobbed, her little voice piercing through the roar of the flames.

Sloane’s head snapped toward them, her jaw dropping in disbelief. "No... no! You were supposed to die in the bedroom!"

Elodie didn't waste a fraction of a second. While Sloane was distracted by Julian's sudden escape, Elodie hurled the heavy garden stone with all her strength.

The stone struck Sloane full in the face.

Sloane shrieked, dropping the flare gun as she stumbled backward. The gun hit the concrete pathway and fired, sending a brilliant, blinding red flare shooting straight into the dry pine bushes bordering the house, igniting them instantly.

Julian handed the crying child to Elodie. "Take her to the street! Call the police!"

"Julian, no! Come with us!" Elodie cried, clutching Maisie to her chest.