Slowly shapes came into focus. Trees, grass, rocks. Lots of rocks.

I realized I was moving more easily. I was breathing more easily. What had happened? Did I kill someone without knowing it? Not Ethan! Please, not Ethan!

I sat up and looked around. The only things around me were the rocks, all perfectly lined up in a circle again. Someone or something had fixed the rocks, put them back in their pattern while I lay on the ground.

My head felt woozy, like I was hung over, but I hadn’t had anything to drink. I slowly got to my feet, still scanning the yard, looking for whoever had done this. Maybe it was the same person who had stolen my necklace. I thought back to the guy who was peeking in the window. The one who’d broken into the house. He knew my name. He knew I could kill with my bare hands. It had to be him.

Suddenly the realization that I was outside alone in the dark with a stranger lurking around set in. I ran back into the cottage and locked both locks behind me. I went around the house checking all the windows, too. He wasn’t getting inside again.

I pulled the curtain back into place after checking the lock on the window above the kitchen sink. I was breathing hard. I turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on my face. No way would I be able to go back to sleep after all this, so I grabbed a paper towel and dabbed my face, trying to think of how I’d pass the time until morning without waking Ethan. I reached for a second paper towel when I saw the note on the counter. A yellow Post-it note. I froze.

My eyes zeroed in on the handwriting. Every letter was perfectly straight.

Where’s your necklace?

Those three words sent terror coursing through my body. Whoever had given me the necklace had been in my house tonight. He—or she, now I wasn’t so sure—had come into the cottage while I was out in the yard having a vision and trying not to die.

Two break-ins in one night? It was hard to believe, but it had to be two different people. One stole my necklace, and the other wanted to know why I wasn’t wearing it anymore. How had so many people discovered where I lived? The whole point of the P.O. box was to keep that a mystery. To make sure people didn’t connect Ethan and me any more than thinking we were together. We had even toned down the couple stuff at school, so people would think we had only recently gotten together.

I couldn’t help it, but Beth’s name came to mind. She always knew so much. She was the queen of gossip, and she was good at figuring things out. Could she have pieced together more about Ethan and me than she was letting on? And which intruder was she? The one who stole my necklace, or the one who gave it to me and wanted to know why I wasn’t wearing it anymore?

This was too much to process. By morning, I only had more questions, and one thing was for sure. I had to keep an eye on Beth. I had to find out what she knew.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ETHAN slept in, so I watched infomercials on the one TV station that came in. Thankfully Ethan had gotten the TV working again after my peeping Tom collided with it. Really I wasn’t even watching, but I figured it would look suspicious if Ethan found me sitting in a dark room staring at the wall. So I put the TV on as a decoy. Meanwhile, my brain went over every possible reason Beth could be messing with me.

“Hey.” Ethan was all smiles as he came into the living room.

I hoped he wouldn’t make a comment about last night. I’d end up blushing and feeling self-conscious. “Morning.”

“I’m going to hit the shower, and then we can drive out to that storage place. It’s about two hours from here, so if we leave in the next twenty minutes, we should make it back in time for our shift at the diner.”

“Sounds good.” I went into the bedroom and got dressed. I was eager to get away from this place. Now that I knew that it was so easy for people to break in, I didn’t feel safe here, and it wasn’t like I could tell Ethan. So I was dying again last night, and I hit my head on a rock and blacked out, but I had another vision of some strange old man, and when I woke up from it, I was breathing normally, and the rock circle was back in place. Oh, yeah, and did I mention I found another note, which means someone else broke in?

Oh crap! The note! I ran out of the bedroom and to the kitchen. The note was still on the counter. I hadn’t even been able to bring myself to touch it last night. The bathroom door opened. Speedy Ethan was ready to go. I grabbed the note and slipped it into my back pocket.

“All set.” I faked a smile and pretended I’d been waiting for him.

I locked the door behind us and almost bumped right into Ethan. “What’s wrong?”

“Did you move the rocks back?”

Another thing I’d forgotten. “No.” There, it wasn’t a lie. I stared at the rocks circling the house, like I was as surprised as Ethan. “Do you think it was whoever broke in and stole my necklace?”

“No. It was probably those guys from the diner. They were pretty mad about getting kicked out.”

“They didn’t get kicked out. Shannon did. She’s the one who made them leave.”

“Doesn’t matter. I bet they’re screwing with us.”

Us. Crap! “Do you think they know we live together?” If that was true, then more than just two people knew about our living arrangements.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He shrugged. “I’m thinking we should leave the rocks, at least for a little while. They’ll get tired of messing with us if it looks like we don’t even care.”

“I guess that makes sense.” If only ignoring my problems really was the answer, but my Hyde side wouldn’t let me ignore them, neither would my conscience.

We took Route 80 most of the way to the storage facility. How Ethan knew which one to go to was a mystery to me. There were tons of them, and they all looked the same. We pulled up to a gated entrance, and Ethan used a passkey to open it. We drove around the building to a set of smaller, climate-controlled garages.

“That’s us.” Ethan nodded to the row of doors on our right.

“You said this is your cousin’s storage unit?” I followed Ethan out of the car and down the lot to a big garage door with the number 1221.

“Yeah, but he moved to California last year. Told you he wouldn’t be using the cottage or this place.”

That was good to know. At least none of Ethan’s family would be breaking into the cottage while we were sleeping. That was reserved for strangers who liked to scare me.

Ethan used his passkey to open the garage door on the storage container. It wasn’t very big, but it was packed with things.

“Whoa, look at this stuff.” There were chairs, an ottoman, pots and pans, dishes, an old stereo system. It was like the family had packed up all the good stuff and left the junk to rot in the cottage.

“We can take anything you want back to the cottage. It’s not like anyone is going to use it.”

“Why would your family save all this stuff if they never plan on coming back to the cottage? Why are they even still keeping the cottage? They could sell it.”

Ethan sighed. “You’re always so curious about everything.”

“Sorry.” I was prying. I didn’t have a right to question what his family did. I should’ve been grateful we had a place to stay, and now we’d have some decent furniture, too.

“My great-grandfather built the cottage. No one has the nerve to sell it or tear it down, so it just sits.” Ethan started picking through a stack of books to avoid looking at me. This must have been a sensitive family issue. One I’d missed thanks to cancer.

“But if we hadn’t moved in, it would’ve fallen apart eventually.”

“I know. No one else seemed to figure that out, but I couldn’t let that happen. I have great memories here.”

I reached for his hands and turned him toward me. “You’ll have great memories here again.”