Then she opened her mother’s door and the world somersaulted and she thought she might puke. Everything was exactly as Dea had left it the day before. If anything, it looked messier than Dea had left it—the drawers of the bureau overturned, piles of clothing and tangled bits of cheap jewelry littered across the carpet, the faint smell of cosmetic powder and perfume hanging over everything like a haze. The sheets were still balled up on the floor, the mattress bare.

Dea had to hold onto the wall. Her mom hadn’t been home last night. Had she left? Had she had enough of Dea, picked up and taken off somewhere?

There was a dull pain in her head, the throbbing of a single word repeated over and over: no, no, no, no. She ran downstairs and hurtled into the living room, pressing her face to the window.

The car was still in the driveway. That gave Dea some relief. So her mom couldn’t have gone far. She didn’t remember whether she’d seen the VW the night before, when she came home.

Then a new anxiety began to pluck at her: her mom was most definitely gone. So if she hadn’t left on her own, in the car, what did that mean? Something terrible could have happened. Dea tried to remember whether the front door had been locked the night before; she thought so, but she couldn’t be sure. Miriam might have been abducted. She might have been killed. Some psycho might have snuck into the house. People did things like that, crazy people, just came inside and snatched you or battered your head in with an ax.

It had happened to Connor’s family. It could have happened to hers. Dea had a sudden image of Connor’s mother, moaning, while her brain leaked onto her pillow. Her stomach rolled into her throat. She had to stay calm.

She had to call the police.

Her phone was upstairs. She’d dumped her bag at the foot of her bed the night before. She fished her phone out of her bag and moved to the bed, to sit down. A piece of glass was wedged in the soft underside of her foot.

She noticed, for the first time, that shards of glass carpeted the area in front of her closet. She put the phone down and moved carefully into a crouch. Was this evidence of a struggle? But why would there have been a struggle in Dea’s room? And where had the glass come from?

She swung open the closet door. Her secret mirrors. They’d exploded. Not shattered, not broken—exploded. The frames were empty, bare, as if something inside the mirror had reached up a fist and punched its way out, sending a spray of glass into her room.

She remembered what her mother had said the first time Dea saw her dismantle a bathroom mirror, fiddling with the screws, dismounting the swinging door, wrapping the whole thing in layers of black cloth before bringing it out to the trash.

“That’s how the monsters keep watch,” she’d said, dropping her voice. “That’s how they see out.”

Dea closed her eyes and opened them again. She wasn’t thinking straight. Monsters didn’t come through mirrors. They didn’t pass through water, either, as her mom had always said, and they weren’t afraid of clocks and doorways. There was no such thing as monsters—not in real life.

Her foot was bleeding. She hobbled to the bathroom, where the contents of the medicine cabinet were still scattered across the floor. She sat on the toilet and fished the glass out from her foot with a pair of tweezers, struggling to control her shaking hands. Then she bandaged her foot, went back to her room for her cell phone, and punched in 9-1-1.

The phone rang for what seemed like forever. Wasn’t the point of a first responder supposed to be the response? Dea almost hung up and tried again, but at last someone picked up.

“9-1-1.” The woman’s voice was monotone. “What’s your emergency?”

Dea tried to speak but only whimpered. She cleared her throat. “My mom . . .” Jesus. What should she say? Her mom was gone? She’d been abducted? Dea didn’t know that yet.

The monsters took my mother. The thought came to her, unbidden, and she pushed it away.

“What about your mom?” Dea could hear the woman tapping away at her computer.

“She disappeared,” Dea said. Her voice was steadier now.

Tap, tap, tap. “How long has she been gone?”

“I’m not sure.” Dea had left the house a little before noon the day before; her mom had come home some time afterward, and then vanished sometime before one a.m., when Dea had returned. She might have been missing for twelve hours or almost twenty-four. “I mean, I don’t know exactly.” She was about to explain when she heard the doorbell ring. She was so startled, she nearly dropped the phone. Connor. It must be.

She went halfway down the stairs, where she had a view of the front porch through the thick windowpanes on either side of the door. Not Connor. Two police officers. In the driveway, she saw a local squad car, lights revolving, slices of red and white reflecting in the puddled surface of the road.

“When was the last time you saw your mother?” the woman was saying.

“That’s all right,” she said. “They’re here already.”

“Who?”

“Your guys,” Dea said. “The police.”

“No, ma’am, I haven’t—”

But Dea was so distracted, so relieved, that she hung up without listening. The police would help. That was their job.

“Odea Donahue?” one of the cops said, when she opened the door, pronouncing her name the way that people from Fielding always did, as if it was a foreign food that they found distasteful. He looked vaguely familiar. In his midforties, probably, big in the chest and shoulders with a stomach paunch that rolled over his belt. His eyes were very pale blue. The second cop—at least, Dea assumed he was a cop, although he wasn’t in uniform—was a few years younger, thin, and wearing a yellow poncho and shiny leather shoes.

“Thank God,” she said. It was cold, and the rain was coming down so hard it sent a fine spray upward when it hit the porch. She crossed her arms and backed up so they could enter the hall. “I didn’t think you’d come so quickly.”

The two cops exchanged a look. “Can we come in?” the first one said, and Dea nodded. There was a moment of awkward quiet after Dea closed the door. Since there was no mat for them to wipe their feet on, the cop just stood there, dripping on the floor, arms extended stiffly away from his body, like a human umbrella.

“I’m Officer Briggs.” This from the cop who looked familiar. Dea felt a jolt. Briggs. This was Will Briggs’s dad, who’d supposedly cracked a guitar over his son’s head. Connor’s uncle. Briggs gestured next to his partner. “And this is Special Agent Connelly.”

Special agent. It sounded like something from a movie. Dea assumed Connelly must be a high-ranking detective, someone who tracked down missing persons for a living. She kept her hands wrapped around her waist, squeezing.

“We were hoping to speak to your mother,” Connelly said. His tone was casual. He might as well have been saying We were hoping to borrow a vacuum cleaner. “Is she home?”

Dea’s heart sank. They were wasting time. Her mom was gone, and the police hadn’t even been properly informed. “She didn’t tell you?”

Connelly frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The dispatcher,” Dea said, fighting the growing desire to scream. “The woman I spoke to just now. I told her. Something must have happened—she would never just leave me.”

“Hold on, hold on.” Connelly moved as though he was thinking about putting a hand on Dea’s shoulder, but he didn’t. “Your mom’s gone?”

“She’s missing,” Dea corrected him. Gone made it sound as if it was something Dea’s mom had chosen. Connelly and Briggs exchanged a look. “Didn’t they tell you anything?”

Connelly rubbed his eyes, as if Dea was being a big pain in the ass.

Briggs spoke up. “No one called us out here, Odea,” he said. “We came on our own.”