Chapter 17 · The Ring Below

"Leah."

I jerked awake. The voice came from inside the walls, soft and wet, like someone speaking through a mouthful of river water.

"Leah, baby. Come find me."

I sat up so fast my vision went white at the edges. The room was freezing. My breath came out in clouds. The clock on the nightstand read 3:47 AM—forty-seven minutes since I'd crawled into bed with the key Daniel gave me clutched in my fist.

The key was gone.

"No. No no no—" I threw the blankets off, dropped to my knees, ran my hands over the floor. Nothing. I checked under the bed, between the mattress and the frame, inside my pillowcase. Gone.

"Looking for this?"

I spun toward the window.

Mom stood on the other side of the glass.

Not the river-soaked thing from earlier. Not the bloated face that rose up after the hand sank. This was her. Alive. Hair pulled back the way she used to wear it when she worked nights at the diner. Flannel shirt I remembered from a dozen childhood mornings. She held up her left hand. The wedding ring caught the moonlight.