Chapter 24 · Hand Back the Knife

The red door slammed shut with a sound like a bone breaking.

Maeve hit the floor on one knee. Her palms skidded across the stage, catching on splinters and old dust. For one stunned second, she still felt Eli’s weight against her chest—the heat of him, the frantic drag of his breath, the hand she had forced away from her throat.

Then there was nothing.

Only the empty pressure of her arms closing around air.

“Eli?”

Her voice vanished into the dark.

Somewhere beyond the stage, a monitor gave a long, unbroken tone.

Maeve froze.

Not a theater sound. Not an echo. This was sharper, cleaner—the flat electronic note she had heard too many times in the emergency department, the sound that turned a patient from a body into a room full of people pretending not to grieve.

A voice whispered through the darkness.

“Jonah.”

Maeve lurched to her feet. “Who said that?”

The answer came from beneath the stage.

“Jonah Kellan.”

Her brother’s name crawled through the theater like a hand searching for a lock.

Maeve turned toward the footlights. They were dead. The grand chandelier above the audience hung in pieces, every bulb black.