Page 46 of He Sees You
Like the house is holding its breath.
There's a smell too—rot and rust and something sweeter, like flowers left too long in a vase.
The porch steps groan under my weight.
Inside, I can see wallpaper hanging in strips like flayed skin.
A chandelier lies shattered on the floor, its crystals scattered like teeth.
"You shouldn't be here."
I don't scream, but it's close.
Cain stands at the edge of the property, appearing from nowhere like he's made of the same shadows as the house.
"I needed to see it," I say.
He moves closer, each step deliberate.
Today he's in all black again—jeans, sweater, coat that makes him look like something out of a Gothic novel. "Why?"
"To understand."
"Understand what?"
"You. This. Why someone would come back to a place where terrible things happened."
He's close now, close enough that I can see the silver scar through his eyebrow, the way his jaw tightens when he looks at the house.
"Sometimes we return to our haunted places to prove they can't hurt us anymore," he says. "Sometimes we come back to make sure the ghosts stay dead."
"Did they? Stay dead?"
His smile is sharp as winter. "Nothing stays dead, Celeste. Not really. The past just changes shape, finds new ways to bleed into the present."
"Is that why you built your cabin? To watch the house rot?"
"I built my cabin to have something that was mine. Something they never touched." He looks at me then, really looks at me, and I feel like he's reading my bones. "Jake was at your house."
It's not a question. "How did you?—"
"I know everything that happens on this mountain." He steps closer. I should step back, but don't. "Did he hurt you?"
"No."
"But he wanted to."
I don't answer, but I don't need to.
Cain's eyes darken, and for a moment, I see what Bobby must have seen freshman year.
What made three teachers necessary to pull him off.
"Jake Bauer thinks being close to someone is permission enough," he says quietly. "He thinks history is destiny. He thinks wanting something enough makes it his right to take it."
"He mentioned you. Said you're dangerous."
"Iamdangerous." He says it simply, like stating the weather. "But not to you. Never to you."
