I'm convinced my brain runs on a completely separate program when I'm in crisis mode. Before I can register that I've moved from beside the bed, I've crossed the room and slammed the lock on the door shut again. I don't know what part of me remembered it was still open. A weaker lock than this kept a Sleeper out of the shed where I first kissed Ditzy, so if this doesn't protect us, I don't know what will.

Outside the door, there's a sudden, rapid creaking: footsteps from up the hall. The sentry. Light flashes under the bottom of our door as they flick a flashlight on. "Psy?" says a voice. "What are you—"

They scream. The Sleeper's footsteps lunge up the stairs. I recoil from the door as two bodies hit the floor meters away. Animalistic sounds fill the hallway. Another scream. Something bangs. More footsteps pound up the stairs, accompanied by shouting. I retreat to the middle of the room and grip my hockey stick with both hands. Even if someone calls us, I'm not going to open the door. Not until they've stopped whatever's happening outside. And maybe even then.

More shouting. I hear, "Stand back!" in Ember's voice just moments before a sickening crunch—like a bat striking a watermelon—echoes through the house. The animal sounds stop abruptly.

"Take him downstairs," snaps Oreo. Then he shouts to the whole house, "Everyone report to the living room for role call! Now!"

An explosion of footsteps makes the whole house shudder. We all leap back as a fist pounds on our door. "That includes you, too, Chestnuts," growls Oreo. "No more hiding."

He strides away. I turn to the rest of the room to find all three of my friends looking at me. Calico J has pushed Patrick into a corner and taken up a protective stance in front of him, Ditzy's old bat in hand. Or maybe Patrick found the corner on his own. He's frozen like a deer in headlights, both hands braced against the wall and eyes locked on the door. Calico J looks almost as terrified as he does, but my brain fixates on Ditzy.

I've only seen Ditzy scared—properly scared—once before. This makes a second time.

She's still standing in her pajamas beside the bed with her flail gripped in both hands, but despite her fighting stance, she's shaking. Her eyes are huge, and in the grey light from outside, I see a single shining line track down her cheek. I didn't know Ditzy cried when she got scared.

"I won't let them hurt you," I say. Well, that other half of my brain says. I turn to the others. "Any of you."

My voice is far too steady for how petrified I am right now. I sound like a leader. I don't know why I'm taking charge. But that isn't enough to stop me from continuing to talk like my voice is a mind of its own. "We need to go with them, or they're going to suspect us. But whatever happens down there, stay close. Okay?"

Ditzy and Calico J both nod. Another tear slips down Ditzy's face. I redouble my grip on my hockey stick, then realize I'm in pajamas without my headlamp or knife. I change quickly and retrieve both items while my companions do the same. When my belt is on, I unsnap my knife sheath so I'm ready to grab my sharper weapon the moment I need it. That makes me feel safer as I return to the door, unlock it, and swing it wide. Ember steps back. "Good," she says calmly. "I was about to come get you."

"We're coming."

She steps away. There's a clear message in her body language: we're going first.

"J, look after Patrick," I say. They're murmuring together in the corner, and it's a long moment before they join us by the door. Patrick walks like an automaton. His face is still fixed in that same stricken expression, but that's the thing about Patrick: he always obeys an order. Even if he's so terrified, he falls apart after. It's scary.

I size up the situation. "Ditzy, can you lead?"

She nods and leaves the safety of the room with a shaky kind of bravery that only redoubles the fierce protective instinct that's reared its head inside me. I make eye contact with Ember as she starts to move. She stops again. I hold us both there, pinned by our mutual gaze, until Calico J has followed Patrick after Ditzy towards the stairs. I hope Patrick doesn't have a panic attack in the middle of whatever is waiting for us.

That hope is quashed moments later as Ditzy pulls up sharply at the top of the stairs. I click my headlamp on in red mode. There's some kind of discoloration on the floor. I realize what it is with a feeling that starts at the bottom of my gut and crawls up through me like a parasitic worm. I switch the light from red to white to reveal a thick splatter of blood on the floor. Blood, not Redding. There's Redding, too, watered down with streaks of rain that Psy must have tracked in from outside.

Patrick wrenches back. Calico J tries to catch him, but he just spins around and faces the wall, breaths suddenly coming short, sharp, and almost sob-like. So much for avoiding a panic attack.

Ditzy inches around the splatter, all her normal grace fixated on not touching the blood. Calico J hovers beside Patrick until the episode passes. It only takes a minute. Then Patrick just keeps on walking, this time like he can't even see the blood. I take up the rear again with one hand locked around my hockey stick and the other on my knife.

"You'll need to leave the weapons in the mudroom," says Ember's too-calm voice behind me. "House rules for role call."

"Too bad we're not from this house, then."

Ember doesn't reply, and I don't look back. I do turn my attention to every sound she makes, though, lest she try to jump me from behind. If anyone gets attacked first here, it'll be me.

We reach the main floor without altercation, though, and Ditzy pauses to look back for directions. I tip my chin towards the living room. Or maybe the murder room is a more accurate name for it. The candles are back in force, and their glow off the red rug, drapes, and couches bleeds out the open doorway to mingle with the blue-grey light of predawn outside. We might as well be stepping into the viscera of a giant beast. I enter the room just as a small woman twice tightens the curtains, blocking the last of that light from outside.

There are a lot more people here than we've met so far. An elderly man sits hunched on one of the couches beside an emo teen girl and a very average-looking woman with long, dark hair. A young man who could be Psy's duplicate shifts from foot to foot in the middle of the room, turning with every half-step as his eyes dart between his fellow group members. Nobody sits or stands closer than two feet from anyone else. A tough-looking woman with an aura that could burn on contact sits cross-legged not far from me, her arms draped over her knees, chewing on a lip ring with a resting scowl that she too turns on me and the others.

On Oreo's side of the room, two more men with over-long, unkempt hair hold the bound arms of a third, scrawnier one who can't be any older than I am. He looks haunted. Bile shoots up my throat as I spot the dark red streaks across his cheeks and down his neck. He's the one who got attacked at the top of the stairs. Those streaks could be either blood, or Redding.

There are still more people, but now my eye skips over them in favor of ascertaining the overall situation. In the dim red glow, it's almost impossible to discern skin tones or clothing colours. Everyone has a cagey look about them. Everyone has shadows under their eyes. I spot the two women who lurked around our car back at the motel, but the only names I know are Ember and Oreo.

Oreo stands on an upturned desk drawer like some kind of podium at the far end of the room. He fixes us with a chilling glare as I shuffle our group to an unoccupied corner within reach of both the window and the door. I position myself in front of them. Ditzy comes up beside me and resumes her brave stance, hands white-knuckled on the handle of her flail.

"Hand your weapons over to Ember," snaps Oreo. His eyes are laser-focused on our little group, as if we needed any more indication of who he was talking to.

"Tough luck, Cookies." I sound stone-cold now. "I expect an explanation before we disarm after that thing got into your house."

He raises an eyebrow at Ember. She just glares back, her arms crossed. She has her club conspicuously tucked under one of them. Oreo's got a knife on him, too. So the leaders stay armed. There must be some kind of silent exchange of understanding between them, because the next reaction is a lip curl bordering on a sneer from Oreo, again directed at us. I jump in my skin as he claps his hands.

"You know the drill," he says. "Shirts off."

"You, too, Chestnuts," says Ember.

Everyone around the room starts cautiously stripping. As they do, their eyes dart back and forth between and over one another in a ceaseless pattern that's paranoid bordering on frenetic. Oreo surveys them all with a critical, discerning eye, then looks back at us. His glare deepens as he finds that none of us have made a move to undress.

Ember steps in front of us, her club slung over one shoulder now and an increasingly dangerous look on her face. "You have one minute to comply with the house rules."

"Or?" I say coolly.

"Or we screen you for you. Nobody leaves this house without a check after a Sleeper incident."

A Sleeper incident. This has happened here before.

I should have signaled us to make a break for the door when we came down the stairs. Our bags are still in our room, though—clothing can be replaced, but I can't leave my phone when it's the only way for my family to reach me. Vix's phone and journal are also upstairs. The words in her journal begin to come back to me of their own accord.

I need to leave. Please, God, if you exist, help me. They're going to kill me. They're going to KILL me.

I should have put two and two together. Patrick and I are the only ones who've read the journal, and he's as good as incapacitated right now. I've put us all in danger. Danger we may not be able to escape.

A sound from the other side of the room distracts Ember. It distracts everybody. It's a low growling, but the freaky kind you'd hear from a raccoon or cat, more voice than actual growl. That's an animal, but there is no animal, and the attention of everyone in the room has fixated on the man that Psy attacked. He twists slowly from side to side against the grip of his captors. His captors look at one another. Then they both look at Oreo.

Oreo steps off his podium, grabs the growling captive, and slits the guy's throat.

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