“Take it off her right now.”

And as my sister fumbled at the little clasp with shaking fingers, another memory surfaced through the fog — Christopher’s voice, low in the kitchen the night before, just before the dark took me: Don’t worry about her.

Tomorrow she won’t be able to stop a single thing we do.

Chapter 8 — Call the Police

When the paramedics reached me, one of them crouched down and asked, gently, if I knew where I was.

I looked past his shoulder — at the open coffin, at my mother shaking, at my sister pinned against the wall with her bare neck now, the necklace back in someone’s hand.