The house was quiet, but not a peaceful quiet.

Amelia had her feet up in the window of her bedroom, legs drawn up and inside of herself, forehead pressed to the glass. Beyond the window, the city glimmered as though nothing whatever had ever occurred in the world, but it churned in her breast.

She couldn't shake the man in black. The way he'd spoken her name. The way he'd spoken to her as if she were something short of an object, a thing to be bought and sold.

Two days. Two days since ...