The Night Sister

Piper shook the thought off. Nonsense. She’s just a girl. They’re probably still playing Crazy Eights. Margot’s laughing at all the rules Lou keeps making up as she goes along.

The kings mean you have to take a card from another player. And the aces turn you into a monster.

Piper put the car in park, cut the ignition, and ran toward the house.

“Margot? Lou?” she called before the front door was even halfway open. She was pumped up on adrenaline, hand trembling as it gripped the knob. “I’m back. I was running late, so I didn’t stop for pizza. I can go pick one up, though. Or we can get it delivered.” She kept talking, waiting for a response as she moved down the hallway, into the kitchen. “Hello?”

A box of crackers and jar of grape jelly had been left on the table. Smears of purple covered its surface, like dark, coagulated blood.

She headed for Margot’s room. “You guys still playing cards?” she asked, straining to keep her voice light and chipper.

Please. Please let them be.

But no.

The room was empty. The covers were on the floor. The fitted sheet covering the bed had a large wet spot, like someone had spilled something. The cards were all over the floor, along with a cracked plate still sticky with jelly.

She heard Jason’s stern warnings: “She’s not to leave the bed. We’ve got to keep her calm. If her blood pressure shoots up again, it would put both her and the baby in danger.”

“Margot!” Piper shouted, voice shrill with panic.

She tore out of the room and down the hall, throwing open the doors to the bathroom, guest room, and laundry room—all empty. She flipped the basement lights on and trotted down the stairs, to find only the furnace, water heater, chest freezer, and an old Ping-Pong table.

Where the hell were they?

Then she heard it: a piercing cry from outdoors, somewhere in the backyard.

Margot, screaming.





Jason


“Looks like an animal attack,” one of the state boys said. “Those have to be claw marks, right? No knife did that.”

“But what kind of animal could do something like that?” Tony asked, his flashlight aimed down at the body.

They’d gone to Crystal’s trailer to try to locate Lou, and had found Crystal while searching the grounds. Her body was sprawled between the Dumpster and a cinder-block wall out back, behind the row of trailers. She was wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt, and slippers. A bag of trash was spilled everywhere. She’d been taking out the garbage when the attack occurred; you didn’t need a fancy criminal-justice degree to see that.

“A bear?” one of the men suggested.

“Uh-uh, a black bear wouldn’t attack a person like that,” Jason said.

“So—what? A catamount, maybe?” Tony said.

“Maybe,” Jason said. “But we haven’t had a big-cat sighting in years. They just aren’t around anymore.”

“Maybe one is,” Tony said, pointing the beam of his flashlight out into the woods behind the trailer park. “I want this whole area searched. Whatever we’re looking for, man or beast, may have left something behind. A paw print, maybe. Let’s get on it.”

Officer Malcolm Deavers came out of the trailer holding a piece of paper. “I think I know where the girl is,” he said.

“Where?” Tony asked.

“She’s at Jason and Margot’s.”

“What?” demanded Jason, snatching the note from Deavers and blinking down at his sister-in-law’s handwriting in disbelief. He turned to hurry back into his cruiser and head for home, muttering, “Goddamn it, Piper!”





Piper


“Margot!” Piper called, looking out the open back door into the rain. She flipped on the floodlights that lit up the backyard and stepped out onto the patio. In front of her was the in-ground pool, its cover off; Jason had begun to scrub it down in preparation for the summer. The blue-painted cement reminded her of being twelve, of Amy and her chasing Margot around the pool in circles.

She saw no sign of her sister or Lou.

Piper started out across her sister’s neatly landscaped yard—perennial beds, vegetable garden, perfect green lawn. Beyond the lawn, the woods.