Something hit me. Hard. With enough force to send me flying backward across the room.

Noah caught me before my back slammed against the wall. We both went down, falling into a heap on the ground.

"Stella!" he shouted, trying to simultaneously get out from underneath me, help me to my feet, and move us closer to the door.

I looked down at my front, expecting bleeding cuts like what he'd shown me across the front half of my body. But there was nothing. Nothing besides the ache from the impact. It'd felt like an airbag had gone off in my face. An extremely violent, viciously malevolent airbag.

It howled again. That sound sent life back into my body and I was up and moving, pulling on the front door's handle.

But it wouldn't budge.

"It's stuck!" I shouted.

Noah grabbed at it, pulling with me. But the door wouldn't open.

"Down!" he shouted, shouldering me to the side. We fell, him on top of me, as splintering wood erupted above us.

I looked up to catch a glimpse of massive claw marks wrenched across the front door.

"Put up a ward!" I yelled. We both scrambled away from the door, into the living room.

I made to head for my bedroom but Noah's arm shot out. He grabbed my arm and yanked me back. I turned.

He focused on something, watching it as it moved about the room. Jumping from the walls, to the ceiling, to the floor. It moved fast. Like a bouncy ball.

I nearly laughed. A monster bouncy ball was about to eat us.

And I still couldn't see a damn thing.

"This is so freaking old!" I shouted just as Noah yanked me toward Bronte's room.

The door slammed shut before we could reach it.

We stopped short, Noah spinning to follow the creature's path as it continued to bounce through the living room.

I stared at Bronte's door. It swung open, then shut. Open, then shut.

Then all the doors in the apartment began doing the same thing.

All the kitchen cabinets. The drawers to the furniture. The bedroom and bathroom doors.

Open, then shut.

Banging. Knocking. All so violently the wood protested in groans.

Beyond Bronte's door, the Ouija board rose into the air. It spun like a pinwheel, spinning around and around until it was eye level with me across the door frame. Then it stopped. Hovered at eye level.

Then the planchette began to move, spelling out letters.

Three letters.

Over and over and over.

D.

I.

E.

"Put up a ward!" I shouted at Noah, spinning around toward him.

He stared into the apartment. Watching the banging doors. His mouth moving, forming unsaid words. Eyes wide. Panicked. Terrified.

"Noah Walker!" I shouted, relief flooding through me when power surged through my voice again. "Put up a ward!"

His hand slapped up over his eye.

The banging stopped.

And the following silence felt infinitely louder than the knocking.

I could hear my heart hammering in my chest. My body felt jumpy, shaky. My legs wanted to give out. It was a miracle they hadn't yet.

Noah's hand began to slide down from his eye and I reached out to stop it. "Wait," I whispered, afraid to speak too loudly. Even then, my voice seemed too loud in the stillness. "Maybe it's gone. Do you see it?"

"N-no." His voice shook. His hand underneath mine shook.

Then a noise, so soft and light, drifted through the room.

I couldn't place it. It sounded like sliding. Fabric sliding. Like when you're stretching the sheets over the bed.

I turned to look through Bronte's bedroom door. Her bed was still. I stared, waiting, watching, but the sound continued without the sheets moving.

"Stella."

I turned at Noah's voice.

He faced the windows.

Where the curtains, ever so slowly, began to close.

The sheer curtains. The curtains that couldn't block out light, even if they were pulled close.

But somehow they were thicker. They were the same curtains, the same sheer curtains from before. But as they closed, they blocked out the outside light. All of it.

Sheer curtains closing, casting the room in total darkness.

And they were halfway closed.

"Put it up," I hissed.

Noah pulled his hand away from his eye. The same shimmery film from before pushed out, enveloping everything.

When it reached the curtains, they stopped moving.

And the creature shrieked. A sound halfway between pain and fury. Somehow much more terrible than anything I'd heard from it before. It sounded wounded. Wounded and furious.

Whatever darkness resided behind the curtains vanished and sunlight filtered through them again. And the room stilled.

My eyes darted around, still trying to catch a glimpse of the thing. "Is it gone?"

"I don't—I don't know."

"We need to get out of here."

We both turned toward the door.

"I don't think we should," Noah breathed.

I took a step toward it. "Um, yeah. We absolutely should."

His hand snapped out and latched onto mine again.

Annoyed, I shook him off. "Will you stop doing that?"

Noah continued to look around the room. "I think it came from the outside."

"What outside?"

"I don't think it's bound by the same rule as the ghosts—" his eyes widened and he spun toward me. "Where are they?"

I jumped at his shouting. "What?"

"Your ghosts—they—where—"

"They're fine. Bronte took them this morning. They're ok."

Unexpectedly, I watched his shoulders sag in relief. "Thank God. If that thing had gotten to them..." He shuddered and then turned toward me again. "Are you ok? Did it scratch you?"

I looked down at my pajama shirt. "No. I'm fine." Then I looked up at him. "You think if we leave your ward, it can reach us? That's it waiting outside?"

He nodded.

I turned to look at the shimmery film outlining the living room of the apartment. Where the doors into the other rooms stood open, the ward had acted as if the doors were closed. I could see past the film and into Bronte's room. Nothing stirred there, but nothing looked protected by the ward either.

"How long do we need to wait here?" I asked.

Noah shrugged. "I have no idea." His voice lowered. "You've heard it before, haven't you?"

I glanced at him and he continued. "When I mentioned the monsters that come after the ghosts before, you didn't seem surprised by it. You've heard it before, haven't you?"

There wasn't any point in hiding things now. "Yeah. Once. On Friday."

"How long did it stay then?"

"I don't know. I left. Cyril and Oliver stayed here."

He sighed. "We're just going to have to wait it out."

I turned to look around the room again. The protection turned prison, I thought dryly.

Then my eyes fell on my laptop, still sitting on the dining room table from the last time I'd used it, earlier in the week. Before all this madness began.

And a thought struck me. "You said the monsters that come after had lost their lives and their humanity, right? That they were like ghosts, but depraved?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Why do you think that?"

He took in a long breath. "Because the thing that attacked Clara—the old widow I'd told you about—boasted about how many people he'd killed before. An uncaught serial killer—back before they knew what serial killers were. He'd added Clara to his kill count. Ninety-six, he kept saying."

"Ninety-six?"

"I'm guessing that was living people and ghosts."

"So it had been human once?"

He arched a brow at the excitement in my tone. "I guess so. Why?"

I moved toward my computer on the dining room table. "If it was human once, it must have a name."

He caught on immediately, following after me. "And if it has a name, you can command it."