“Oh god. Oh god. Henri, Alayla, get the twins inside quickly - carefully!”

“Don’t touch it! Hermione! Get back before it tries to bite you!”

***

It’s pandemonium upstairs. 

I can hear Mr. George hurriedly clearing things out of the bathroom closets and dumping them onto the floor as Therese asks in an agitated tone “Where did it go? Did you see where it went?”

I need to get to my room and get my bags. Text Judith to come pick me up, right now…

“Mora?!”

My body becomes so still that I almost stop breathing.

“Come here quickly, ma choupette,” Therese is calling from the top of the stairs and my breathing becomes even quieter as I hesitate, unsure whether I should obey the command or even entertain the idea.

Why…

…Would she tell me to come to the place where they found that snake?

Why would anybody…?

Unless…

Unless this wasn’t a real surprise or an accident to them-

Any normal person would have come running down the stairs the minute they heard the word ‘snake.’

Without thinking, I take a step toward the backdoor, but I know better than to fall for that - to fall that easily.

If the snake has already escaped the house or made his way out of a house he had no need to escape, then his first thought would be to hide in the grass for me.

Quickly, I make my way out of the kitchen and toward the front door.

I can forget about my things - clothes - books - the sanctuary will replace them- nothing is that important-

Nothing that I have left that is. And I can’t run the risk of letting it see and identify me-

I smell her before I see her. 

A savor of grass and some kind of wildflower that I haven’t seen or smelled in ages, but along with her, wafting down the stairs comes a…

“Hush, my pet,” Therese is whispering with her hand on my arm and one finger to her lips, just as my fingertips light on the handle to the front door. “Where are we headed in such a shaky hurry, my sweet?”

I hadn’t even realized I was trembling.

Think fast, Mora. Think.

“I thought we should bring in those baskets you had airing out on the grass outside, so the snake doesn’t try to crawl inside them.”

“Mmm, but it’s no good to go walking about through the grass when there is a snake about,” Therese smiles, the corner of her mouth twitching like she wants to laugh as she puts both her hands on my shoulders and leads me gently away from the door and locks it behind me.

This is not…

I feel cold as ice on every inch of my spine.

All my warning signals go off like screaming sirens the second she touches me, and I catch my thoughts already straying toward insanity-

How hard would it be for me to paralyze her and escape? If I had to paralyze the guys too-

-Stop, seriously. That's crazy. What would happen if you killed your harbor giver, even by accident? 

This is probably all a coincidence. These could be innocent people. But why-

…Lead me closer to the place where they saw the snake?

How do we know we can trust these people, Judith?

I mean, yeah yeah, you check their track records, but even if they’ve never worked with an Actaeon before, or worked as Actaeons themselves, how could we possibly know what they might do if they knew…

Or if they know.

For a little bit of money, out of fear, out of malice.

Maybe you can prove that they’ve never killed a phant before, but you can’t prove that they never…would…

Wh…what is that fl…no…perfume…smells like…salt…

I start to lose track of my senses…or…my proprioception as that same…vapor dances over my perception - too indistinct to…identify…

“Why…,” steady, “why would we go toward where the snake is?” I force myself to ask, trying to keep my words from slurring, though I’m not sure I’m ready for how she might respond. It seems like the thing any reasonable person would wonder, and I make sure to sound as scared as I feel as much as I feel anything coherently, “Shouldn’t we stay away from the place we saw it last?”

“Silly goose,” Therese laughs, “the snake will want to leave where we saw it last because it knows it’s been found. We’re in more danger opening drawers and cabinets in the rooms where we least expect it, at least until Maman spreads some of her Fangsbane around the perimeter of the house.”

“Fangsbane?”

I pretend I don’t know what that is, and try not to betray my confusion.

Speak less. I hardly know…what I’m saying.

But it wouldn’t make sense for an Actaeon to have Fangsbane on hand. Unless it’s some kind of a trick.

No, a dragon wouldn’t take kindly to being put at that kind of risk, even for the sake of an elaborate deception.

“Fangsbane is a wildflower,” Therese is explaining, “Order Liliales. Very pretty, but the snakes can’t stand its smell or taste.”

Yeah, I know, but how do you…?

How could anyone get their hands on it?

My grandmother always said that it was endemic to Iris Wood, and Iris Wood is…

Exactly what Therese George smells like right now.

Exactly.

It takes everything in me to keep a blank expression as Mr. George comes out of the bathroom with a little glass bottle in his hand, looking unusually pale in the face.

“No sign of the snake. It must have slipped down the drain,” he shakes his head.

“What kind of crazy animal would go down the drain on purpose?” Therese laughs nervously, her lip trembling ever so slightly.

And either this fear is genuine.

Or she’s a better liar than me.

“It’s unnatural,” Mr. George crosses his arm, glancing anxiously back toward the bathroom.

Yeah, that’s a good word for it.

But they…should know.

If they ARE innocent, it’s way too dangerous to leave them in the dark about this. But if they aren’t, what would happen to me right now, if they found out I knew? The Sanctuary wouldn’t even have time to find and rescue me. It would be three against one, and if they’re Actaeon’s they have to know-

I smell…yellow…

Something like a ghostly vapor or steaming light darts past my peripheral but when I turn my head to look for it, it’s gone.

Mr. George looks at me sideways, and I smile nervously, “Thought I felt something crawling on my neck, but it was just my hair.”

He nods, and I watch as he and Therese make their way down the stairs, Therese murmuring, “I’ll spray down the outside and then come back and serve dinner. You call the exterminator.”

“Alright, but don’t open any drawers until I can check the kitchen for you.”

“Be careful, mon beaux.”

There’s a loving worry in her voice that tears my heart out of my chest like I’m leading a dove to the slaughter.

But I can’t risk it. I’m not allowed to risk it. I won’t.

I try to turn around and head to my room, but I smack right into Christopher George, who has his hand pressed to his forehead.

And his face is bleeding.

What?

I can see the blood but I can’t smell it, as any trace of his natural scent is completely drowned out by orange oil and shaving cream.

It’s surprisingly not distasteful, but his sudden close proximity makes my hair stand on end like I’m about to be struck by lightning.

“What happened to you?” I ask, despite myself. 

Despite the fact that I should be going to my room and contacting Judith immediately and I know it. My mouth moves.

Maybe it’s subtlety. Maybe it’s being inconspicuous.

Or maybe it’s a trace of sincerity I still have, for now at least, that can worry about someone other than myself even though I’ve been told ten thousand times to let that part of my conscience burn.

“Oh,” he touches the injury lightly, “Cut it by accident when I got spooked.”

He doesn’t look me in the face, his eyes searching every inch of the room like he’s still expecting to see the snake any minute, and subconsciously, I start doing the same.

There are too many scents in this house for me to easily detect him, and he knows enough about me to mask his scent anyway. I’d probably never be able to notice him in any other house on the block.

But the George’s are one in a million, and just as I enter my bedroom, I smell bleach.

The George’s never use bleach.

Therese can’t even stand cleaning products that are artificial and sticks to things like tea tree oil and homemade soap for her sanitation - so where…

I turn around slowly, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary anywhere as far as I can tell but a passing shadow I see flickering just outside the window.

A bird? A swaying tree branch?

Maybe the smell came in on the breeze? From somewhere down the street?

Woah…

The room does a pirouette.

Focus…

The smell…could have come from anywhere…but I need…to know for sure.

There are few things anyone in hiding should dread more than an open window. 

But weighing my options against the rapidly rolling in mental fog, I make my way slowly toward the wall, press my back against the dreary greenish paint, and try to take a peek outside the glass without making myself visible to anyone on the street below.

There’s nothing of relevance anywhere but the old woman who lives across the way, planting plastic flamingos in her grass.

It was nothing.

It was something.

There was the snake or a snake. And you can never tell what might be an ordinary dumb snake and what might be a snake that’s developed gold fever.

At least, there’s no way for me to know unless I can get a description from Christopher George, but what are the odds that he would have looked closely at a snake? He’s not a lunatic. I’m assuming.

Why won’t my eyes stay still? 

It seems my vision is jumping about without my permission, never maintaining focus on anything for more than a second or two at a time, and every time I hear a noise it’s right behind me.

Breathe steady.

I turn around slowly, and let my eyes adjust to the growing darkness.

It must be almost 7:30.

I step over to my bedroom door and turn the lock. 

Turning off all my other electronic devices - computer, phone, smart watch - I pull out my ‘cell phone’ and press 1. Hit the send button-

Just as something clatters against the window sill.

I jump back to see the wriggling, writhing mass as it falls onto the floor and begins slithering across the room straight toward me. Jumping up onto my bed quickly, I scream like a kid in a haunted house, but just like that it rams its head into the wall and disappears.

Nothing.

It was nothing.

Oh God.

It’s happening again.

The-the pictures I used to see that Judith told me were just my imagination - 

“Hold your mind in place, Mora Glas, and try to make sense of what you see.”

Reason with yourself and explain why what you can see, smell, and hear can’t possibly be real.

But when you’re always seeing the unreal - or when it dances in and out of reality like a quick-change act - how do you know when and what is actually real?

I’m fading out again…

“Mora! Are you alright, honey?!” Mr. George calls from the top of the stairs and I call back quickly.

“Yeah!”

Keep your voice steady.

“I just thought I saw something moving and thought it was the snake.”

In an instant, he’s knocking on the bedroom door, and I realize I’m still standing on the bed. Or I think I’m on the bed.

Quickly, I jump down as he asks, “Can I come in?”

“Yeah.”

The door opens with a soft click.

Wait.

I thought I locked that door…

“You think you saw a snake?”

“I th…” I start to say, but then I hesitate for some reason, as my thoughts start to spin.

What if none of this is real? 

What if I’m seeing the phantasms again, and I’m making it up? The snake. The blind man with his doberman.

What if they weren’t even talking about a snake earlier?

They were, right? I mean…

Did he say “a snake” or “the snake?”

“I thought I…saw something moving,” I reply dubiously.

“Do you see anything now?” Mr. George asks, scanning the room anxiously.

“No,” I lie hurriedly, but the room is crawling with motion and light that I can practically taste, though I know it can’t be real. 

Fire pours down the walls and the floor is so crowded with living reptilian things that it ripples like water.

I feel lightheaded. 

That smell…

What is that smell…?

I feel lightheaded…

“Mr. George, I don’t…feel…”

And then black.