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there. It’s not normal for the house to be unoccupied.”
    “The whole coven’s probably skyclad and drunk and pretending to draw down the moon.” He rolled his eyes. “Stop worrying about it.”
    “You’re too young to be so cynical,” Hannah said.
    He responded with a heavy sigh.
    Twelve years old and already a critic. Wasn’t that supposed to hit after puberty?
    They left the meadow behind as they took the hidden path. Hannah remembered having to step carefully over slugs that used that trail as a highway when she was a girl. But there were neither slugs nor herbs now. Brambles snagged the sleeves of her pea coat as she passed.
    A few twigs had become stuck in Nathaniel’s hood. She plucked them out and smoothed his black hair flat. He ducked under her touch.
    “You know,” she said hesitantly, “if you want to talk about—”
    He didn’t let her finish. “I know.”
    It had been months since Hannah and Nathaniel returned from Hell, yet he hadn’t talked about it even once. She had been locked in a cage, watched Belphegor peel skin off of other prisoners, and heard the damned screaming from within the pits. None of that scared her as much as the idea of what Nathaniel must have seen while he had been running around with Elise.
    Since he wouldn’t talk, Hannah could only imagine what was bothering him. Had he seen a slave auction? The human butcher shops? Witnessed the curing of slave-skin leather?
    “Can I tell you what I saw?” Hannah asked.
    “No.”
    She was spared the unique hell that was trying to communicate with her preteen son when she spotted a signpost. The text burned into the wood was faded with time, but she found the name “Faulkner” with her fingertips.
    They were almost there.
    Hannah took the left-hand fork toward the old Faulkner house. The branches were too thick for sunlight to penetrate that part of the forest.
    The Faulkner house had been kept in better condition than the ritual space in the meadow. The windows were new—Hannah had helped replace them last spring. The weeds had been pulled around the path, too.
    But there was no light inside, and no cars outside. James’s parents definitely weren’t there.
    Hannah stopped her son with a hand on his shoulder. “I think something is wrong.” He rolled his eyes, shoved open the door, and stepped through. “Nathaniel, stop!”
    She followed him inside.
    The couches were covered in plastic, and the antique rocking chair next to the fireplace looked like it had been recently polished. The clock on the mantel ticked too loudly in the silence of the unoccupied house. Someone must have been there to wind it. Hannah reached into the mechanisms to stop the clock.
    Nathaniel dropped his backpack next to the door and slid his jacket off. He was wearing that harpy wool shirt he had picked up in Dis again. “So where are Grandma and Grandpa?”
    “I don’t know,” Hannah said, flipping the light switch. Nothing happened.
    The floorboards creaked when they stepped into the kitchen. Hannah checked the empty refrigerator. Even though it was plugged into the outlet, it wasn’t running, and the shelves were warm. The house didn’t have any power.
    Nathaniel grabbed a box of Lucky Charms out of the pantry as Hannah continued to explore. She peered down the hall. All of the bedroom doors stood open, like eye sockets gaping out of a dried skull.
    The electrical panel was hidden under a tapestry next to Pamela’s office door. All of the breakers were turned on. There just wasn’t any power.
    “I’m not mad at you,” Nathaniel said from behind her. When she looked askance at him, he swallowed another mouthful of cereal and said, “I’m not being quiet because I’m mad, and it’s not because I’m scared or scarred or damaged. You just don’t want to know what I saw in Dis.”
    He looked like such an adult, standing there in his jeans and hiking boots. More like a teenager than her baby.
    “You can tell me anything,” Hannah