Ken arrived at 9:41 p.m.
Aria heard the car first. Headlights swept across the foyer windows, crawled up the wall, and went dark. A door slammed. Footsteps crunched across the gravel.
She was halfway across the foyer when something small shot past her knees.
Théo had refused to go to bed. He had spent the whole evening on the third step of the staircase in a sweater that reached his shins, guarding the front door. Margaux had tried to carry him upstairs twice. Both times he had gone limp like a sack of flour and slid out of her arms.
Now he hit the door at a run, dragged it open with both hands, and charged into the dark.
On the porch stood a tall man in a charcoal suit.
In the rain, with the porch light dead, he looked exactly like Damien.
Théo kicked him in the shin.
"Ow!" The man hopped backward, clutching a hard-shell case to his chest. "Sir? Sir, there's a child—"
"He thought you were me," Damien said from the staircase.
