“Aunt Lydia?” I called. “Are you here?”
I was met with silence. Something was wrong. I felt it in my gut. My heart hammered, and my gaze swiveled around the living room warily.
Aunt Lydia’s strange phone call earlier had me rushing home after my last class. My ever-calm aunt had sounded off… distressed even. I frantically searched the first floor for her.
She wasn’t in the kitchen baking as she was most afternoons. I peeked through the window to see if she was in the backyard, stooped in her garden. She wasn’t there either. When I turned to the staircase, and my foot landed on the first step, the hairs on my arms stood on end. It was as if my body detected danger when my mind hadn’t yet processed it.
As I advanced up the stairs, my unwelcome feeling intensified. My steps faltered when I spotted a dirty footprint on the cream carpet of the passageway. Aunt Lydia was a clean freak. Even as a kid, I’d been careful not to be messy. My Uncle Sam knew the rules of the house, too—no muddy shoes on the carpet.
Aunt Lydia is going to flip, I thought.
One dirty footprint led to another and another. I followed the trail all the way to my aunt’s favorite room—her office. Aunt Lydia fancied herself a skilled researcher of the supernatural. The shelves in her workspace were filled with books on the subject—like shape shifters, ghosts, witches, and everything that I considered absolute insanity. But my aunt’s eccentricities didn’t make me adore her any less.
Her office door was ajar, which was strange. It was always locked, and Uncle Sam and I had strict instructions to stay out of her office. I used to joke about her possibly hiding evidence of UFOs and little green men in there. I just didn’t get what all the secrecy was for.