Prologue

There's a version of you that only comes out after dark.

Most people go their whole lives without meeting it. They fall asleep believing the person in the mirror is the only one who lives there.

I used to believe that too. I don't remember when I stopped.

Three years ago a lake took me under for four minutes. I know that because someone told me, later, in a hospital room that smelled like rubbing alcohol and cheap coffee — four minutes, no pulse, and then, somehow, me again, gasping on a stretcher like my body had made a decision without asking the rest of me first.

I don't remember the four minutes. I've stopped trying to.

What I do remember is smaller, and worse.

Waking up in places I didn't fall asleep in.

Finding blood under my nails and no story to explain it. A gap in my evening shaped exactly like a person — my height, my weight, wearing my clothes, doing God knows what with my hands.

I used to think I was losing time.

Now I think something's been borrowing it.

They'll tell you this is a story about a killer.

Maybe it is. I've stopped being sure there's a clean word for what I am, and I've stopped trusting the people who think there's an easy one.

Here's the only thing I'm sure of, most nights, lying awake and listening to my own house creak like it's holding its breath along with me:

They think there are two of us in here.

I'm not convinced there ever were...

A Few People You Should Know Before This Starts..

Mira Voss — twenty-seven. Works at a secondhand bookstore, keeps to herself, waters a dying fern out of guilt more than hope. Three years ago she drowned for four minutes and came back different. She's built her whole life around small rules — lock the door, check the door, don't trust comfortable — because rules are the only thing standing between her and the hours she can't account for.

Detective Sarah Okafor — sharp, tired, six months into a case that keeps refusing to make sense on paper. She doesn't believe in things she can't put in a report. She's about to meet something that won't fit in one.

Father Damien Cruz — a priest carrying a failure he's never said out loud to another living person. He's seen the shape of this before. He didn't win, last time.

Him — you'll meet him soon. Mira doesn't know yet what she is to him, or what he's about to become to her. Neither does he. That might be the most dangerous thing about him.