“You’re asking me to commit a crime, Celeste.”

The voice came from the shadows of the weeping willow, low and jagged, like broken glass dragged over velvet. Lucian Aldridge didn’t move from the stone bench where he sat, his figure nearly swallowed by the pre-dawn gloom of the old mansion’s garden.

Celeste stood ten paces away, her breath hitching in the chilled air. She was a ghost of herself—dressed in a nondescript oversized hoodie, her hair tucked under a baseball cap, and oversized glasses hanging from the collar of her shirt. She had slipped past the gates of the estate she once called a prison, navigated the blind spots of...