“Vivian, please. Don’t let them take the light.”

The voice didn’t belong to the titan of industry I’d seen in the magazines, or the brooding beast who stalked these hallways in the dark. It was the sound of a boy drowning.

I stood frozen in the corridor of the Aldridge estate, my fingers curling into the velvet of my robe. Outside, the sky over Westchester had been torn open by a mid-Atlantic gale. Thunder rumbled with a tectonic force, shaking the very foundation of the mansion. Every crack of lightning that illuminated the tall, arched windows felt like a strobe light to a nightmare.

“Ms. Harper. Step away from the...