We move fast, making light work of scaling the stairs, getting through the house and down into the secret passage to the underground via the library nook that used to be Colton’s and I’s bedroom. Just seeing this room, free of our things and our bed, almost breaks me in two. My soul throbbing with the loss of his presence and the knowing I won’t be able to see or touch him until we do something about this curse.

I feel like he’s gone somehow, that I’ve lost him to something I don’t know how to fight and this room where we began, where he first marked me, stabs deep...