For a second, everything is gone.

  I feel nothing.

  Finally, the full oblivion I’ve craved for fourteen months.

  Then I come to, as startled as someone yanked back to life by CPR. My body spasms as I breathe in, then out. My eyes blink open to a sky made cotton candy pink by sunrise. Beside me, Len sits up.

  Only it’s no longer Len.

  It’s Katherine Royce.

  I know because she gives me the same wide-eyed look of terror I saw when she came back to life the day we first met.

  “What just happened?” she says, her voice unmistakably her own again.

  “He’s out of you,” I say.

  It’s clear Katherine knows enough about the situation to understand my meaning. Touching her face, her throat, her lips, she says, “Are you sure?”

  I am. Len is inside me now. I feel him there, as invasive as a virus. I might look fine on the outside, but inside I’m no longer fully myself.

  I’m changing.

  Quickly.

  “Here’s what I need you to do.” I talk fast, afraid I won’t have control over my voice for much longer. Already Len is winding his way through my system. He’s done this before. He now knows where to go and what to control. “Take the boat to Boone’s place. Eli will be there. Tell them you got lost in the woods. Boone might not believe you, but Eli will help convince him. The story is you and Tom got into a fight, you went for a hike and got lost, although Tom thought you’d left him.”

  I let out a cough as ragged as sandpaper.

  “Are you okay?” Katherine says.

  “I’m fine.” I notice the change in my voice. It’s me, but different. Like a recording that’s been slightly slowed. “Tom is in the Fitzgeralds’ basement. While I don’t know for sure if he’ll go along with your story, I think he will. Now let me untie you.”

  It takes a frightening amount of effort to unknot the rope around Katherine’s wrists. Len’s starting to fight me. My hands are awkward and numb, and sudden random thoughts push into my brain.

  Don’t do this, Cee.

  Please don’t.

  I manage to loosen the rope enough for Katherine to do the rest. As she slides her hands from the restraints, I set to work creating my own. It’s not easy. Not with Len getting louder.

  Don’t, Cee.

  You promised.

  My vision has blurred and my depth perception is off.

  It feels, I realize, like I’m drunk.

  Only this has nothing to do with alcohol. It’s all Len.

  With him fighting my every move, it takes me three tries to grasp the rope attached to the anchor. Knotting it around my ankle takes even longer.

  “Remember—” I need to pause. Forcing out that single word has left me breathless. “Tell them you got lost. That you don’t know what happened to me.”

  “Wait,” Katherine says. “What’s going to happen to you?”

  “I’ll be the one missing.”

  I pick up the anchor and, before Katherine—or Len—can try to stop me, leap into the chilly depths of Lake Greene.

  Water surrounds me.

  Cold. Churning. Dark.

  So dark.

  As dark as death as I hurtle to the lake’s floor. I’d been foolish to think my descent would be gentle—a slow, inexorable drop akin to drifting off into permanent sleep. In truth, it’s chaos. I twist through the black water, the anchor still hugged to my chest. Within seconds I hit bottom, the centuries of sediment collected there doing nothing to lessen the impact.

  I land on my side in an eruption of silt, and the anchor jolts from my arms. I grasp for it, blind in the dark, dirty depths as my body starts to rise. Already, it wants air, and I have to fight to keep my arms from flailing, my legs from kicking.

  They try anyway.

  Rather, Len tries.

  His presence is like a fever, both chilly and hot, coursing through my limbs, moving them against my will. I spin in the darkness, not knowing if I’m floating up or sinking down. Still blind and fumbling, my hand finds the rope stretching between my ankle and the anchor.

  I grab on to it even as Len tries to pry my fingers away, his seething voice loud in my head.

  Let go, Cee.

  Don’t make me stay down here, you fucking bitch.

  I keep hold of the rope, using it to pull myself back toward the lake bed. When I reach the end of the rope, I grab the anchor, hoist it to my chest, and roll onto my back. It feels inevitable now that I’m here.

  It feels right.

  In the same place where Megan Keene, Toni Burnett, and Sue Ellen Stryker were laid to rest.

  My limbs have turned numb, although I don’t know if it’s from fear or cold or Len taking over. He remains so desperate to get to the surface. My body jerks uncontrollably against the lake floor. All his doing.

  But it’s no use.

  This time I’m stronger.

  Because I’m giving Len exactly what he wanted back when he was alive.

  It’ll be just the two of us.

  Staying here forever.

  It isn’t long before Len gives up. He has to, now that this body we share is winding down. My heartbeat slows. My thoughts fade.

  Then, when every bit of strength has left me, I open my mouth and let the dark water pour in.

  Movement.

  In the darkness.

  I sense it on the distant edge of my consciousness. Two bits of motion going in separate directions. Something approaching while something else slithers away.

  The motion that’s stayed has moved to my ankle, the touch feathery as it unwinds the rope knotted there.

  Then I’m lifted.

  Up, up, up.

  Soon I’m breaking the surface and my lungs start working overtime, somehow doing two things at once. Hacking out water while gulping down air. It goes on like this. Out, in, out, in. When it’s over, there’s no more water, only sweet, blessed air.

  I feel more movement now. Something being slipped over my shoulders and tightened around my chest until I’m floating.

  I open my eyes to a sky that’s dazzlingly pink.

  My eyes.

  Not his.

  My body, containing only my thoughts, my heart, my soul.

  Len is gone.

  I know it the same way a sick person can tell their fever has broken.

  Len has poured himself from one vessel—me—into another.

  Lake Greene.

  The place he came from and where he’ll hopefully remain.

  I turn away from the sky to the person swimming beside me. Katherine beams, her smile brighter and more beautiful than any picture she’s ever been in.

  “Don’t freak out,” she says. “But I think you almost drowned.”

  What are we going to tell people?” Tom says to Katherine. “I tried to keep it a secret, but word got out you were missing. The police were involved.”

  He looks my way, his gaze not quite accusatory but sharp enough to know he’s still annoyed, despite the fact that Katherine’s only back—literally her old self—because of me. He made that clear when we returned to the Fitzgeralds’ basement. At first, Tom looked ready to kill us both. But once Katherine started reciting bits of knowledge only she could know, he became overjoyed at her presence. Less so with mine.

  The three of us now sit with Eli in the Royce living room. Tom and Katherine are both freshly showered and changed. I’m in a set of Versace athleisure wear borrowed from Katherine that’s as comfortable as it is ridiculous.

  “We tell them something as close to the truth as possible,” I say. “You two fought.”

  Katherine turns to her husband, surprised. “We did?”

  “You decked me.” Tom leans in to give her a good look at the still-fading bruise under his eye. “Well, he did.”

  Len’s name hasn’t been uttered once since Katherine and I returned. I suspect it makes them uncomfortable acknowledging the person who, for all intents and purposes, possessed her.

  I’m fine with that. I never need to hear his name again.

  “The police will believe that, after the fight, Katherine left in a huff,” I say. “She went for a long hike in the mountains, leaving everything behind.”

  “And she got lost in the woods,” Tom says.

  I reply with a nod. “You thought she left you, which is why you never reported her missing and posted that photo to Instagram. You were too embarrassed to admit your marriage was falling apart.”

  Katherine touches the bruise on her husband’s face. “Poor Tom. This must have been so hard on you.”

  “I thought you were lost forever,” he says with a quiver in his voice and tears in his eyes. “I had no idea how to bring you back.”

  “I tried,” Katherine says. “I tried so hard to keep it from happening.”

  “So you knew what was going on?” Eli says.

  “Sort of.” Katherine hugs herself, as if chilled by the memory. “Obviously, there were the blackouts. One minute I was fine, the next I was waking up somewhere with no memory of how I got there. Then there was this weird sixth sense. I knew things I had no reason for knowing. Like your phone number, Casey. Or those binoculars on your porch. I never owned a pair. I was never into birding. But when I saw them, I suddenly had these memories of buying them, of holding them in my hands, of watching the trees across the lake right from that porch. And then they went away.”

  I’m chilled myself as Katherine tells us what it felt like to have someone else slowly take control. Even though I, too, experienced it, I at least knew what was happening. For Katherine, it seemed like she was losing her mind.

  “I didn’t fully figure out what was going on until the night I looked it up online. I felt stupid Googling articles about haunted lakes and ghosts in mirrors. But then I found stories about other people who had experienced the same thing I was going through. Strange memories of things they never experienced and sudden weakness and this sense that they were slowly losing control. That’s when I knew what was happening.”

  It also turned out to be a moment I witnessed from the other side of the lake. Watching Katherine intently scan the computer, her shock writ large on her face.

  “You should have told me,” Tom says.

  “You would have thought I was crazy. Which is exactly how I felt. So I kissed you on the cheek and suggested we go back to bed. I know it sounds foolish, but I hoped it was temporary. Like I would go to sleep and wake up in the morning feeling like my old self.”

  “Instead, the opposite happened,” Eli cuts in.

  “Yes,” Katherine says with a grim nod. “The last thing I remember is Tom going back to bed and me going into the bathroom. I stared into the mirror, panicking as my reflection began to blur. Everything went out of focus. Then there was nothing but darkness. I have no memories after that besides waking up in the boat this morning. But the second I came to, I knew it was over and that he was gone. Thanks to you, Casey. It’s like I was lost and you found me.”

  “Which is what we’ll tell the police,” I say. “I couldn’t sleep, went out in the boat to see if there was any storm damage to the shore, and saw you stumbling out of the woods in a daze.”

  All in all, it’s a good story. Not too far out of the realm of possibility, when ignoring the whole being-possessed-by-a-drowned-man thing. I think people will believe it.

  Even Wilma.

  With our story straight, I get ready to go to my house across the lake. I glimpse it through the giant windows of the Royces’ living room, looking as warm and inviting as a nest. One I want to return to as soon as possible.

  Before leaving, Tom shakes my hand and says, “I understand why you did what you did. That doesn’t mean I liked being locked in that basement for twelve hours. Or having the police after me.”

  “Or being hit with a table leg?” I say, cringing at how unhinged I must have seemed to him at the time.

  “Especially that.” Tom’s pissed-off look softens, as does his voice. “But it was all worth it because you brought Katherine back to me. So, thank you.”

  “You’re forgetting that Katherine also brought me back,” I say. “I think that makes us even.”

  Tom stays behind as Eli, Katherine, and I step onto the patio. Outside, the day is bright with promise. With the sun on my face and a breeze brushing my still-damp hair, I can’t quite believe that, two hours earlier, I was at the bottom of the lake, ready to remain there.

  I don’t regret making that choice.

  But someone else made a different choice. Katherine decided that I should live, and who am I to disagree? Especially when there’s still unfinished business to take care of.

  It’s Eli, of course, who reminds me of that. Before walking to his house next door, he places a folded handkerchief in my hands. “You know what to do with this more than me,” he says. “I hope it doesn’t get you into too much trouble.”

  “It very well could,” I say. “But I’m ready to deal with the consequences.”

  Eli departs with a hug, leaving me and Katherine alone to stroll to the dock and my boat tied to the end of it. She loops her arm through mine and makes sure our shoulders bump—so touchy-feely even without Len’s influence.

  “I need to tell you something,” she says. “Those memories that I talked about? The ones that weren’t mine but I had them anyway? I got some of them before he took over. Others arrived while I was unconscious and he was completely in control. But all of them are still there.”

  My pace quickens. I don’t want to know what Len remembered.

  “You made him very happy, Casey. I know that’s probably not what you want to hear, but it’s true. He truly did love you, and what he did—that had nothing to do with you. You can’t blame yourself for any of it. He would have done it no matter what. In fact, I got the sense your presence in his life kept him from trying earlier. He thought he had too much to lose.”

  “Yet he still went ahead and did it anyway,” I say.

  Katherine stops walking and turns me until we’re face-to-face. “Which is why I don’t judge you for what you did to him.”

  Of course she knows. Len is as imprinted on Katherine as a tattoo. God help her.

  “I probably would have done the same thing,” she says. “It’s easy to talk about justice and responsibility and taking matters into your own hands when it’s not happening to you. But this did happen to you, Casey. And you did what a lot of women would have done in your shoes.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t matter to the police.”

  “Maybe not,” Katherine says. “But I don’t plan on telling them anything about it. This will stay just between us.”

  I desperately wish it could, but this goes beyond me and Katherine. There are others to consider, including the friends and families of three women still submerged in the frigid darkness of Lake Greene. They’re at the forefront of my thoughts as I climb into the boat and make my way across the water. I keep a grip on my phone, still in its Ziploc bag, ready to call Wilma Anson as soon as I get back to the house.

  The person standing on my dock delays that plan a bit.

  “Hey,” Boone says, giving me a wary wave as I cut the motor and bring the boat into the dock.

  “Hey yourself.”

  I let Boone tie up the boat because, one, he seems eager to do it and, two, I’m exhausted. Definitely far too tired to be talking to him at the moment, although it’s clear that can’t be avoided.

  “Eli told me you found Katherine,” he says, shooting a glance across the water. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine.”

  I give him an abridged version of the official story as we walk from the dock to the porch. I collapse into a rocking chair. Boone remains standing.

  “I’m relieved to hear that she’s safe and sound,” he says. “Good for her. And good for Tom.”

  He stops talking after that, leaving me to pick up the slack. “Was that why you came by?”

  “Yes. And also to tell you that I’m leaving the lake. I’ve done all the work I can do at the Mitchell place, so I found a nice studio apartment a few towns over. Now you no longer need to worry thinking there’s a murderer living next door.”

  While Boone’s voice retains a hint of the anger I heard the last time we talked, another mood rides on his words. It sounds like sadness.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t completely honest. But it should be clear to you by now that I had nothing to do with what happened to Katherine or those other missing girls,” Boone says, reminding me that he still knows nothing about Len’s crime—or how I made him pay for them.

  Twice.

  “As for what happened to my wife,” Boone says, “yes, I was investigated after her death. And, yes, there was a time when people thought I had killed her. There was no proof of that, but there also wasn’t any proof that I hadn’t. At least, proof that I was willing to show people.”

  I look up at him, surprised and suddenly insatiably curious.

  “There was more to it than what you told the police?”

  “My wife didn’t fall down the stairs by accident.” Boone stops, takes a breath. “She killed herself.”

  I flinch, shocked.

  “I know because she left a note telling me she was sorry and that she had been unhappy for a long time—something I thought I knew but didn’t. Not really. She had been more than unhappy. She’d been plunged into darkness, and I blame myself for never noticing how bad it was until it was too late.”

  Boone finally sits.

  “I called Wilma as soon as I found the suicide note. She came over, read it, and told me I needed to go public with it. By then we both knew I looked suspicious. It was obvious. But I still couldn’t do it. That kind of news would have destroyed her family. I decided that thinking it was an accident would be easier for them to deal with than knowing she’d taken her own life. They, like me, would have blamed themselves for not noticing how much pain she was in and failing to get her the help she needed. I wanted to spare them all of that. And I didn’t want people judging Maria for what she did to herself. Or, worse, letting that taint their memories of her. I wanted to shield everyone from the same guilt and pain I was going through. Wilma grudgingly agreed, and together we burned the note.”