the room, and my gaze snagged against something on the mantel. Small shapes, arranged haphazardly. I had to draw close in the dim light before I could be sure what they were.
They were birds. Two dozen, maybe, none of them with a wingspan bigger than my palm, carved out of pale wood, their throats painted with a single red patch. Terns. Some had their wings stretched to the sky, others pointing straight up, still others tucked neatly at their sides. I reached out, running one tentative finger along the proud crown of one bird’s head. Like my mother’s and Abby’s, they were simple, but something in the pose of each one gave it a spark of life. No two were exactly the same.
There was only one place left to explore. I crossed to the closed door. It wasn’t latched, and I pushed it lightly with my fingertips. It swung inward with only the whisper of a creak.
It was another bedroom, and it wasn’t empty. A man stood with his back to me—a massive man, shirtless, the whole of his back covered in a blue-black tattoo: a snarling bear, claws raised to swipe and rend. He had a shirt in his hand, clearly in the middle of changing. A floorboard creaked under my foot, and he turned.
And then I screamed. It was him. Mikhail.
I jerked back, hitting the stone mantel. One of the wooden birds clattered to the ground. Mikhail held up those giant hands. “Ne boysya,” he said. “It’s okay.”
I looked at him. Really looked at him.
This wasn’t the man who had attacked me. He looked nearly the same—graying, curly hair, thick limbs, bristling beard. But his eye—the man who’d attacked me had two bright, angry eyes. Mikhail had only one clear eye, the other scarred over, pale and sightless. The way the other man had held himself, it was like he was all body, all meat and momentum. This man hunched, like he was used to intimidating people by his sheer size and he didn’t like it.
“Please,” he said. His accent was thick, his voice pleading. “I won’t hurt you.”
“Okay,” I said. It wasn’t much, but he looked relieved, almost like he was the one who’d had cause to be afraid. He lurched, and I startled, but he only grabbed one of the kitchen chairs and pushed it toward me.
“Please, sit. You are tired,” he said.
I didn’t move. “What’s out there? What were those things?”
“They are—” He gestured, swiping his hand in the air over his face. “Gosti. The Visitors. Not usually so dangerous in the daytime, but . . .” He shrugged. “Not always.”
“I saw you,” I said. “You attacked me.”
He shook his head. “No. That was not me. They look like us, but they are hollow.”
“He—” I put a hand to my throat. It was tender where he’d choked me. I flinched at even the light brush of my fingers across it. I’d been lucky.
“Prosti menya,” he said. I stared at him blankly, too weary to ask what it meant. He let out a sigh and picked up his shirt from where it had fallen, pulling it on.
“How did I get here?” I asked instead.
“I found you. In the water,” he said. “Just there.” He pointed toward the back wall of the cabin, which faced the sea.
I must have lost consciousness when I fell. I was lucky I hadn’t drowned.
A memory shimmered below the surface of my mind like a pale fish beneath the water—a hand in mine, walking down toward a rocky beach. But not the same beach. Not the same hand—or was it? I shook my head to clear it. “What is going on here?” I asked, more plaintively than I meant to. “Who are you? What was that place? What are those things?”
He stopped me, holding up his hand. “This is no way to talk. I will make tea. You sit, rest. Then ask your questions.” He gestured to the small kitchen table. I considered. He wasn’t the man who’d attacked me, but they shared the same face, and the most primal part of me refused to let go of my fear. And even if that had not been true, he was a strange man and he’d taken me here, alone and vulnerable.
A glass lantern hung from the wall on a hook, the smudges on the interior suggesting it wasn’t just decorative. I stared at the miniaturized reflection in its surface.
The man in the reflection wasn’t Mikhail. It was the other one. He had