"Bram," Isadora said gently. "I need you to stay here. Lock the door behind us — the real lock, not the one that apparently does nothing — and do not open it for anyone except me or Mrs. Hargrove. Do you understand?"
"She walked through the wall, Izzy."
"I know."
"A lock will not stop someone who walks through walls."
"No. But it will make me feel better, and right now that is reason enough. Can you do that for me?"
He nodded. Slowly. His chin still trembling.
Isadora held her hand out to Elenora. "Come with me."
Her mother looked at the offered hand. Looked at it the way a starving person looks at bread — with desperate, aching want and the absolute certainty that they do not deserve it.
She did not take it.
She walked past Isadora and into the corridor, and Isadora followed, and behind them, Bram slid off the bed and locked the door with shaking hands, and the click of the bolt echoed through the stone hallway like the closing of a coffin lid.
