The Starlight household was draped in a heavy, unnatural stillness when they returned the kind of profound, aching silence that only exists in homes where the inhabitants have been suspended in a state of perpetual, anxious waiting. It wasn't the peaceful quiet of sleep but the taut, vibrating stillness of people who had settled into a defensive posture, their nerves stretched thin by the uncertainty of the hour.
Lily sat on the main sofa in the sitting room, a book resting open in her lap. To a casual observer, she was reading; to anyone who knew her, it was a lie.
Her eyes hadn't moved across the page in twenty minutes. Beside the window, Diana sat motionless in a high-backed chair, her gaze fixed not on the moonlight or the view, but on the dark, empty street outside, as if she were watching for a ghost to emerge from the shadows.
The moment the heavy front door groaned on its hinges, the atmosphere in the room shifted.
