The nursery was dark except for the rain, and Dante Moretti had his hand inside his jacket, fingers curled around the grip, because a stranger had just switched off the lights in a room full of his screaming daughters. Every psychologist in three countries had told him the same thing: light chases the monsters. This girl — cheap shoes, no references, hired out of pure desperation — had done the opposite, and now the screaming had stopped, and that was worse. Then she began to hum. A low, broken melody, a folk song from a village above Palermo. A song his wife used to sing to her belly before the twins were born. A song Isabella died before she could teach them. Dante's blood went cold. He crossed the room, took the girl's arm, and asked her the only question that mattered — and her answer would either save his children or bury them all.

The rain came down on Chicago like it had a grudge.

It hammered the bulletproof glass of the penthouse and slid in sheets down the black skyline, and inside the Moretti estate the storm was worse, because the storm had a voice. It came up the marble hallway at eight o'clock exactly, the way it always did. Not crying. Not fussing. Screaming — the primal, ripping kind that made grown men in the hallway check their weapons.

Mia and Bella were four years old. They had not slept a full night since the car bomb took their mother three years ago.

Dante Moretti stood at the window and did not turn around.

Sir. Arthur, the butler, spoke from the doorway. The only staff member who had lasted more than a month. She's here.

The new one.

Sarah Jenkins. She's young.

I don't care if she's twelve or eighty. Dante's reflection watched him from the glass. Does she need money?

Desperately, sir. Her brother owes the Kowalski syndicate forty thousand. Friday is the deadline.

Good. Dante turned. The shadows under his eyes made him look fifty; he was thirty-two. Send her up. Tell the guards to stay outside the door. If she harms a hair on their heads, she doesn't leave the room.

Sarah Jenkins stood in the foyer with her canvas bag against her chest. The chandelier above her had cost more than every house on her block combined. She was not a nanny. She had been a waitress two days ago, until she spilled coffee on a man who owned half of Wicker Park. But when the agency mentioned the Moretti job — the one nobody wanted, the devil's house, the monster children — she had begged for it. Five thousand a week. Toby would keep his fingers.

Arthur walked her up the grand staircase. The screams got louder with every step.

Do not speak to Mr. Moretti unless he speaks to you, Arthur said. Do not touch anything valuable. And above all— He paused. He looked at her with something close to pity. Do not expect to sleep.

The nursery door opened onto a battlefield. Pillows gutted, feathers drifting like snow. Porcelain dolls smashed against the wall. In the middle of it, two identical girls with black wild curls stood screaming — one hurling what was left of her toys at a maid cowering in the corner, the other tearing at her own hair as if she wanted to climb out of her own skin.

Dante filled the doorway. He didn't move toward them. He had learned long ago that his hands made it worse. They wanted their mother. He was only the man who had failed to save her.

You have ten minutes, he said, not looking at Sarah. If they aren't calm, you're fired.

Sarah stepped over the broken porcelain. She didn't shout. She didn't offer candy. She walked to the window, pulled the heavy curtains aside — the storm, the city, the rain — and did the one thing nobody had ever dared.

She turned off the lights.

What are you doing? Dante roared, hand already inside his jacket.

They're afraid of the dark, she said.

No.

Her voice shook, but it held. She didn't look at him. She looked at the girls, whose screams had snagged into confused whimpers.

They aren't afraid of the dark, Mr. Moretti. They're afraid of what they can see.

The room went black except for the wet gray light off the lake. The twins went silent. Only breathing.