Chapter 1

The first thing I saw was my wife's hand clamped over my daughter's mouth.

Priscilla had Bea backed against the dining room wall, her palm sealed tight over Bea's lips, her other arm locked around Bea's chest. Bea was six, small for her age, and she fought like a cat in a sack-twisting, kicking, her little fingers scrabbling at Priscilla's wrist. Her eyes were fixed on the antique dumbwaiter set into the wainscoting, and she was pointing at it with a desperation that turned my stomach to ice.

"Stop it, Bea," Priscilla hissed. "Stop it right now."

I stood in the doorway from the kitchen, a tray of clean glasses still in my hands. The rain hammered the windows in sheets, and the chandelier swayed with a draft I couldn't feel. Thunder rolled somewhere down the river, and the glass in my hands trembled.

"Let her go," I said.

Priscilla's head snapped toward me. Her auburn hair had come loose from its pin, and her nurse's watch glinted on her wrist. For one second-just one-her face showed something I had never seen before. Not guilt. Not anger. Terror.

Then it was gone, folded away behind the calm smile she used on difficult guests.

"Miles. She was trying to climb into the dumbwaiter again. I told you she's been doing this."

Bea wrenched free the moment Priscilla's grip loosened. She didn't run to me. She ran to the wall, her small hands slapping against the painted panel that covered the old shaft.

"Daddy," she gasped. "Daddy, she's hungry. She's been hungry for so long."

Priscilla moved fast-faster than a woman who'd just finished a twelve-hour shift managing an inn should have been able to move. She caught Bea by the shoulder and pulled her back, hard enough that Bea stumbled.

"Priscilla." I set the tray down on the sideboard. The glasses rang against each other. "What is she talking about?"

"Nothing. She's overtired. She's been having nightmares, and now she's-"

"I'm not tired!" Bea's voice cracked. She pointed at the dumbwaiter again, her arm shaking. "She sings to me, Daddy. She sings the river song. Mommy's river song."

The room went very quiet. The rain kept coming, and the chandelier kept swaying, but everything else in the Holloway House dining room seemed to stop.

The river song. Cora's lullaby. The one she used to hum while she rocked Bea to sleep, back when Bea was two and the inn was young and I still believed my life could hold its shape. Cora had been gone six years. Drowned in a kayaking accident on the Mississippi, her boat found, her body never recovered. I had mourned her. I had buried an empty coffin in the Natchez City Cemetery. I had stood in this very room and told Bea, who was too young to understand, that Mommy had gone to be with the river.

"Miles." Priscilla's voice had gone thin. "She doesn't know what she's saying."

But Bea did know. Bea had been humming something under her breath for weeks-a tune I had caught in fragments, a melody that had haunted the edges of my sleep. I had told myself it was a song from preschool, or something Priscilla sang to her. I had told myself a lot of things.

I walked to the dumbwaiter. It was an original feature of the house, built in 1883 when this had been a riverboat captain's home. The panel was painted the same cream color as the wainscoting, its seams caulked and sanded smooth. I had renovated this room myself four years ago and never noticed anything wrong.

Bea had noticed. Bea had been trying to tell me.

I ran my fingers along the panel's edge. The paint was fresh there-tacky, as if it had been reapplied recently. And there, in the narrow gap between panel and frame, I saw a trace of something that didn't belong. A smear of grease, dark and faintly iridescent.

"Priscilla," I said without turning around. "Where's the crowbar?"

She didn't answer. I heard her take a step toward me, then stop. When I glanced back, she was standing between Bea and the wall, her hands clasped in front of her, her knuckles white.

"Don't," she said.

It wasn't an order. It was a plea, so raw and broken that I almost stopped. But Bea was crying now, silent tears streaming down her cheeks, and she was still pointing at the wall.

I grabbed the crowbar from the toolbox I kept in the sideboard, beneath the silverware. I wedged the flat end into the seam and leaned my weight against it.

The first attempt failed. The panel didn't give. The crowbar slipped, scraping paint, and I nearly went sprawling.

"Miles, please-"

I reset the crowbar and drove it in again. This time I heard the wood crack, a wet, sickening sound like a bone breaking. Plaster dust cascaded down in a fine gray rain. The panel split, and I pulled it away in two pieces.

Behind it was not a dumbwaiter shaft.

Behind it was a narrow steel door, and the latch had been painted over.

For a long moment, none of us moved. The dust hung in the air, turning in the chandelier light. The steel door was old but solid, and on the floor of the shaft, I saw what Bea had been trying to tell me-fresh food wrappers, a child's hair ribbon, a plastic cup with water still in it.

The humming started then.

It came from behind the steel door, faint and breathy, a woman's voice humming a lullaby I had not heard in six years. Cora's lullaby. The one she used to sing to Bea when the river fog rolled in and the house creaked with old wood.

The humming stopped.

Three soft taps answered from behind the door. Knock. Knock. Knock.

My hand froze on the crowbar. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. Bea was clutching my leg, her small body shaking, and Priscilla had gone as pale as the plaster dust on her cardigan.

"Mommy's home," Bea whispered.

The brass handle of the steel door turned from the inside.