The damage to Clio’s apartment is minimal, but she has to move into a hotel for now. She realizes she could ditch the home renovation project, but she wants to go back. Clio knew, years ago, that she was fundamentally different from her sisters: They play it safe, while she craves danger and excitement. When she gets to 6 Edgewood, she finds the copy of her mother’s book that she ordered. As she cleans the kitchen, she notices a huge shadow behind her. Her new book has been moved and annotated, this time by the demon.

The page to which she opens describes the process Alex went through to get a second opinion on the house. When one investigator came, he told Alex that demons don’t possess places, but people. In the margins, she finds the words, “Wear any skin. Want house skin” (199). The man said that the entity was likely a poltergeist and gave Alex his card. She called a married couple from Father Bernard’s list, and he filmed as the wife started retching; they interviewed Clio about the entity despite agreeing not to speak to the girls. James’s lawyers got hold of the footage and used it against Alex in court. Eventually, Clio told Alex that James wanted the girls to live with him, but the entity in the house wanted them to stay. She said that she’s “its favorite.”

Clio calls Austin, and they go out to eat. She listens while he talks about his mother’s illness, his dad’s death, and his student loans. She realizes that he’s invested in their relationship, but she wishes it could stay casual. Clio associates a thin gold chain like Austin’s with a certain type of guy: The casual-sex-no-commitment kind.

She tells him about the differences between her few memories and the book, and she considers telling him that the house really is haunted, but she decides against this. Clio sleeps at his house and goes home the next morning. She remembers catching her mother dancing on the deck once, smoking and drinking. She recalls the pink lighter Alex had, then looks at the scar on her arm.

Clio calls Helen and asks if she knows where the burn came from; Helen cautions Clio about looking into the past. Helen reaffirms her hate for James and how much Alex loved the girls. Helen says that Daphne and Leda told James that they saw Alexandra burn Clio, but Alex had no idea how Clio got the burn.

Daphne and Leda continue to ignore Clio’s calls, so she keeps reading. Alexandra writes about calling Mariella, a Connecticut psychic, who described the entity as “rather … egocentric,” displaying a level of understanding no one had yet. The entity, apparently, annotated this description, saying, “The selfless starve” and “Pick my teeth with their bones” (216), along with a smiley face. A storm arrived, and Alex was awoken by a massive shadow in the doorway; she saw its horrific, nightmarish face in the lightning. Where she described her attempts not to look, the creature drew frowny faces in the margin. The next morning, she brought up the storm to the girls, but outside was dry. Clio orders a pizza and keeps reading.

In the book, Mariella arrived with Ruth, a clairvoyant; Jed, a paranormal technician with expertise in EMF and EVPs; and Roy, a demonologist and Mariella’s nephew. They were all kind and affirming; they felt like allies to Alexandra because they took her seriously. After investigating, they said she did have a demon living in her attic, and it was attached to Clio.

Clio gets a text from Daphne: She is calling a sisters’ meeting on Saturday in Manhattan.

Impatient, Clio skips ahead to the exorcism. Alex writes that, although James agreed to take the girls that weekend, he claimed he never did. She believes he set her up for failure. That Saturday, she told the girls that a team was coming over to make the haunting stop. Clio argued, saying that the entity was there first. She ran to her room, and Alex followed, still holding the knife she’d been using to cut up fruit. She could hear Clio laughing, and then the demon started laughing too. Alex snapped, screaming at it, and plunged the knife into the door. She yelled at the demon, claiming she would “bleed [it] out” before she let it take her daughter (228). At some point, she realized everything had gone quiet, and she turned to see Daphne and Leda, terrified. They ran off, but Clio came out to comfort her mother. Then she whispered that Alex was going to die there.

Clio recalls Alex screaming and banging on the door, but the rest is a blur. Alex did, in fact, die there. Clio goes back to reading. Clio realizes that, when James burned her book, that was the second time he separated her from her mother and drove a family member into a house possessed. Alexandra writes that she waited for Father Bernard and the team, thinking that this dynamic in her haunted home was so familiar to her that she wasn’t sure who she’d be without it. Ruth set the girls up on the deck with coloring supplies, snacks, and games.

The group began the exorcism, but Clio came back inside, saying it didn’t matter where she was. Ruth began convulsing and retching while Father Bernard prayed and Roy chanted in Latin. Alex sobbed, screaming at the demon to get out, and something suddenly dragged her from the house, right through the now-open front door. The demon annotated this event, claiming, “My house skin mine” (237). Alex struggled back inside, and blood was pouring from Jed’s ears. Roy told Ruth not to let “it” in, but it was too late. She bashed her face against the table repeatedly and then ripped out her own eyes. They called an ambulance while the girls cried outside on the deck. Later, Clio told her mother that she should have left the entity alone. She also disclosed that she, too, would die in this house.

Helen calls Clio, and Clio insists that Alex made it all up: No one clawed out their eyes, no ambulance came. Helen refuses to argue. Clio insists that if Alex missed them so much, all she had to do was get sober, but Helen says it’s not that simple. James convinced Alex that she was a terrible mother, according to Helen. Clio is frustrated that everyone blames someone else, and no one will tell her the truth. Helen says Clio doesn’t want the truth; she just wants a version she can live with. Helen doesn’t know why Alex was in the house when she died, but she asks Clio why she’s in the house now.

Clio goes back to the city for a few days and stays with friends. She misses Austin, but she’s afraid that if she returns now, she’ll tell him the truth about the house.

She goes to meet her sisters at the restaurant. Daphne tells Clio not to be difficult, but Leda says she can’t help it. Leda says she thinks Clio is incapable of empathy and has a personality disorder. Clio is appalled, but she asks about their memory of Alex burning her. Leda says the environment was bad for Clio, that she was acting out because of Alex, but the truth is that Leda and Daphne saw Clio burn herself. At the time, Clio said it didn’t hurt, just like the demon said it wouldn’t. They blamed Alex for brainwashing Clio, and when they told James, he said they had to help him get them all away from their mother.

Clio tells them that the house is haunted, and Daphne panics. Leda shakes her head, muttering that Clio is just like Alex.

Clio goes back to the house. When James arrives, she accuses him and her sisters of lying to her. She says she’s the only one telling the truth, and yet no one believes her. He says he’s coming to get her, and she tells him not to. After he leaves, Clio lights a cigarette and takes a swig from the vodka bottle. When Austin arrives, she’s standoffish. She picks a fight, a little drunk, and tells him they should end things. He says something that hurts her, and she criticizes his gold chain; he says it belonged to his father.

Clio watches Austin walk away. When she goes back inside the house, the door slams behind her. She goes back to reading. Alex writes that Roy told Alex that the demon lived there, on the land, even before the house was built. He says she may not even be able to sell the house if the demon doesn’t want her to leave. Clio sees a word scrawled across the page: “HOME.” She grabs her phone and sees that she’s posted a couple of pictures on her socials: They show the vodka, her childhood drawings, the cigarettes, the opening to the attic, and even a blurry, bloodshot selfie. She thinks maybe she’s just killed her career.

Clio hears a thud. She says, “hello,” and there’s another thud. The floorboards creak, and she feels something hit the back of her head: It’s the pink lighter. “Hello,” an “incomprehensibly foul” voice replies. She thinks she may have ruined her life, and it occurs to her that she should light herself on fire. The foul voice tells her it won’t feel like anything. She flicks the lighter and holds the flame to her scar; she doesn’t feel it, but the smell stops her.

Clio throws the lighter across the room, and the creature laughs. It runs into one of the bedrooms, and Clio decides it’s time to reach out to the only person who will believe her: Roy.