Chapter 3

I screamed.

Adam rushed over immediately. He pulled me up from the floor where I'd collapsed and wrapped his arms around me.

"Honey, it's okay. You're okay."

Once I'd calmed down, he asked me what happened. I pointed toward the doorway. "The cat and dog were standing right there, staring at me."

Adam frowned. "You mean Whiskers and Sunny? They've been in their crate the whole time."

When I didn't believe him, he led me back to the crate. Sure enough, Whiskers and Sunny were lying inside, exactly where they should be. The moment they saw us, they jumped up and pawed excitedly at the bars.

The strangest part was that the lock was still secure. There was no sign that it had been tampered with.

Had I imagined it?

Adam rubbed my shoulder. "You've been under too much stress lately. Once your mom gets here tomorrow, everything will be fine."

Right. Once Mom arrived, everything would be better.

The next morning, I woke to the sound of her voice. She'd come early and had already made breakfast for me.

I glanced instinctively at the crate. Sunny and Whiskers were gone.

"Adam took them out for a walk first thing this morning," Mom said.

I nodded and sat down to eat. The second I leaned over my bowl of oatmeal, I caught a whiff of something foul and horribly familiar.

Dread washed over me. I knew this feeling from my previous life.

I stirred the oatmeal a few times and found a large clump of cat feces at the bottom of the bowl. "Mom, why is there cat shit in this?"

Mom's face went white. She immediately dumped the entire bowl into the trash. "Oh my god, I have no idea how that happened. Did Whiskers think the bowl was a litter box?"

My appetite vanished. I knew they'd started making their move.

That afternoon, while Mom and I were at the mall, I bought several security cameras. I planned to install them in every corner of the house. I wanted to see exactly what those animals were doing when no one was watching.

I hid all the baby supplies I'd just bought in a cabinet. But the next day, they were shredded to pieces and covered in urine stains.

I was certain Sunny had done it, but she was too smart—unnaturally smart for a dog. She'd avoided every single camera, so there was no footage proving she was responsible.

In the end, the mice took the blame. Whiskers even put on a show of helping Adam catch them. Between the two of them, they caught two mice in snap traps.

But that night, things took a turn for the worse. I started feeling dizzy and nauseous. My head pounded, and my skin began to itch all over.

At the hospital, they told me I'd been infected with toxoplasmosis. Fortunately, we'd caught it early enough that the baby wasn't affected.

At the same time, I found animal hair on my clothes. What terrified me most was finding fur on my underwear too.

"Adam, cats are the primary host for toxoplasmosis! Whiskers and Sunny planned this whole thing! They've been trying to kill me and the baby this entire time!"

Adam stared at me in shock.

"Leanne, do you hear yourself? They're just pets. How could they possibly want to hurt their own owner?"

I held up the strand of fur that had been stuck to my underwear. "Then how do you explain this?"

When Adam hesitated, I pressed on. "If you don't believe me, have the hospital test it. Let's see if this came from a dog or a cat."

Adam didn't object. A few hours later, the results came back. I stared at the stamped lab report, unable to form a single word.

The fur had come from mice. And the hospital confirmed they'd detected toxoplasmosis on it. Things were spiraling into territory I didn't understand.

Were the mice in my house turning against me too?