THE MERCY DEBT

They return the people you love. Then they collect. Twenty-seven years ago, Nora Fitch lost her little sister to the black waters of Lake Mercy. She buried thirteen-year-old Mara, fled her small Maine hometown, and spent the rest of her life trying to forget what happened that terrible summer. Then her mother dies. Nora returns to find a birthday cake in the freezer, an empty chair at the kitchen table, and a terrifying secret buried beneath her childhood home. That night, Mara walks out of the lake. She's still thirteen. Still wearing the yellow dress she drowned in. Still calling Nora by the nickname nobody has used in twenty-seven years. And she has no heartbeat. At the edge of the woods stands a terrifying figure in a black suit, holding a brass bell. Beneath the lake, hundreds of forgotten children wait inside a drowned house with a glowing red door. And in her mother's hidden ledger, Nora discovers a century of names divided into two columns: RETURNED and GIVEN. Every resurrection comes at a price. Seven days after the dead return, someone living must take their place. For generations, Harrow's most respected citizens have secretly decided who deserves to live and who can be sacrificed. Now Nora has seven days to save her sister before the lake comes to collect. But the deeper she investigates, the more her childhood begins to unravel. Her first love knows what really happened the day Mara drowned. Her mother signed a horrifying agreement. And the greatest lie of all may be that Mara was ever the one who died. As the Bellman closes in, Nora must confront a monstrous truth about love, sacrifice, and the terrible things people do to bring back the dead. Some towns bury their secrets. Harrow drowns them. And the lake never forgets a debt.