"No, you don't." He stood up. "You don't know what it means when something from that room comes out. Because nothing has come out of that room in sixty years. Not a sound during the day, not a person, not a thing. If that bangle is from that room, then something has changed. Something knows you're here." He picked up his bag. "I'm making some calls. You stay in this room tonight. Lock the door. Don't go near the Pandey house."
"Satish —"
"Please." It was the first time he'd said please. "Tomorrow I'll get you the Varanasi contact. Tonight, just... stay inside."
He left. Nidhi locked the door. She sat on the charpai with the bangle and her recorder and the notes from three old people who'd told her the same story from three different angles — a bride who entered, a groom who vanished, a room that locked itself, and sixty years of singing that only the night could hear.
At 3:17 AM, the singing began again.
But this time, it wasn't distant. It wasn't coming from the Pandey house.
It was coming from the wall.
The wall where the handprint had been.
Nidhi pressed her ear to the whitewashed surface and listened to a woman's voice singing from inside solid brick, inches from her face, with the clarity and proximity of someone standing in the room with her.
And this time, she understood a word. Just one, repeated in the melody like a heartbeat in the song:
"Aaiye."
Come.
