Muffled voices from upstairs had me freezing in place.
Someone’s inside the building!
A second voice joined the first, and from the sound of footsteps of creaky wood, they were coming down the stairs.
Deciding these strangers were probably a bigger threat than Conor, I aimed my gun at the stairs.
My heart stopped in my chest when they appeared. Tall, covered head to toe in black, with masks covering their features. They were both armed and had their guns trained on me and Conor.
They weren’t at all put off by the revolver in my hand.
“Well if it isn’t the little granddaughter. You’ve grown,” one of the men cackled.
“I don’t know who you are or what you want…” I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking, but I managed to keep my voice steady. “But if you don’t leave right now, I’ll shoot.”
“I don’t think you will, girl. Not unless your grandpa got that gun fixed since the last time we were here. And considering the state we left him in, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that he hasn’t had a chance yet.”
They were here before? My heart sank from my chest and dropped straight to the floor.
These were the men who killed my grandparents.
“Where’s the evil eye?” the taller of the two men demanded.
They knew about the topaz. They didn’t look like cultists, but they definitely weren’t the average burglar either.
“First one to tell us gets to live.”
Conor flinched as if he’d been physically struck, while I didn’t so much as bat an eyelash.
Threatening me with death when I’d already seen so much of it—and in my darker moments,yearned for it—did nothing to pull a reaction from me.
“Have fun tearing this whole place apart. You’ll be looking for weeks,” I snarled.
“We can make her talk,” one of them hissed beneath his breath to his companion. His whisper was purposefully loud, probably hoping to scare me into submission.
The second gunman eyed me, probably seeing something in my face that gave way to the fact that I wouldn’t crack. He turned his attention to Conor. “What about you? Where is the evil eye?”
“I’ve never been here before. She’s the McCrum, not me.” The red-headed creep shot me an accusatory glare, as if this was all my fault. As if I’d lured him here. “I have nothing to do with any of this!”
Conor flung himself into the labyrinth of antiques, gunning for the exit. One of the cultists ran after him.
Using the distraction, I hurled my grandpa’s broken revolver at the second gunman. He swung around, eyes widening as the gun hurtled toward his head. He shot at me, but in the chaos, he missed. The bullet ricocheted off the wall over my head.
I don’t know what compelled me to look away from the armed man. Whatever the reason, my head whipped around to see the bullet had gone through the kitten painting. The hole in the canvas glowed ominously, like the topaz beneath had been blown open and whatever inside was burning up.
There was no time to investigate.
When the gunman crumpled to the ground, blood spilling onto the floor from his fresh head wound where my revolver made contact, I grabbed his gun and shot into the maze of furniture.
With a gun in one hand, I used my other to grab my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans. With shaky fingers, I punched999into the dial pad.
Before I could hit send, the building jerked violently, and I dropped to the ground. My phone and the gun slid out of reach under a cluster of junk. Disoriented, I jumped to my feet, looking around wildly.
The entire building was quaking so hard, the floorboards shook and the nails holding them down rattled loose, while shelves overflowing with figurines and other antiques toppled over in an explosion of glass and porcelain.
A vicious shiver skipped up my back. This was no earthquake. A foreboding sensation, deep under my skin, told me it was something far more dangerous.
An unholy scream ripped my attention away from that voice in the back of my head telling me things that made no logical sense. Thanks to the piles of junk, I couldn’t see the source of the scream. Was it Conor? Was it the gunman? Whoever it was, he was running with an urgency that told me someone—something—was chasing him.
