Somewhere along the way, I’d outgrown my fatalism and decided I wanted a life. I even began to believe I deserved one. I’d built a home and a family.
It looked like young Jenny was right about the cause of death, even if she’d been off on the timing.
Two more limbs reached for us. I pushed Annette aside. The second limb slammed into my ribs and pinned me against the wall. I felt the needle-jabs of a thousand spines piercing my skin. Every breath sent stabbing pain through my side.
A new smell caught my attention: death and decay and rot.
An overly long, mummified hand reached past me to grasp the limb holding me in place. After a moment, the fingers crunched into the alien flesh like it was a rotted tree branch.
I collapsed into the arms of a harvester.
I got a face full of shadows and death and rot and decay. After the otherworldly nastiness I’d been smelling and feeling and tasting, it was almost a relief. Though I had no idea what a harvester was doing here or how it had gotten inside to begin with. I pushed myself up and looked around.
The harvester wasn’t our only guest.
Glittering claws slashed another limb. Duke from the Gauntlet nodded in greeting. He wore stone gauntlets tipped with diamond-hard claws. A dragon-cat gargoyle perched on his shoulders, hissing and swiping at the nearest tendrils.
Hjálmar the selkie approached the hole in our basement wall. “Quite the storm of horrors you’ve got down here, isn’t it?”
“What are you doing here?” I croaked.
“Helping you, you daft lass.”
There was a metallic growl. It grew louder...I blinked and tried to focus. “Is that achainsaw?”
Hjálmar grinned. “Your young friend didn’t say what the fuss was about. He just said to bring the best weapon I had.”
Annette stared at me. Her face was pale and sweaty, and her brow was crinkled. She looked as confused as I felt.
“Get back where you came from, you ugly spider-fucker!” Hob the hearth devil raced across the basement and smacked a limb with an aluminum baseball bat.
More and more people pressed into our basement—using bothpeopleandbasementin the loosest possible sense. There was the mothwoman I’d treated for burns, the Celadon Man who’d come in with a fungal infection, the girl with goblin blood whose hoarding tendencies had led her to collect the world’s biggest assortment of poisonous plants—the hoarding was less of a problem than the poison ivy outbreaks.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“It was Ronnie’s idea.” Temple Finn limped down the stairs, leaning on a wooden staff. No, not a staff. That was Phile, a dryad I’d treated for emerald ash borers.
“I told him to take the kids out of town,” said Annette. The fear and anger in her voice made my own pulse quicken. “He’d better not have—”
“Your grandson’s safe,” said Temple. “Ronnie just made a call while he was driving. On your phone, as I understand it. You still had Marmaduke Stone in your contacts. He called Duke and told him to gather everyone and anyone who might have any kind of bond to this place.”
“But these are all people I’ve healed,” I said as Hjálmar went after another tentacle with his chainsaw. “They accepted the contract to do no harm. How...”
“Their contract had a self-defense clause,” said Temple. “And once you and Annette hooked up with our home, I was able to rip out the vandalism Alex had done to our welcome spell so everyone could get inside.”
Hob spat. “Keeping this parasite from crawling up the world’s ass qualifies as self-defense, don’t you think?”
Temple limped toward the wall. “You gave your strength to this place. I hope you’ll forgive me for taking a bit of that strength for myself. Enough for me to finish things.”
I hated the finality of his words. “Temple, you can’t—”
“I can.” He stepped past me to face the burning portal. “This place will take good care of you and Annette. It loves you. We both do.”
“I prayed to Artemis to help me save you,” I whispered.
“You did.” He adjusted his hat, scratched his belly, and tookStuart Littlefrom his fanny pack. “Thanks to you, I get to be Temple Finn one last time.”
“Oh. Oh, shit.”
