She nods.“I chose this.The hunt.The risk.”
YES.
“And you won’t take that choice from me.”
NO.
“Thank you.”Her voice breaks slightly.
It’s the sound of something cracking.Something that’s been holding itself together too long.
“If you had left the house fully to get to me, would you have died?”she asks.
YES.
With a shaky breath, she pulls her hands away from the glass, but I have more to tell her.I need to tell her about Eddie’s car, how it drove itself away from nearby last night without him in it, and then drove itself back.Not because of me, since I can’t pull any strings outside this house.It’s because of the same shadowy form who sneaked into her car.
But how do I put that into words she’ll understand?Why does communicating with her have to be so difficult?
She lies back on her mattress and stares up at the footprint-covered ceiling.“Stay with me, Shadow Daddy.I mean right now.Stay.”
I do.I settle into the corner shadows, holding form enough that she can see me watch her.A guardian or a ghost or something in between.
I will make this house devour anything that tries to take her from me.
It’s a vow, a promise carved from the foundation up.
The house shivers in response, accepting the new parameters.Not a prison.A weapon.Her weapon.
I’ll stand in the spaces between walls.I’ll watch from vents and crawlspaces.I’ll wait with the patience of rot and ruin.
Here, with me, she is untouchable.
You think the cage is the cruelest thing I could do to you, Sera.
You’re wrong.
The cruelest thing would be letting you face the world alone.
So I won’t.
Chapter 9
Sera
Onehourbeforework,I have photos spread across my bedroom floor like a deck of tarot cards, each one predicting the same inevitable ruin.
Sheriff Vincent Harrow caught in pixels and timestamps—different towns, different bars, different hotel parking lots at two a.m., different women who thought they were special.His hand on a lower back that isn’t his wife’s.
The air goes still.
Not quiet, but still, like the house is holding its breath.
Then—pop.The electric hum that’s been the constant background noise of this rotting Victorian dies.Darkness rushes in like floodwater.
I continue to sit cross-legged on the floor surrounded by Vincent’s sins in the dark.
My breath fogs in the sudden cold.The temperature plummets—not gradually, but all at once, like someone opened a door to winter.
