“Kai.” I put a hand on his chest. His skin has cooled. That raging heartbeat I’d felt earlier is slower now. “Please.”
“He called last night,” Kai chokes out, staring off into the distance with a disgusted twist to his mouth. “You were asleep.”
My face goes cold. “He called?” I whisper. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“Tonight was supposed to be just us, Haven!” Kai yells, his voice cracking. “All I wanted was one fucking night where we could just chill, and have fun, and not—” He drops his gaze to his feet. “One night when we weren’t his fucking puppets.”
I stare up at him, slack jawed.
There’s so much I want to say—scream—but I think those gulps I took from Teagan’s drink just kicked in.
Why? Why does it always lead back to Bastian?
He’s poisoned everything in my fucking life, and everything that I think might be an antidote just turns out to be more poison.
Kai turns his phone screen to show me.
It’s a map showing a location a short distance away. I don’t know this area, so I have no idea where it leads.
From the look on Kai’s face, it’s a fucking hellmouth.
“We have like five minutes to get there,” Kai says, pausing to swallow. “Or I’m going back to jail.”
My stomach does a triple backflip. I don’t even question how Kai can be so sure—it’s fucking Bastian.
“Fuck, Kai, we?—”
“We’ll make it,” Kai says. He grabs my hand again. His palm is warm, but surprisingly dry for someone who’s going to prison if he doesn’t hustle. “Come on.”
He pulls me toward a path leading down the hill where the abandoned church was built. I look back at Sanctuary as we descend.
The lights. The music. The normal fucking world I’m always being led away from.
Then I look down the hill, at the darkness waiting for us.
Well…down the rabbit hole we go.
Chapter 20
Bastian
The silence in the Winslow family’s walk-in mausoleum is a heavy, sacred thing, broken only by the hiss of the oil lantern I placed in an urn niche. The flame dances behind the glass, flooding the granite walls with a temporary, taunting warmth.
Raymond Winslow, Yolanda’s grandfather and former mayor of Agony Hollow, is entombed in a dark granite sarcophagus in the center of the crypt.
I like the dead. They’re honest, kind, and above all, quiet.
So fucking quiet.
I smooth a hand down my black trench coat, then the softer black shirt beneath. All in black tonight, but for the mask.
My fingers trace the hard ridges of a snout. The shaggy, imitation fur. One stiff ear.
A snarling wolf, frozen in attack.
Such a cliché. The wolf in the fold. The predator lying in wait. But tonight, I am done pretending to be something I’m not.
Tonight, I reclaim my power. Tonight, my pets learn what happens when they choose to bite the hand that feeds.
