I swallow, my pulse hammering. “Carrson, I—”
“You went snooping.”
I can see he’s angry, but there’s more.
Hurt.
Betrayal.
A hole opens where my heart should be.
He takes a step toward me, then another, until he’s right in front of me, so close the heat from the flame sears across my skin.
“You searched this house,” he says, each word dropping like handfuls of dirt thrown onto my coffin. “Opened things that don’t belong to you.”
“I was curious—”
“Curious,” he repeats. “You were curious.”
The way he says it, flat, disbelieving, dismissive, makes anger flare in my chest. It’s the disdain in his voice that makes me push off the wall and take a step forward.
“Yes. Curious,” I snap, lashing out. “If there’s one thing about me you should know, it’s that if I see a locked door I’m going to want to know what’s behind it.” I throw his own words from months ago back at him. “I’m going to open it.”
I cross my arms over my chest and refuse to look away.
Silence falls, broken only by the hiss and crackle of the flame.
“I think,” Carrson says, his eyes moving over me, “that might be the first real thing you’ve ever said to me.”
His attention shifts past me, checking the room again, the symbols, the table, the knife.
Everything.
Then he laughs. High. A little hysterical.
As if the night has spiraled for him too.
“You came to the right place if you want locked doors.” He gestures toward the ceiling. “I’ve got a house full of them. Where should we go first? Tell me, what do you want to know?”
Even though I know it’s a hypothetical question, my eyes jump to the wall behind him. To the strange words carved there.
“What’s The Order?” I ask.
Carrson shakes his head, grinning, but it’s not kind. “Oh no. Don’t start with that one. I’d have to kill you if Itold you that.”
I almost laugh because now I know. The Order is real, and it’s big. Important enough to kill over.Thisis the thing I’ve been chasing since I moved to Ashville. The thing behind Carrson, his family, all the people who matter. It’s The Order. Are they all in on it? I wonder. All the people who decide how the world works?
“Aren’t you anyway?” I challenge, refocusing on him as I raise my chin. “Going to kill me?”
At the same time, we both glance at the knife, sheathed on the table.
I calculate. Wondering if I could get to it first.
“Please,” Carrson says, mocking, reading my mind. “I’d like to see you try.”
“What? I wasn’t going to do it,” I lie.
He’s right, though. There’s no way I’d reach the knife before he does. I won’t reach the door either.
