Page 88 of The Ashes of Summer

Jacob.

Oh my God.

The relief comes up through the numbness so hard it hurts—like blood forcing its way back into a limb that's been dead for hours, and God, it aches, and I don't care. Let it hurt. Let it tear me open.

He came.

For one bright, impossible second I can see him. Not the memory of him—him, now, in this house. Tactical gear. Rifle up. That flat, terrible calm he wears when he's decided something and no force on this earth is going to move him off it. Coming up through the dark, room by room, for me.

Jackson leans across me to look at the guard—his weight on the mattress, his throat, his jaw, his ear right there⁠—

And I don't think. I lift my head and I close my teeth on it and I bite down with everything I have left in my body.

The scream that comes out of him nearly deafens me. It isn't a man's sound at all. It's something guttural, something from underneath the person he pretends to be, and I hold on through it because every second I've spent in this room is in my jaw right now.

He tears himself away and something comes with him—bloody, rubbery flesh. I spit it onto the sheets and drag air into a throat that's already ruined and I scream anyway.

"JACOB!"

It rips out of me raw, tearing something on the way up, and I taste copper. I don't stop. Let them hear me. Let the whole rotten house hear me.

Jackson looks back at me over his shoulder, one hand clamped to the side of his head, blood running bright between his fingers.

And he smiles.

That's what breaks something in me. Not the blood. The smile. I've just taken part of his ear off with my teeth and he's standing there looking excited—like I've finally given him something worth having, like this is the most alive he's felt all night.

"I've got a date with the sheriff, sweetheart."

Cold crashes through me. "Jackson⁠—"

He isn't listening. He straightens his cuffs, one and then the other, unhurried, like a man stepping out to a meeting instead of a war. Blood is running down his neck and into his collar and he doesn't seem to feel it.

His eyes drift over me one last time.

"Try not to miss me too much," he murmurs.

Then he walks out. The door slams. The lock turns.

And I lose my mind.

I fight the restraints like an animal—twisting, wrenching, my shoulders screaming, the rope stripping skin off my wrists, my broken fingers grinding against each other until the pain whites everything out. I don't stop. I'd tear my own hands off at the wrist if it meant getting free of this bed.

"JACOB!"

My voice shreds on his name and I keep screaming it anyway.

Because he's here. After everything, after every hour I lay in the dark holding those three words against my chest—he's here.

And he's walking into it.

That's what stops me. Not the pain. That.

Because I know something Jacob doesn't. I know Jackson has been listening to every step he's taken since Kurt opened his eyes. I know the man who just strolled out of this room with his ear hanging off has been sitting in that chair for hours with the patience of somebody who set the table days ago. I know this house is a mouth, and Jacob is walking straight into it, and he has no idea.

And I'm the only one who does.

I'm tied to a bed two floors up with a ruined throat, and I am the only person in this entire world who knows what's waiting for him down there, and I can't get to him. I can't warn him. I can't do a single thing except lie here and listen.