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“An angry House makes mistakes, and mistakes create loopholes.” Shoving him back, I wiped the blood from my mouth. “There’s always a loophole.”

“There are no loopholes.”

“There’s always a loophole.” Pulling the replacement Keeper contract from the table, I held it up. “The House prepared this before Zinnia even arrived. It’s been waiting for her to agree to become the permanent vessel. But it can’t force her to agree. It can only wait for her to say yes.”

“Then we make sure she never says yes.”

“Or we make sure she says yes on her terms.” Tossing the contract at him, I crossed my arms. “The House wants a Keeper. Fine. Give it one. But make the contract so specific, so narrow, so full of contradictions that the House can’t use it the way it wants.”

Malachi stared at the contract, his expression unreadable. “That’s insane.”

“It’s the only option we have.” Turning to Zinnia, I met her gaze. “Unless you want to walk away right now. You could leave. Forget about Dahlia. Forget about all of us. The House would let you go because you haven’t completed the final stage yet.”

“What’s the final stage?”

“Saying yes when the House asks if you want to stay.”

Zinnia looked at the contract in Malachi’s hands, then at the photograph on the floor, then at me. “And if I say yes?”

“You become the next Keeper. And the House owns you forever.”

“Unless we change the terms,” Malachi said quietly.

“Unless we change the terms,” I agreed.

Around us, the House groaned. The walls began to shift. The filing cabinets slammed shut. The glass cases shattered. And somewhere above us, the alarm began to scream louder.

The Freaks were emerging from the shadows now. More Grinners. More Crawling Ushers. The Seamstress with a new spool of thread. They were coming to collect the evidence, to restore order, to make sure the House could still claim what it wanted.

“What’s happening?” Zinnia said.

“The House is reacting to the corrupted record.” Grabbing her arm, I pulled her toward the door. “It knows something happened and it’s trying to reset the archives before the contradiction spreads.”

“What do we do?”

“We run.” Shoving the door open, I pushed her into the corridor. Water was rising fast now, flooding the lower levels, trying to drown the evidence before it could escape. “And we hope Malachi’s plan works before the House decides to kill us all.”

Malachi grabbed Rook’s arm. “You coming?”

Rook looked back at the collapsing archives, then at Zinnia. “Yeah. I’m coming.”

Behind us, the archives collapsed.

The Freaks shrieked as the shelves came down, burying contracts and photographs and decades of carefully maintained lies. The Mouth-Bearer’s voice was cut off mid-confession. The Grinners’ painted smiles cracked and shattered.

And somewhere in the darkness, Dahlia screamed again.

Chapter 12

Khaos

“SICK LIKE ME” BY IN THIS MOMENT

The archive buckled behind us with the groan of bending iron and splintering mahogany, century-old filing cabinets bursting open as thousands upon thousands of bleeding contracts tore free from their bindings. Black water churned across the floorboards, slick with discarded ink and shredded parchment, while the House shrieked through the ventilation shafts in an effort to scrub out every falsified clause I had spent two decades sewing into its flesh.

Zinnia lost her footing in the rising sludge, her knuckles grazing the wall before I caught her by the upper arm and hauled her upright against the current.

She wrenched herself out of my grip with enough force to bruise her own skin, her dark eyes spitting pure venom. “Do not fucking touch me.”