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If I was careful, I could create loopholes.

I started embedding contradictions into the records. Mislabeling files. Creating duplicate entries with conflicting information. Preserving evidence the House couldn’t categorize.

I didn’t know why I was doing it.

Not yet.

I didn’t know her name then, but I knew she was coming. And when she finally crossed the threshold, I intended to be ready.

The House’s scream tore through the memory, dragging me violently out of the past and slamming me back into the Room of Four Masks.

Hot-pink ink bled down the curved plaster walls, pooling in the grooves between the stone tiles. The four platforms shuddered as they rose toward the glare of the overhead lights, iron gears grinding beneath the floorboards.

Zinnia had already moved onto the Keeper’s dais, her spine rigid and her jaw set, refusing to give the room an inch of ground. Malachi stood opposite her on the Devil’s stage, the copper mask catching the harsh light while his gaze remained locked on her face. Rook took his position near the Hound’s mark with heavy, the white muzzle strapped tight over his jaw.

The entity’s voice vibrated through the stone, layered and demanding, waiting for the four of us to assume our roles.

Every contradiction I had ever buried in the archives was about to be put to the test.

Chapter 14

Zinnia

“IN THE ROOM WHERE YOU SLEEP” BY DEAD MAN’S BONES

Iron gears groaned beneath the flagstones as four circular stone platforms rose from the floor, shuddered against the bedrock, and locked into place around the central pit. Damp limestone, hot machine oil, and the sharp chemical sting of hot-pink ink leaking from fractured pipes filled the air with a thick, rancid smell.

Malachi stood on the western platform, his copper Devil mask catching the light. His shirt hung torn at the shoulder, blood and soot streaked across his chest from our run through the flooded tunnels. Across from him, Rook braced himself on the northern ring, the distressed-brown muzzle of his Hound mask tilted slightly as he scanned the balconies above. Khaos occupied the southern platform, his split-faced silver mask gleaming as he pressed his scorched ledger against his ribs.

I stood on the eastern platform. Directly in front of me, suspended from an iron chain that disappeared into the rafters, hung an empty veil of white lace.

Neon pink floodlights cracked to life overhead. In the tiered balconies ringing the upper walls, dozens of hooded figures sat motionless, their heads covered in blank linen sacks. They began to clap—slow, dry claps that sounded like paper tearing.

“The Devil has been claimed. The Hound has been summoned. The Madman has been recorded. The Keeper will be named.”

The voice didn’t come from a speaker. It scraped through the mortar between the stones, vibrating the floor until my teeth ached.

“Don’t touch that fucking veil,” Malachi said, his voice flat and hard through the copper mask. “The second you do, the House stops negotiating and enters you as inventory.”

“You said the answers were on the other side of the red door,” I shot back, gripping the iron rail. “So unless you have something useful, save the lecture.”

“This chamber runs on legal precedent,” Khaos cut in, his fingers drumming against the cracked silver cheek of his mask. “Every binding agreement in this building requires four registered roles: an enforcer, a hunter, a clerk, and an anchor. In 1898, your aunt provided the anchor. To replace her, the House has to lay out the original agreement so the new vessel accepts the transfer willingly.”

I turned toward him. “You knew that before we left the archives. When you had me trapped against your desk, you already knew this room was waiting.”

Khaos didn’t look away, though his neck went taut. “I told you what kept you moving forward instead of crawling out through a drainpipe. If I told you every hook waiting in the dark, you would have frozen.”

“I don’t freeze,” I said. “And you’re still holding back whatever you scribbled on those last three pages.”

“He holds back because that is what bottom-feeder clerks do,” Malachi snapped, stepping toward the inner edge of his dais. “He trades information in quarters so nobody can shoot him before he gets paid.”

“At least I trade in information,” Khaos shot back. “You traded her family away for a pocket full of silver and a seat in the velvet boxes.”

Before Malachi could answer, the obsidian floor in the center of the room cracked down the middle. Gray steam hissed from the seam, and flickering light projected against the curved stone walls until the masonry gave way to an illusion of rough pine timber and cheap sawdust.

An old wooden hall materialized in the projection. It smelled of kerosene and damp cedar.

A young woman stood on a raised platform in the center of the hall. She had my high cheekbones, my straight nose, and the same sharp, stubborn line to my mouth. Evangeline Vale held a curved skinning knife over a brass bowl, both of her forearms scored with fresh cuts.