The manor on Ocean Road didn’t look like a house; it looked like a tombstone carved from granite and spite.
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Chapter 5 / 10
Chapter 5 - THE THING IN THE CELLARI grabbed the vellum and ran. I didn't go to Vane. I didn't go to the front door. I went to the cellar. If my mother’s signature was the lock, then my blood was the key.
The cellar was filled with artifacts—hundreds of walnut boxes just like mine, stacked floor to ceiling. Each one held a soul, a memory, a piece of a life that Vane had harvested.
"Clara!" Vane screamed from the top of the stairs, a revolver in his hand. "Don't break the seal! If you open that, the debt passes to you!"
"I'd rather be dead than a jailer for a monster!" I yelled.
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I sliced my thumb against the jagged lock and pressed it to the blood-print sensor.
The house began to scream. Not Vane. The house. The walls bled black ink, the foundation cracked, and Ghost, my silent protector, leaped onto the stairs, not to attack me, but to tear the throat out of the man who had turned his life into a cage.
