The thirteenth chime echoed through Blackwood Manor like a death knell, reverberating in my chest long after the sound faded. Adrian and I stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, every sense on high alert.
"That clock was stopped when I got here," I whispered. "Three thirty-three."
"Not anymore." Adrian's jaw was tight, his eyes scanning the darkness beyond the kitchen. "And thirteen chimes means something's opened. A door, a portal, a barrier—something that was closed is now accessible."
"Accessible to what?"
"That's what we're going to find out." He moved forward with predatory grace, and I fell into step behind him, cleaver gripped so hard my palm ached. "Stay alert. If you see anything move, anything at all, you tell me immediately."
We made our way back to the foyer. The grandfather clock stood exactly where it had been before, but now its pendulum swung in lazy arcs, and the hands pointed to 1:00 AM. Which was impossible, because it was barely past 9:00 PM.
"Time doesn't work right in this house," Adrian muttered, examining the clock without touching it. "Your grandmother must have set up wards, protection spells. They're breaking down now that she's gone."
"Can you fix them?"
"I'm a hunter, not a witch. Different skill set." He ran his hand along the clock's carved surface, stopping at a particular rose among the thorns. "But I know how to spot a hidden mechanism when I see one."
He pressed the rose, and something inside the clock clicked.
The entire panel swung open like a door, revealing a narrow passageway behind it.
"Of course there's a secret passage," I said, fighting the urge to laugh hysterically. "Why wouldn't there be? This day has been so normal up until now."
Adrian shot me a look that might have been amusement. "Sarcasm in the face of terror. I like it." He pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight. "But save it for later. We need to see where this goes."
The passage was barely wide enough for one person. The walls were rough stone, cold and damp, and the air smelled like earth and decay. Cobwebs caught at my hair as we descended a steep staircase that I was certain hadn't existed in any blueprint of this house.
"How deep does this go?" I asked, my voice echoing strangely.
"Deep enough that we're probably under the house now. Maybe under the grounds entirely." Adrian kept the light trained ahead, his other hand on his gun. "The really old families in towns like this—they built their homes on top of something older. Something they wanted to keep close but hidden."
"That's ominous."
"It's accurate."
The staircase ended in a circular chamber carved directly from rock. The walls were covered in symbols—some I recognized from Adrian's arm, others that looked older, more primal. Candles sat in alcoves around the room, unlit but pristine, as if they'd been placed recently.
In the center of the chamber stood a stone altar.
And on that altar was a book.
Not just any book—this thing was massive, bound in leather so old it was nearly black, with metal clasps that looked like clawed hands. Even from across the room, I could feel something radiating from it. Power, yes, but also wrongness, like it was something that shouldn't exist.
"Don't touch it," Adrian said sharply, even though I'd made no move toward it.
"Wasn't planning on it." I circled the altar slowly, taking in the rest of the chamber. There were more photographs here, pinned to boards that lined one wall. Dozens of them. Crime scenes, bodies, the same black rose left at each one.
But it was the family tree that made my blood run cold.
It was drawn on the largest board, branches spreading across the surface in careful detail. At the top: Caldwell Family - 1823. The tree wound down through generations, each name written in the same spidery handwriting I'd seen in my grandmother's notes.
And at the bottom, circled in red ink: Iris Caldwell - Last Daughter.
"Last daughter?" I breathed.
Adrian moved to stand beside me, his expression grim. "Your grandmother's notes. Look." He pointed to annotations written beside various names. Next to my great-great-grandmother: Died age 28 - childbirth (suspicious). Next to another ancestor: Died age 25 - drowning (body found in dry well).
Every woman in my family for the past two hundred years had died young. Violently. Mysteriously.
All except the daughters who'd left Hollow's End before their twenty-eighth birthday.
"My mother left when she was twenty," I said slowly. "She made it to forty-nine before the cancer."
"Which means she broke the pattern. Got out before it could claim her the traditional way." Adrian's finger traced the line down to my name. "Your grandmother stayed. She was the exception—lived to seventy-three. But she paid for it in other ways."
"What ways?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he moved to another section of the board where newspaper clippings were pinned alongside old diary entries. "She spent fifty years hunting this thing. Documenting it. Learning everything she could about it. She knew she couldn't kill it—she didn't have the power. But she thought you might."
"Me? I didn't even know I had powers until tonight."
"Because your mother kept you away. Kept you ignorant. She thought if you didn't know, if you stayed far from Hollow's End, you'd be safe." He pulled down one of the diary entries, written in faded ink. "But Vera knew better. The entity doesn't care about distance. It cares about bloodlines. And you're the last one."
I took the diary entry from him with shaking hands. The paper was brittle, dated 1985.
The pattern is clear now. It takes the firstborn daughter of each generation before she can bear children of her own. It's not killing for sport—it's eliminating the bloodline. Slowly. Methodically. Elizabeth thinks we can run, but I know better. You can't run from something that's already inside you.
If I'm right—if the binding is what I think it is—then everything depends on the last daughter. She'll have the full power, undiluted by generations of dilution. She'll be strong enough to break it.
Or she'll be the perfect vessel.
The paper slipped from my fingers. "Vessel for what?"
"Turn around," Adrian said quietly. "Look at the altar."
I did, and this time I really looked. The book wasn't just sitting on the altar—it was part of it. The leather binding merged with the stone, as if they'd grown together. And around it, carved into the altar itself, was a name repeated over and over in flowing script:
IRIS IRIS IRIS IRIS IRIS
"How long has that been here?" My voice came out strangled.
"Based on the wear? Centuries." Adrian circled the altar slowly, examining it from every angle. "This isn't an altar for worship, Iris. It's a summoning stone. And that book—I'd bet everything I have that it's a grimoire. A very old, very powerful one."
"My grandmother built a summoning altar under her house?"
"No. The altar was here first. Your ancestor built the house on top of it. Probably thought they could contain it, control it. They were wrong." He pointed to symbols carved around the base. "These are binding wards. Meant to keep something trapped. But look here—they're breaking."
He was right. Several of the symbols had cracks running through them, the stone crumbling at the edges.
"When did my grandmother die?" Adrian asked.
"Three days ago."
"And when did the murders start in town?"
I thought back to the clippings I'd seen upstairs. "The lawyer said there were nine bodies in three months, but the most recent was—" My stomach dropped. "Three days ago."
"The same day Vera died. Her death broke the final ward. Whatever she'd been keeping trapped down here, it's free now." Adrian's hand went to his gun again. "And it's been waiting a very long time."
A sound echoed through the chamber—footsteps on the stairs we'd just descended. But these were different from before. Lighter. Human.
Adrian positioned himself between me and the staircase entrance, weapon raised.
A figure emerged from the shadows.
It was a woman, maybe sixty, dressed in clothes that looked like they belonged in a different decade. Her eyes were completely white, no iris or pupil visible, and when she opened her mouth to speak, her voice came out wrong—layered, like multiple people talking at once.
"She has returned," the woman said, those terrible eyes fixed on me. "The vessel has come home. The binding can finally be complete."
"Who are you?" I demanded, trying to keep my voice steady.
"I am the First. The one who made the bargain. The one who promised him a bride in exchange for power." Her mouth twisted into a smile that looked painful. "I am your great-great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Caldwell. And I've been waiting in this house for two hundred years for you to arrive."
Adrian fired.
The bullet passed through her like she was made of smoke. She didn't even flinch.
"Half-breed weapons cannot harm me. I am not alive, not dead. I am bound to this place until the debt is paid." Elizabeth drifted closer, and I could see now that her feet didn't quite touch the ground. "Iris Caldwell. Last daughter. Perfect vessel. Your grandmother tried to prevent this. She thought she could research her way out of a blood pact. Foolish woman."
"Stay back," I warned, raising the cleaver.
Elizabeth's gaze dropped to the weapon, and something like fear flickered across her ghostly features. "Salt and Seer light. You have teeth, little one. Good. You'll need them for what comes next."
"What comes next?" Adrian growled.
"The convergence. The night when the veil is thinnest and the binding can be completed. Three nights from now, on the anniversary of the pact." Elizabeth's form began to fade. "He will come for you, Iris. And when he does, you will have a choice. Become his bride and end the bloodline by joining with him. Or refuse and watch everyone you've ever cared about die screaming."
"There has to be another way," I said desperately.
"There is." Her voice was barely a whisper now, her form nearly transparent. "Break the binding. Destroy the grimoire. But to do so, you must learn its secrets. You must open it. Read it. Let it into your mind."
"That sounds like a trap," Adrian said flatly.
"Of course it's a trap. Everything about this is a trap. The pact was designed to be inescapable." Elizabeth's eyes—those horrible white eyes—locked onto mine one last time. "But Vera believed you were different. Believed you had the strength to walk through the trap and come out the other side. I hope, for all our sakes, that she was right."
She vanished completely, leaving only the faint smell of roses and rot.
Adrian lowered his gun slowly. "Well. That was informative and terrifying in equal measure."
"Three days," I said numbly. "That's all we have?"
"Then we'd better make them count." He moved to the grimoire, examining it without touching it. "This thing is the key. Everything your grandmother learned, everything we need to know about breaking the binding—it's probably in here."
"Elizabeth said reading it would let it into my mind."
"She also said it was the only way to break the binding." He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw genuine uncertainty in those silver eyes. "It's your choice, Iris. We can leave right now. Get in the car, drive away, and you can live whatever life you have left before he comes for you. Or you can open that book and fight."
I thought about my mother, who'd run and still died too young. About all the women in my family who'd been victims of a pact they never made. About the nine people who'd been murdered in the past three months because something ancient and evil had been set free.
I thought about the vision I'd had—the terror, the helplessness, the certainty of death.
And I thought about the light that had poured from me in the kitchen, how it had felt like power and purpose and choice.
"Teach me how to open it safely," I said. "I'm done running from things I don't understand."
Adrian's expression shifted—surprise, respect, and something else I couldn't quite name. "Alright. But we do this carefully. Methodically. One page at a time, with protections in place."
"How do we—"
A phone rang, shrill in the silence. Adrian's phone.
He answered it, his expression darkening with each word. "When?... How many?... I'm on my way."
He hung up and looked at me with an expression that made my stomach drop.
"What happened?"
"Two more bodies. Found an hour ago at the edge of town. Same black rose, same message carved into their skin." His jaw clenched. "But this time, there's something new. They're arranged to spell out words."
"What words?"
"'Three days, little Iris. Then you're mine.'"