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The knocking came again.
Harder this time.
It wasn’t from the apartment door. It wasn’t from the black crack tearing across Micah’s living room wall, either.
It came from behind my ribs.
I doubled over so fast my shoulder hit the coffee table. The thing snapped in half under me. Cold coffee splashed over my hand, dark in the candlelight.
“Nora.” Elias grabbed my arm.
“Don’t touch me.”
My voice came out thin and ugly. I yanked away, but the blood pact burned under the skin of my palm. His blood. Mine. That little cut from the ritual had healed hours ago.
The mark hadn’t.
Micah was still on the floor by the wall, wrists wrapped in those black chains. They weren’t metal. Not really. They moved when I looked straight at them, tightening and loosening like something breathing.
His face had gone gray.
“Get away from her,” he whispered.
“I’m trying to get you out,” I said.
“No.” His eyes found mine, huge and wet. “Not you. Him.”
Elias’s hand tightened around the knife at his side.
Vera stood near the busted front door, one boot planted in the entryway like she owned the whole building. Maybe she did. The Morrows seemed to own a lot more than expensive suits and creepy family jewelry.
She looked from Micah to me, then to Elias.
“Well,” she said. “That’s new.”
“Shut up,” I snapped.
She smiled a little. “You’ve got your brother’s manners.”
The crack in the wall gave a wet little shiver.
A hand pushed through.
Not all the way. Just fingers first. Gray skin. Broken nails. The wrist bent wrong, like whoever it belonged to had been buried under something heavy.
Micah screamed.
I moved before I could think.
Elias caught me around the waist and dragged me back so hard my feet slipped on the coffee-soaked floor.
“Don’t,” he said into my ear.
“My brother is right there.”
“You touch him, it gets worse.”
“You keep saying that.” I shoved at his arm. “You keep saying it like that means anything.”
“It means you need to listen for once.”
I turned in his grip. His face was too close. Blood ran from a cut at his hairline, down the side of his neck, soaking into the collar of his black shirt.
He looked wrecked.
He also looked like he knew exactly what was happening to me.
That made me want to hit him more than the blood did.
“What’s inside me?” I asked.
His jaw locked.
“Elias.”
The mark in my palm flared.
For one second, I smelled smoke.
Not apartment smoke. Not electrical smoke from the dead power lines outside.
This was old smoke. Hot wax. Wet stone.
And then the room dropped away.
I was standing somewhere else.
No. Not me.
I was inside Elias.
His body was smaller. His hands were smaller. A boy’s hands, shaking so badly that candle wax trembled in the brass dish he held.
He couldn’t have been more than twelve.
The room was underground. Stone walls. Rows of candles. Too many people dressed in black, all wearing silver rings that caught the firelight.
Morrow rings.
A man stood at the far end of the room. Tall. Dark hair gone gray at the temples. His face had the same sharp bones Elias had, except colder.
His father, I guessed.
Beside him stood Vera.
Younger then. Maybe not much older than Elias was now. Her hair was pulled back tight. Her mouth was already doing that smug little thing I wanted to punch off her face.
On the floor between them sat a child.
A girl.
Her knees were scraped. Her brown hair hung in her face. She wore a yellow raincoat that was way too big for her.
My raincoat.
My breath stopped.
The memory lurched closer.
Little Elias stood near a stone table with a silver bowl on it. Blood dripped from the edge of the bowl, thick and black in the candlelight.
Daniel was there too.
He was maybe eight. Crying quietly. His hands were bound with red thread.
The man—Elias’s father—looked at the boys.
“One of you can leave this room,” he said.
Daniel made a choking sound.
Elias stared at him. “What?”
“One of you,” the man repeated. “The other stays and takes the oath.”
Vera stepped toward the little girl in the yellow raincoat.
I knew that girl.
I knew the small scar over her left eyebrow. I knew the way she kept biting her lower lip because she didn’t want to cry in front of strangers.
It was me.
I tried to move. Tried to scream. Nothing happened.
I was stuck behind Elias’s eyes.
The man pointed at me.
“She can replace the vessel,” he said. “Her blood already answers the door.”
Elias looked at me.
Not kid-me. Me.
Like somehow he could see straight through the memory and find the woman trapped inside it.
His face went white.
“No,” he said.
His father didn’t even blink. “Choose.”
Daniel was sobbing now. “Eli, please.”
The room squeezed tight around us.
Little Elias looked at his brother.
Then at me.
Then at the silver bowl.
“I’ll do it,” he whispered.
His father shook his head. “That is not the choice.”
Vera crouched beside little me and brushed hair off my face.
“Pretty thing,” she said. “She won’t remember much.”
I kicked at her in the memory.
She laughed.
Little Elias’s breathing turned ragged. I could feel it. His panic. His shame. His tiny hands curling into fists.
“Take her,” he said.
The words hit harder than the chains around Micah.
“Take her,” he said again, louder this time. “Let Daniel go. Take her.”
The memory shattered.
I came back on my knees, gagging.
Elias was in front of me, both hands on my shoulders.
“Nora.”
I slapped him.
The sound cracked through the room.
Even Vera went quiet.
Elias’s head snapped to the side. He didn’t touch his cheek. Didn’t defend himself.
I hit him again.
This time he caught my wrist.
“You gave me to them,” I said.
“Nora—”
“You gave me to them.”
“I was twelve.”
“And I was what?” My voice broke. “Five? Six?”
His eyes shut for half a second.
That was answer enough.
Micah looked between us, confused and scared. “Nora, what is she talking about?”
I couldn’t look at him.
Because I remembered pieces now. Not a full memory. Just scraps.
A lady with cold fingers washing blood off my hands.
A boy crying in a corner.
Someone saying I was lucky they’d decided not to keep me.
Then a bus station. A social worker. A new name written on a form.
Vane.
Like they’d stamped it over whatever I’d been before.
Elias let go of my wrist.
“I got you out,” he said.
I laughed once. It sounded crazy. “You got me out?”
“I came back.”
“After you handed me over.”
“I came back for you.” His voice rose, sharp for the first time. “I was a kid, Nora. I didn’t know what they were going to do. I thought they’d use your blood once and send you home. I thought Daniel would die if I didn’t—”
“Don’t say his name like that fixes it.”
“It doesn’t fix anything.”
“No kidding.”
The crack in the wall snapped wider.
Cold air hit us. Not normal cold. Grave cold. It crawled under my shirt and pressed against my skin.
The dead hand reached farther through the opening.
Then another one appeared beside it.
Vera finally lost that little smile.
“Elias,” she said. “Close it.”
He didn’t look at her.
“Nora,” he said instead. “I need you to do exactly what I say.”
“Oh, now you need me?”
“Yes.”
“Go to hell.”
“That door is trying to come through you.” His voice dropped. “You can hate me in ten minutes. Right now, I need you alive.”
The blood mark on my palm burned so hot I cried out.
A memory slammed into me again.
Elias at seventeen, standing in a bathroom with blood all over his hands.
Daniel on the floor behind him.
Vera’s voice from somewhere beyond the door: Do what you’re told, or he opens up again.
Another flash.
Elias breaking a window with his bare fist.
Running through snow.
Holding a small child in a yellow coat against his chest.
Me.
He’d carried me out.
I saw his face in that memory. He was crying so hard he could barely breathe.
Then I saw something else.
A ring on his finger.
The same black-silver ring he wore now.
It cut into his skin as he ran, and blood dripped onto the back of my little hand.
The mark in my palm answered.
Elias cursed and grabbed his own hand.
“No.”
“What?” I asked.
His face changed.
Not guilt this time.
Fear.
Real fear.
“The pact is pulling too deep.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“You’re seeing things you shouldn’t be able to see.”
“Maybe stop keeping a whole murder basement in your childhood memories.”
“Nora.” He stepped closer. “If it goes both ways, you could pull the gate through the bond.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means I have to cut you off.”
My stomach dropped. “Cut me off how?”
He looked at the knife in his hand.
I stared at it.
“No.”
“It won’t break the pact.”
“Then what’s it going to do?”
“Put a wall between us.”
“You have a wall. It’s called lying every time you open your mouth.”
His mouth twisted. “Fair.”
“Elias.”
He took my hand before I could pull away.
His fingers were freezing.
The blood mark jumped under both our skin.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Then he drove the knife straight through his own palm.
I screamed with him.
Pain ripped up my arm, hot and blinding. The room tilted. Blood poured over his fingers and onto mine, our hands locked together around the blade.
The mark flared white.
For one wild second I felt everything in him.
Daniel laughing as a kid.
Elias starving in some motel room because he’d spent his last cash getting me across state lines.
Vera’s boot on his throat.
A locked room.
Daniel screaming his name.
Then a black door with my blood running beneath it.
Not Micah’s door.
Mine.
I saw myself standing on the other side of it.
Older. Blood all over my mouth. My eyes completely black.
The vision cut out.
Elias ripped his hand away.
The connection went silent.
Not gone.
Still there under my skin, like a wire buried too deep to pull out.
But silent.
I fell forward, catching myself on both hands.
Elias staggered back into the wall. Blood ran down his wrist. His face had gone pale enough that I could see every bruise under his skin.
Micah made a terrified noise.
The chains around him jerked tight.
“Nora!”
I looked up.
Vera had moved.
Fast.
She was behind Micah now, one arm hooked around his chest, the other holding a narrow silver blade under his jaw.
Elias swore and raised his knife.
“Don’t,” Vera said.
The dead hands on the other side of the crack stopped moving.
Like they were listening.
Micah shook his head at me. “Don’t let her take me.”
“I won’t,” I said, pushing to my feet.
Vera pressed the blade just enough for a red line to appear on his throat.
“You’ll stay right there,” she said.
“You hurt him,” I said, “I swear to God—”
“You’ll do what?”
I took another step.
The crack in the wall knocked from the other side.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Vera’s eyes flicked toward me.
Not fear. Interest.
Like she’d just found money in an old coat pocket.
“Oh,” she said softly. “So it really is you.”
Elias went rigid.
“Vera,” he said. “Leave her out of this.”
She smiled at him. “You had years to tell her.”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
Of course nobody answered.
Vera dragged Micah backward toward the doorway. The chains moved with him, sliding across the floor like black oil.
I lunged.
Elias caught me around the middle again.
“Let me go!”
“If you cross that threshold, she’ll use you to open it.”
“She has my brother!”
“I know.”
Micah reached for me.
“Nora!”
My fingers brushed his.
Just the tips.
Then Vera pulled him out into the dark hall.
The apartment door slammed shut.
Every candle blew out at once.
For a second there was nothing but Micah screaming my name from somewhere beyond the door.
Then Vera’s voice came through the wood, calm as ever.
“Three days, Elias. Bring me the girl before the city wakes up dead.”
The lock clicked.
And from inside my chest, something started knocking back.