Page 129 of An Inheritance of Monsters

“You’re missing one big point, Carson,” I told him. “The Fuseli Comet—”

“Is an Elder God, yeah, yeah,” he cut me off. “And right now, the doors to the Void are vulnerable. I took that right out of your notes. This is the time to strike.”

I held back a snarl of anger. If he hadn’t hit me so fucking hard, maybe my thoughts wouldn’t be swirling like fireflies just out of reach.

I felt there was something I was missing, something I needed to understand… and every time I reached out for it, the thought slipped away.

The last thing I wanted was to help him break the connection between Earth and the Void further.

“Then you should probably untie me so we can get on with it.” I flexed my arms as much as possible, trying to make my point. Once I was free, he’d be getting a concussion himself, courtesy of the candelabra he’d used on me.

But Carson laughed, rising back to his full height. “Come on, Junes. You act like I don’t know you.”

So I wasn’t the best actress. I smiled sweetly, all too aware of the tension of the comet rising beneath the throbbing pain in my skull.

If he didn’t untie me soon, the ritual would remain uncompleted, and our world would be destroyed.

All I could think to do was distract him long enough to escape.

“You know Jack is dead, right?” I asked him, looking him in the eye. He should at least know that his lying, conniving friend’s throat had been cut.

Carson didn’t so much as bat an eye. “I pushed him through one of the doors. I wanted to see what was on the other side. He was deadweight, anyway.”

“That’s cold.”

“That’sbusiness,” he corrected, gaze icy as he flipped another page of the Black Book, studying it. “He served his purpose.”

His purpose… and what was my purpose supposed to be, beyond receiving half the pay?

He wasn’t keeping me around because helikedme.

I finally managed to catch one of those darting, firefly thoughts.

Carson needed me because I was a Marsh by blood. Without me to seal the ritual, the doors to the Void would remain closed forever.

It was a struggle not to begin hyperventilating. I’d rather be dead than be responsible for the death of my monsters or the destruction of our world.

I just managed to hide my expression when he faced me again, slamming the Black Book shut and flipping it closed.

“Now, I think we both know what comes next,” he said. Something glinted at his wrist and I started; he wore the skeleton key on its ribbon like a bracelet.

My heartbeat was so loud, I was sure he could hear it pounding like a drum. “You release me, and I stop the world from ending?”

Carson’s smile was cold as ice. “The blood sacrifice.”

My breath caught in my throat.

“Actually, I can thank Rosalie for this one—before she took off, she shared a little about her research paper with me. She was studying death cults. Apparently, your ancestors were a viciously bitchy lot, and their husbands and fiancés didn’t just die. Oh, no. They werebrutalized, in a constant cycle going back three hundred years.” He began pacing, his limbs moving with the frenetic, bouncy movements he always used to get when he was excited. “Every single time the manor passed hands to a new owner, it was marked by a bloody death. Which means one thing: someone has to die tonight, and then we have free, unfettered access to the Void for the rest of our lives.”

“Were you planning to volunteer yourself?” I asked quietly. “Everyone else is gone.”

He merely pointed at the sad, still lump of woman in the corner.

“Don’t do this, Carson.” My throat was thick and tight. Sierra had done nothing to deserve this.

He didn’t answer. Carson strode to Sierra and picked her up bodily, dragging her over to the dining room door.

She groaned as she slid by my chair, a soft exhalation that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight.

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