Page 57 of PET

I’ll let him run for now. He won’t be able to run forever, and he clearly has business in Reaper, so he isn’t going to go far soon.

His crazed eyes look between me and Holden as he backs up, cornering himself. But I’m not expecting him to use his foot to open a secret door in the wall behind him. I’m about to lunge forward when I stop myself, knowing Billie’s still in danger.

Then Patrick shoves Billie forward, making her land on her knees with a thud. And then he’s gone, disappearing through the secret door.

“Billie!” I rush forward and pull her to me.

She climbs me like a tree, burying her face in my neck as I shove my mask up and kiss her face wherever I can. There was a moment there that I actually thought something bad was going to happen to her. The bastard almost took her from me, but that won’t happen again. Billie won’t leave my sight from here on out—or Zeke’s.

“I’m going down!” Holden shouts, running to the secret door.

“Holden, wait!” I yell after him. “Fuck!”

I set Billie down and frame her face with my hands. “Baby, I need you to stay right behind me. We have to go in after Holden.”

“No,” she sobs, shaking her head wildly. “He’s down there!”

It’s clear she’s afraid of her uncle, more now than ever, but I shake my head. “I won’t let anything happen to you, little hellfire, but we can’t let him go down alone, and I refuse to let you out of my sight.”

She nibbles nervously on her plump bottom lip, searching my face as her brows pinch together. “Please don’t go down there,” she whispers.

“I have to, Billie. We can’t let him get away.”

With a brief nod, she softly says, “Okay…”

“That’s my girl,” I say with a smirk as I take her hand and pull her behind me as we descend into the darkness.

The stone steps look to be as old as the house, probably put in when the house was built in the 1920s. It’s not uncommon in these parts for houses to have hidden spaces, what with prohibition going on back then. These houses have more history and stories to tell than most museums.

“Holden!” I shout into the darkness.

Billie is clutching onto my back as we slowly make our way down the winding stairs.

“Down here, man,” Holden shouts back.

I follow his voice, holding my arm up against the cool stone to guide my path. Blinking when I see light, we enter a small chamber, but it doesn’t seem like we’re in the basement. And Patrick’s bitch ass is nowhere to be found. There must be another secret door, but not one I can see with the naked eye.

“What the hell is this place?” I ask, looking around the cramped room full of trinkets, framed photographs, old and dusty books, and a table in the center with candles and parchment.

“Kind of feels like something out of Hogwarts, doesn’t it?” Holden asks, wiping the dust-covered glass of a photo hanging on the wall. “Well, fuck me. Dude, come look at this.”

I take three steps to get to him, squinting as I look at the picture. It’s an old, colorless photograph from a time well before ours, and several people stand in a group without any smiles on their faces.

I’m not seeing anyone familiar in the photo until my gaze halts on the man in the back row, standing tall—my grandfather. My gaze takes in the rest of the people and their surroundings. They’re standing in front of the dormitory building of Reaper Academy.

“If that’s my grandpa,” I say, pointing at the others, “then these other people must be Reaper alumni, too.”

Billie steps up behind me, glancing around my arm to see when she points at the lady on the far end. “My Grandma.”

I look at Holden, who looks back at me with confusion. “My grandparents are there, too,” he says.

Stepping away from the picture, I look around the rest of the room and note how everything in here seems to have a tie to Reaper—the school’s logo, books, and uniforms.

“Hey, I’ve seen this before,” Holden comments, pulling me back to him.

He’s holding up a parchment from the table in the center of the room, a question pinching his brows together. “Dana gave me something before Everlee and I left—she told me to get out of these hills, that they hold many secrets. This symbol was on a medallion my mother had on her when they brought her body in.”

Taking the paper from him, I inspect the half human, half skull face with symbols and the wordREAPERprinted in a circle around it. I know this symbol well. But to keep my own secrets, I ask, “What the hell is it?”

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