70

“ H ow do we get her out?” I slammed my gun on the table in the library, the dust that licked the top twirling up into the air and into my nose. Both heads turned to face me. Koen’s brows raised and Clay sat back against his chair to stare at me.

I hated her and I hated myself.

Every inch of her perfect body, the way her curves fit in my hands. The way her fingers pulled the hair at my nape and her nails dug into my back pulling me closer, deeper, so hard that I was sure she had drawn blood. It was ecstasy.

I hated it.

Every tiny whine that left her lips as she marked my body and we took each other right there in the kitchen. It rolled through me like fire.

She had to be a monster, a spirit, or a siren. She had to be… but I hadn’t expected her to feel so human. Violent disgust rolled through me and caught in my throat. It was like Wyatt was mocking me from his grave, making me sick.

There was no stuffing these emotions back in the bag.

“An hour ago, you were insinuating that decapitating her would be the best option to end all this,” Clay snapped. “Now you want to get her out?” He rose from the table, his muscles flexing beneath the navy dress shirt as he questioned my motives.

“You have every right to question my motives.” I stopped him. I didn’t want to fight him again; that’s not why I came in here.

To be honest, I wasn’t even sure why I had. Leaving the kitchen was all my brain could manage, the taste of her still clinging to my lips as I stormed through the house, trying to find something to hit. My hand still throbbed from the hole I left in the shoddy, crumbling plaster in my efforts to redirect some of the anger.

But I couldn’t stop myself. The way her breath caught in her throat when she dared me to end her life. It severed my resolve of hating her and all I wanted to do was kiss her quiet, until there was nothing vindictive or mean or self-effacing left in her mind to leave her lips.

I swallowed down the image of her breathless and spread open on the island to focus on the grilling I was receiving from Clay, begrudgingly coming back to reality.

“I’m questioning it, Wesley. What the hell?” He snapped.

I opened my mouth only to shut it again and Koen started to laugh so hard that he nearly fell out of his chair. His hat tipped off his head and the blond waves shook lightly as he tossed his head back in amusement.

“What?” Clay turned that cold tone on him, his jaw tightening and his lips pressed together in a tight line.

Koen rolled forward and put his elbows on the table, looking at me with a shit-eating grin on his dumb face. He had figured it out. “Isn’t is obvious? He cracked, gave in. He’s had a taste of her.” His accent got thicker as he mocked me but his eyes were also suspicious as they bore into mine .

Clay clued in, though, his gray eyes darting back and forth as he nodded stiffly. “You…” he stopped and inhaled slowly. “If you hurt…”

“He didn’t.” Florence appeared behind us. Her hair was fixed back into a bun and her face was no longer flushed with color. She looked normal, back to a state where I could try and convince myself to see her as a monster, not a woman. That was until I could see the fading marks of my teeth just below her right ear on her neck. It bolstered the noisy thud of my heart as she crossed the room toward the three of us.

Clay’s hand instinctively reached out to her and I could feel the divide growing.

“If we’re going to figure this out,” I sighed, unable to even look at her. “We need to start acting like a damn family again. I’m sick of this.”

Clay’s gaze narrowed on me as he moved it away from his sweep of Florence’s body; like he was checking her for marks. Like he didn’t trust me.

I didn’t blame him.

“We figure out how the hell to get her out of this house and we go. Fast,” I ordered them. “We can’t stay. The house is tearing itself apart with the effort of hurting us. We’re sitting ducks here.” I stopped short of trying to verbalize my remorse for being an asshole, unable to find the words. “We work better as a team. We always have. I’ll start pulling my weight.”

Koen snorted, a wide grin forming on his cheeky little face. “Took you long enough.”

“It doesn’t mean I agree with it or that…I think she’s innocent. If she’s behind any of this, I’ll put her down,” I said, but it hurt more than before when she flinched beside me. Understanding but quiet .

“Fine,” Clay grunted, and the house seemed to rattle in response.

“Alright.”

“It’s only going to get worse,” Florence voiced, and we all turned to look at her. “The Manor,” she steeled her nerves and pinned back her shoulders, “doesn’t like people,” she said.

“Obviously,” I scoffed. “Tell them what you said to me.”

Her eyes bore a hole into me, “Normally... As I’ve explained, not one single soul has been allowed to enter the Manor in all these years, but it let you three waltz right in. And now it seems to be...”

“Playing with its food,” Koen finished for her.

“Exactly. I fear the only reason it’s allowed the situation to progress in this way is because it wants to hurt me.” She stopped again, her body growing tight as she put space between herself and Clay.

“What does that mean?” Clay asked.

“To the best of my understanding, the house likes to be in control. It enjoys inflicting punishment and that’s why trying to leave is so violent. It enjoys my pain. It’s why…” she turned to look at me, “it won’t let me die, but it lets me attempt. It likes to watch and to feel the agony I go through when I recover from the self-inflicted damage. It enjoys taking care of me when I can’t take care of myself.”

We were all quiet as she continued.

“It’s found something even more appealing than physical pain,” she explained.

“Emotional torture,” Clay finished for her. “It’s going to do that through us to hurt you.”

We had never faced a monster with such intellectual awareness. The Manor was playing games with us.

“You mean it’s going to kill us to hurt you?” Koen asked because Clay was silenced by his anger and I wasn’t in any position to guide the conversation.

“Most likely one at a time.” Her bottom lip trembled. “It’ll be slow…” She stopped and looked around her like she could hear it talking to her.

I still wasn’t even sure how I felt about Florence.

I knew how good she felt. I knew that the passion made me feel alive.

But the memory of Wyatt still clung to my soul, severing through the scar tissue violently as a reminder of what could happen if she wasn’t telling the truth.

The attraction was there, but the trust was glaringly absent.

“Come at us, you bitch,” Koen demanded loudly, and Florence jumped, making Clay reach out to her again. She offered him a tight smile before looking back at me.

“I can’t protect you,” she said as if it was the first time.

“We don’t need you to protect us,” I said before Clay could argue. “This is what we do.”

“Aye,” Clay added, “we’ve survived worse than one old house.”

She unlinked her hand from behind her back and extended a piece of parchment toward Clay. He looked down at it, wrapping his hand around her wrist instead of the paper.

“Are you sure?” He quietly asked her and she nodded. He pulled his glasses out and situated them on his face before setting the paper on the old table beside his notebook and started to read.

“It’s not the original letter.” She swallowed tightly and stared at Clay. “I wrote down as much as I could remember the moment I realized it had disappeared. The Manor had led me to it and away from it, and when I went back the next day it was gone. I turned the entire second floor over looking for it. I spent days recounting my steps wondering if I had just dreamed of finding it entirely.” She paused, breathing deeply through the memory. “So many parts of the letter were illegible, as if she were too weak to hold the quill… but the ending has been burned into my mind since the moment I read it.”

We all hovered as he studied the faded ink, his brows pinched tightly together in frustration.

Florence inched closer, her long fingers reaching out to show him the flow as she read out loud. “This was how she had originally written the letter. The Manor,” she paused between each messy scribble. “I do not know how or why. All that I do know is that–” Florence leaned forward. “And it requires—For years I have been—but I was never enough.” She inhaled slowly. “It tires of me. I can feel it tearing–at my being–punishing me, always punishing–” When she finished she stood up straight but the air in the room had shifted.

“When Agatha died it was–” she closed her eyes for a moment, steadying herself. “Violent. Disturbing. She did not die of old age. She died in front of my eyes in a way that I can not describe without being ill. It was—” Florence stopped, opening her eyes and they bore into mine. “–horrible. Her body seemed to have been decaying for an untold amount of time. I had tried to help—” She shuddered uncontrollably “—her bones twisted out of shape, she was lifted into the air and her insides were pulled outward–there was so much blood. And I could not move, or look away… the Manor forced me to watch. It was cruel.”

The Manor responded to her confession with more violence as the floorboards groaned, shooting rusty nails into the air, and they fell around us like hail. Clay covered Florence as Koen and I swatted the nails away as best we could.

“I fucking hate this place,” I groaned as a nail caught the skin on the back of my hand in a sharp, painful scratch.

“I didn’t understand why it had forced me to witness such gruesome brutality at first but, after reading the letter and having so much time to understand the Manor and the way it acts, I realized that Agatha was being made an example of. Of what could happen if I stopped playing my part. A threat that I, too, could one day be disposable.”

“So it’s not just throwing telekinetic tantrums. If it really wanted to, it could turn us inside out.” Koen sighed and rubbed his hands over his face, feeling the few new cuts that had been marked into his skin.

“From all my research, all the stories…It’s never done anything like that to guests. ” Clay mumbled absently.

“There haven’t been any guests! And Florence isn’t a guest, she’s a prisoner ,” I snapped, reminding them all of the harsh truth. Clay nodded in agreement. “It also doesn’t guarantee it won’t learn a new trick and use it on us at a moment's notice.”

“Are there more journals?” Clay asked Florence and she shook her head.

“Only the one.”

“There’s something about the letter that doesn’t sit right. Mrs. Warren had written ‘and it requires.’ I think for the sake of figuring this all out, we need to find out exactly what it requires.” He stared down at the letter. “We won’t let the Manor win, Florence. I assure you.” Clay looked up at her, extending his hand and linking it with hers in reassurance.