Seven hundred thousand dollars was more than she'd made in the last three years combined. It was the kind of money that meant she could stop taking commissions for a while, maybe even buy that derelict firehouse in Portland she'd been eyeing. But it was also the kind of money that came with strings attached—strings that could strangle you if you weren't careful.
She set up her temporary living quarters in what had once been the butler's pantry—small, windowless, and defensible. Then she began her walkthrough. brooke beretta
Brooke found the entrance behind a false wall in the kitchen—a narrow staircase of rough-hewn stone that descended into absolute blackness. Her flashlight cut a weak beam through the dark, illuminating walls that were not made of brick or concrete, but of something darker, smoother, almost organic. Obsidian? Coal? She touched the surface. It was warm. Unnaturally warm. Seven hundred thousand dollars was more than she'd
I have done something terrible. To stop Silas, I used the house against him. I reversed the geometry—turned the key the other way. The door opened, but not where they expected. It opened inside them. They are still here, all twelve of them and Blackwood and my husband, but they are not alive. They are part of the house now. The faces on the banister? Those are the servants. The pattern in the parquet floor? That is Blackwood's spine. She set up her temporary living quarters in
That, more than anything, made her say yes. The Ashworth House sat at the crest of a hill, hidden behind a grove of old-growth firs that had somehow survived the city's expansion. The neighborhood around it had long since been carved into smaller lots, filled with Craftsman bungalows and faux-Tudor revivals, but the Ashworth property remained stubbornly intact—three acres of overgrown gardens, a crumbling carriage house, and the mansion itself, a sprawling Victorian Gothic nightmare of turrets, gables, and peeling lavender paint.