Adrian moved like liquid shadow, positioning himself between me and the dark hallway where that horrible singing echoed. His entire body had gone rigid, coiled like a spring ready to snap.
"Stay close to me," he said, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "Whatever happens, don't let it touch you. Don't let it speak directly to you. And for God's sake, don't look it in the eyes."
"You're really selling this whole protection thing," I muttered, but my attempt at sarcasm fell flat. My hands were shaking too hard.
The singing stopped.
The silence that followed was somehow worse.
Adrian pulled something from inside his jacket—a gun, but not like any I'd ever seen. The metal was etched with the same symbols that covered his arm, and it seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
"Blessed silver bullets," he said, catching my stare. "Kills most things that shouldn't exist. The rest it just pisses off."
"That's not comforting."
"Wasn't trying to be comforting. I was trying to be honest." He moved forward slowly, scanning the shadows. "The kitchen—do you know where it is?"
"I think so. Why?"
"Because you're going to go there, find the largest knife you can, and cover the handle in salt. There should be a container in one of the cabinets—Vera kept salt everywhere. She knew what she was dealing with."
"I'm not leaving you alone with that thing."
He glanced back at me, and something flickered in those silver eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or approval. "Brave and stupid. That's a dangerous combination."
"Yeah, well, I've been making dangerous decisions all day. Might as well commit to the theme."
The corner of his mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but close. Then his expression hardened again. "Fine. But you do exactly what I say, when I say it. Understood?"
Before I could answer, a door slammed upstairs. Then another. And another. It sounded like someone was running through every room, throwing doors open and shut in rapid succession.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
The rhythm was deliberate. Taunting.
"He's playing with us," Adrian said grimly. "Trying to scatter our attention. Make us panic."
"It's working."
Another sound joined the slamming doors—footsteps, but wrong. Too many of them, coming from multiple directions at once. Upstairs, downstairs, in the walls themselves.
The lights flickered.
"Kitchen. Now." Adrian grabbed my wrist and pulled me down the hallway. His grip was firm, almost painfully tight, but I didn't pull away. Right now, that touch was the only thing keeping me tethered to sanity.
We burst into the kitchen, and Adrian immediately started opening cabinets with his free hand, never letting go of me. He found the salt on the third try—a large container of sea salt, half-empty.
"Knife," he ordered.
I yanked open the knife drawer and grabbed the biggest one I could find—a cleaver that looked like it hadn't been used in decades. My hands fumbled with the salt container, spilling white crystals across the counter as I tried to coat the handle.
The footsteps were getting louder. Closer.
"Adrian—"
"I hear it." He spun toward the kitchen entrance, gun raised. "Get in the corner. Behind the table."
"What are you going to—"
The thing that appeared in the doorway cut off my words.
It wore the shape of a man, but that's where the resemblance ended. Its body seemed to be made of smoke and shadow, constantly shifting, never quite solid. Where its face should have been, there was only darkness—deep, hungry darkness that seemed to pull at the light around it.
But its smile. God, its smile was visible even in all that shadow. Wide and white and wrong.
"Little Iris," it said, and its voice was velvet over razors. "You look so much like your mother. She screamed so beautifully at the end. Do you think you'll scream like her?"
Adrian fired.
The blessed bullet tore through the shadow creature's chest, and it shrieked—a sound that felt like nails dragging across my brain. The darkness writhed, parts of it dissolving like smoke in wind.
But it didn't fall.
"Stronger than I thought," Adrian muttered. He fired again, and again, each shot making the thing recoil but not stopping it.
It laughed—a horrible, bubbling sound. "You can't kill me, half-breed. I'm older than your bloodline. Older than this town. I've been waiting for her since before her grandmother was born."
"Yeah? Well, I've killed things older than you." Adrian ejected the empty magazine and slammed in a new one with practiced ease. "And uglier."
The shadow surged forward with impossible speed. Adrian met it head-on, and they collided in a tangle of darkness and gunfire. I watched, paralyzed, as Adrian moved with inhuman grace—dodging, striking, firing at point-blank range.
But the thing was fast. Its shadowy limbs extended and retracted like whips, one of them catching Adrian across the ribs and sending him crashing into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.
"Adrian!"
I didn't think. I just moved.
The cleaver was in my hand, salt-coated handle rough against my palm. I swung it at the shadow creature with every ounce of strength I had.
The blade passed through its body, and where it touched, the darkness burned. The thing let out another shriek, this one tinged with genuine pain. It recoiled, pulling away from Adrian.
"Impossible," it hissed. "You shouldn't be able to—"
I swung again. This time I aimed for where its head should be.
The cleaver connected, and the kitchen exploded with light.
Not regular light—this was white-hot and blinding, pouring from the blade like liquid fire. The shadow creature thrashed, its form fragmenting, pieces of it burning away like paper in a flame.
"No! NO! This isn't—you're not ready—you can't—"
Its voice cut off as the light consumed it entirely. There was a final, ear-splitting shriek, and then nothing.
Silence.
I stood there, gasping, the cleaver still raised, my entire body shaking. The light faded, leaving the kitchen in darkness except for the weak overhead bulb.
Adrian was on his feet, staring at me with an expression I couldn't read. "What the hell was that?"
"I don't know. I just—I saw you get hurt, and I—" The cleaver slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor. "Is it dead?"
"No." He moved to where the shadow had been and crouched down. "Look."
There, on the linoleum, was a scorch mark in the perfect shape of a rose. And in the center of it, a single drop of blood that was far too black to be human.
"You banished it," Adrian said slowly. "Sent it back to wherever it came from. That light—that was pure Seer energy. I've never seen anyone manifest it like that, especially not untrained."
"I don't understand any of this."
"Welcome to the club." He straightened, wincing slightly as his hand went to his ribs. "But that thing was right about one part. You're not ready. Not for what's coming."
"What is coming?"
"A war." He pulled out his phone and started typing. "That was just a fragment. A piece of the real thing, sent to test you. The actual entity—the one that's been killing people for over a century—is still out there. And now it knows exactly how powerful you are."
The weight of his words settled over me like a shroud. "So what do we do?"
"We train you. Fast. Because that thing will be back, and next time it won't send a fragment." He looked up from his phone, those silver eyes intense. "Next time, it'll come itself. And when it does, you need to be ready to fight."
"I'm a graphic designer from Seattle. I don't know how to fight demons."
"Then you learn. Or you die." He said it without malice, just cold fact. "Those are your options."
My phone buzzed in my pocket—Mara, probably wondering why I hadn't texted. Normal life, calling from a world that suddenly felt very far away.
"I can't just abandon everything. My job, my apartment, my cat—"
"Your cat will be fine. Your job can wait. And your apartment will still be there if you survive long enough to go back to it." Adrian's expression softened slightly. "I know this isn't fair. I know you didn't ask for this. But that thing in the kitchen? It was the appetizer. And it almost killed us both. The main course is coming, Iris, whether you're ready or not."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him he was wrong, that I could just leave, go back to Seattle, pretend none of this happened.
But I'd seen the visions. Felt the deaths. And something deep in my bones told me that running wouldn't save me. Whatever this thing was, it had been waiting for me. Planning for me. And it would follow me anywhere.
"Okay," I said quietly. "Teach me."
Adrian nodded, a flash of approval in his eyes. "Good. First lesson starts now. We need to search this house top to bottom. Your grandmother left you more than just an inheritance—she left you weapons, knowledge, everything she'd gathered about this entity. We find that, we might have a chance."
"And if we don't?"
"Then we improvise. I'm good at that." He started toward the door, then paused. "By the way, that thing you did with the light? Try not to do it again until I teach you how to control it. That much raw power unleashed without training can burn you out from the inside. I've seen it happen."
"Fantastic. Anything else I should know?"
"Yeah." He turned to face me fully, and for the first time, I saw something like concern in his expression. "That thing called you 'little Iris.' It knows you. Personally. Which means it's been watching you for a long time. Maybe your whole life."
The implications of that made my stomach turn. "How is that possible? I've never been to Hollow's End before today."
"Physical distance doesn't matter to entities like this. If it's connected to your bloodline, it can sense you anywhere." He moved closer, close enough that I could smell leather and gunpowder and something else—something wild and dark that made my pulse quicken. "From now on, you don't go anywhere alone. You don't touch anything without checking with me first. And you sure as hell don't trust anyone in this town. Understood?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
"Good." He stepped back, and I could breathe again. "Now let's find out what other secrets your grandmother was hiding. Because I guarantee that attack was just the beginning."
As if in response to his words, somewhere in the house, a grandfather clock began to chime.
Thirteen times.
Clocks don't chime thirteen.
Adrian's hand went to his gun. "Stay close to me."
I grabbed the cleaver from the floor, my knuckles white around the salt-crusted handle.
Whatever came next, at least I wouldn't face it unarmed.