Chapter 3

All the blood in my body rushed painfully to my head.

"Darling," Eleanor breathed right against my ear. "What exactly are you looking for?"

The magnetic fob burned against my palm like a hot coal.

I spun around. She was standing barely six inches away, looking at me with a tilted head. Her raincoat was dripping water onto the floorboards. She hadn't even gone to town.

I shoved the plastic fob deep into the pocket of my jeans and grabbed a folded wool blanket from the bottom shelf.

"The heating unit in our room is broken," I said, keeping my voice entirely flat. "I was looking for the thick wool blankets. We're freezing."

Eleanor stared at the blanket, then slowly lifted her gaze to my face.

The silence dragged out, heavy and suffocating.

Then, she sighed. Her shoulders dropped. She reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair behind my ear. "You're always so responsible, Elara."

She took the blanket from my hands and set it on the cutting table.

"I know Arthur and I pour all our expectations into Holden," she said softly. "I know this farm belongs to him, and that you and Maeve get the scraps. It’s horribly unfair. Do you hate us?"

My throat tightened.

On this farm, a son was legacy. Daughters were just unpaid farmhands until they could be married off. Holden got the private school tuition and the prime cuts of meat at dinner. Maeve and I wore patched shirts and spent our weekends scrubbing the cow stalls.

But Eleanor was the only one who ever softened the blow.

When Arthur roared that paying for our high school entrance exams was a waste of money on women, Eleanor took a beating to secure our enrollment. Four Thanksgivings ago, she smuggled a slice of butter pudding into the barn for Maeve and me, risking Arthur’s wrath if he caught her.

In my first life, when Silas stood on that porch demanding a blood oath in exchange for a wish, I actually considered it a blessing. I traded my soul to the beast, entirely convinced the bounty would finally buy my mother a ticket away from Arthur’s abuse.

It took two brutal deaths to start questioning the hands that fed me the scraps.

"Elara."

Eleanor reached into the deep pocket of her raincoat. She pulled out a small, heavy bundle wrapped in rubber bands and shoved it forcefully into my hands.

I looked down.

Two Greyhound bus tickets to Chicago. Our social security cards. A stack of crumpled twenty-dollar bills.

Before I could speak, she slapped her hand over my mouth.

Her eyes were wide, frantic.

"I saw the way you two looked on the porch," she whispered sharply, glancing nervously back down the hallway. "That Silas... he's not a spirit. He's something foul. And he’s coming back in three days."

She pushed me vaguely toward the door.

"Take this money. It's enough for a week. Take Maeve and leave tonight. Once you cross the Delaware state line, the Blackwood curse can’t track your scent anymore."

"Mom..." I pulled her hand away from my mouth, entirely stunned. "What does this mean?"

"It means you need to disappear for a few days," she said, her voice cracking. "Let the beast realize his prey is gone. The contract will void itself. Then you can come back to me."

The magnetic fob sitting in my pocket suddenly felt like a physical weight of betrayal.

I had just spent the last twenty minutes trying to frame my mother for the monster's curse. I was ready to serve her up to Silas. And here she was, the only person in this rotting house trying to buy us a way out.

Shame burned the back of my neck. I couldn't form a single word. I just nodded, clutching the tickets to my chest.

An hour later.

The back door creaked open. Maeve slipped into our bedroom, her clothes damp with rain. The color was completely drained from her face.

"He's asleep," she whispered, locking the bedroom door. "I barely got away. We pulled into the gas station down the highway. Mom said she was going in for black coffee. Five minutes passed. I went inside to check, and she was just... gone."

Maeve grabbed my elbow, her nails digging into my arm. "Did she catch you? Did you get into the sewing room?"

I stepped back and pulled the bundle from my pocket. I tossed it onto the bed.

The bus tickets, the social security cards, the cash.

"We had it all wrong," I said. "She caught me, but she didn't punish me. She gave me this. She told us to run to Chicago tonight. Once we cross the state line, the curse breaks."

Maeve stared down at the bundle. Her breathing slowed. "She's... trying to save us?"

"She packed enough cash for a week." I grabbed my duffel bag from under the bed. "We grab some clothes and hike down to the bus station. If Silas comes back and finds an empty house, he has no target."

Maeve nodded silently. She wiped her eyes and walked over to the bed, picking up one of the Greyhound tickets.

She turned it over in her hands.

Her movement froze.

"Elara..." Maeve gasped, her voice barely a scrape of sound. "Look at the back."

I grabbed the ticket from her hands and flipped it over.

There, stamped in the corner in faded red ink, was a date.

A date from three weeks ago.