The living room felt suffocating, heavy with silence and too many unspoken truths. Autumn sat there wearing an expression twisted between confusion and simmering rage, while Patrick clammed up completely, shrinking into himself.

  I gritted my teeth and exhaled slowly, forcing down the fire in my chest before I exploded on the kid. I didn’t think Patrick had meant for this to go so far. I didn’t think there was malice in him… just fear, cowardice, and a secret he thought he could manage. But in our world, secrets were poison. They killed just as cleanly as fangs or silver.

  “We know about your meetings with Peter, Patrick,” I said again, voice sharp enough to cut. Then I added, “We also know about the brush.”

  That broke him. His eyes flared, panic flashing across his face before he tried to smother it, but the damage was done. His silence screamed guilt.

  Sarah’s voice trembled as she leaned forward, the desperate plea of a mother ringing in her words. “Patrick, you have to tell us what’s going on. If any of this is true… you owe it to us, to this family, to speak up. This could be bigger than you realize.”

  Shelta sat statue-still, her short dark hair unmoving as her stare bore into him with predatory intensity. “You’re not leaving here until we know what he did.”

  Patrick’s face had gone pale, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. Everything about him said cornered animal. Every flinch, every twitch confirmed the visions Sam had warned me about, and that terrified me.

  Before Patrick could gather the courage to answer, Autumn snapped. Her voice tore through the room like broken glass. None of us were prepared for her… and what was coming.

  “What are you talking about? Why are you attacking him like this? He has nothing to hide!” Her words poured out in a rush, chaotic, defensive to the point of nonsense.

  She didn’t know the details we did… but she acted like we were the ones who knew nothing. The Autumn I raised would have stopped, questioned, demanded proof. She would’ve picked apart what didn’t make sense. But this Autumn? She wasn’t listening. She wasn’t weighing the facts. She was drowning in emotion that wasn’t hers. Her words weren’t her own. She couldn’t even seem to hear us… only the anger in her voice, only the fact that we had Patrick under fire.

  Eleanor moved then, her voice soft, her strong, toned frame easing beside our daughter. “Autumn, sweetie, we have to figure this out. Please.” She pulled Autumn into her arms, desperate to hold onto her, desperate to bridge the growing void we all felt between us and her.

  For a breath, I thought it worked. I saw it in her eyes… a flicker of the real Autumn, the girl who trusted her mother, who loved us. She looked confused, like something inside her was fighting to surface. My heart leapt with fragile hope.

  And then it was gone. Her body snapped forward, shoving Eleanor back with a violent force that sent my wife stumbling into the couch arm. She almost hit the ground. My heart seized at the sight.

  “Autumn!” I roared, rising so fast the couch jolted under me. “You do not lay hands on your mother!”

  Sarah’s horrified voice broke in, raw and frightened. “What’s wrong with her? This isn’t… this isn’t her!” Then she turned on Patrick with a mother’s fury, “Stop standing there like you’re a victim! Say something!”

  Patrick stepped back, his stance shaky, like he wanted to bolt. Eleanor returned to my side, her face carved with turmoil. I could see it in her eyes… she knew something had taken hold of our daughter. That shove wasn’t Autumn… she had never done something like that to either of us. Our family was everything to us… It was to her.

  And then Autumn screamed again, higher, louder, her voice raw with hysteria. “You’re lying! He doesn’t know what you’re talking about! Why can’t you just be happy for me!?” Her words twisted into a wail, fury laced with anguish, until it was like she was screaming at the world itself. IT felt wrong… so, so wrong. It was like she rejected everything in that moment, and had to protect something in her mind… or maybe something in her mind was protecting its hold on her.

  My jaw clenched so hard it hurt. My daughter… my girl stood there, staring at me as if I were her enemy. The look in her eyes hollowed me out. For the first time, I felt her hate me.

  Finally, Patrick’s voice cracked through, shaking as his walls collapsed. “He wouldn’t leave me alone,” he stammered. “He kept cornering me, talking about all of you, saying things I didn’t understand. He told me he could help me.” A broken glimmer of hope clung to his words, hope that Peter’s lies still held. “That was before he killed Dad.” His voice broke, tears welling in his eyes. He looked like a child again, but all I felt was rage.

  Shelta’s voice cut clean through his excuses. “What did he teach you?”

  “Nothing yet!” Patrick yelped, panicked as he could feel the heat in his aunt's words. “After he killed Dad, I told him to leave me alone. He wouldn’t stop, though. He always found me when I was alone… appearing from nowhere.” His hand dipped into his jacket, and when it came out, he was holding it. A small, green, plastic hairbrush. “He gave me this. Said to keep it close. Said it would work things out for me. That he’d see me soon…” he held his head low, like he was sad… or disappointed. “But then… Sam killed him.”

  The air went icy. Every piece slid into place: the timeline, Sam’s fear, Patrick’s secrecy, and the out-of-place relationship that seemed to spring up from nowhere between the two. And then I noticed Autumn’s face at the mention of Sam. She winced, jaw clenched so tight her teeth ground audibly. Even his name made her recoil, like the very sound of him pushed against the curse that held her.

  Shelta’s voice softened to silk, every word edged with power. “Patrick, give it to me.” She reached for the brush.

  Patrick shook, his grip tightening. He didn’t want to release it… even with Shelta’s compulsion weighing on him.

  I saw Autumn’s body shift, her eyes locking on the brush, her muscles coiling. She wanted it. She needed it like it was the breath in her lungs. She moved, but so did I.

  She lunged, and I caught her hand mid-swipe. Her head snapped to me, and her eyes burned with something feral, hateful. Not my daughter’s eyes.

  “Let go of me!” she spat, her voice dripping with venom, each word a knife to my chest.

  I didn’t let go. I couldn’t. The brush wasn’t just an object… it was everything to her now. Her obsession; her curse.

  Shelta ripped it free from Patrick and stepped back, clutching it as if it might bite her. Meanwhile, Autumn thrashed in my arms, bucking and snarling like a wild animal. Her strength was terrifying, her body jerking with such violence my grip nearly slipped. This wasn’t my daughter. This was a feral, confused creature.

  I glanced over at Eleanor and gave her a sharp nod, the kind of look we had shared countless times in moments where words were too slow. “Go get it!” I snapped.

  I knew she was already thinking what I was thinking. The second our eyes locked, she bolted, her footsteps echoing down the hall, swift and sure, cutting toward the small utility room by the kitchen where we kept the emergency supplies. I could hear her sprinting through the house, drawers slamming and cabinets rattling as she tore through them. She didn’t waste a second. Within moments, she was back, breath quick, syringe in hand.

  She was careful, though. Instead of coming around where Autumn could see her, Eleanor slipped behind me, hovering near the back of the couch, hidden from Autumn’s wild, darting eyes. That was smart. If Autumn had seen what her mother carried, she might’ve fought twice as hard.

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  Meanwhile, I wrestled to keep hold of her. She was thrashing violently, jerking with unnatural strength, her body twisting against mine like a wild animal caught in a trap. I shifted, throwing one leg over both of hers, trying to pin her legs down with my weight while my arm locked across her chest. With my free hand, I forced her head sideways, exposing the line of her neck. My stomach turned to stone at what I was doing. This was my daughter, my Autumn… and I was manhandling her like she was something dangerous. But I had no choice. She wasn’t just trying to get free of me. She was fighting to reach the brush Shelta held across the room, snarling in a way that made my skin crawl.

  This wasn’t Autumn. This wasn’t my little girl. The way she fought, the guttural sounds she made… it was like restraining a starved, beaten stray dog that had lost all sense of family, of trust, of love. There was no recognition in her eyes. No care that she had shoved her mother across the room moments before. She was consumed. Something else lived inside her skin. The Autumn that walked through the door just minutes before vanished quicker than any of us were prepared for.

  Eleanor saw her chance. With one quick step forward, she drove the syringe into the thick muscle of Autumn’s neck. I could tell she was aiming for a vein, but there wasn’t time for precision. This was do-or-die, and she jammed it in with grim resolve. Her hand trembled only slightly as she pushed the plunger down, delivering the full dose meant for a grown man. Then she yanked the needle free, retreating instantly, her face twisted with guilt at what she’d just done.

  Autumn screamed, thrashing harder, her body jerking like the injection had set fire to her veins. Her snarls were animal, her teeth bared, spit flying as she fought me with every ounce of strength left in her. The ten seconds that followed felt like an eternity. I held on as her body convulsed and kicked, my arms aching with the effort of keeping her pinned. And then… slowly… her strength began to drain. Her movements turned sluggish, dulled. The feral snarls became weak, pitiful grunts. She clawed feebly at my arms, then sagged against me. Finally, she went limp.

  For a long moment, I didn’t move. I held her there against me, bracing for some trick, some resurgence. But I knew the dose. There was no way she could fight it off. My grip loosened slightly, and I just… held her. My daughter… her head heavy against my chest, her dark brown hair brushing against my chin, and all I could see was the baby I once cradled in my arms. I wanted… needed to believe she was still in there somewhere. But the thing we just fought back wasn’t Autumn; not by a long shot. Peter and that damned brush had stolen her away from us, and what remained in my arms was someone else entirely.

  Eleanor’s voice broke the spell of my grief, steady but urgent. “Carter, we don’t have forever. She’s going to wake up from that dose eventually. We need to get her locked down. The silver cell… now.”

  Her words hit hard, but I forced myself to move. I shifted my weight carefully, Eleanor helping me untangle from under Autumn’s limp frame. Together, we lifted her, my arms curling under her in a way that felt too much like the old days when she was small enough to carry without effort. My chest tightened, and I swallowed down the grief that threatened to choke me.

  The reality sank in as I adjusted my grip, preparing to take her downstairs. My daughter wasn’t going to her bed. She wasn’t safe in her room. She was being carried to a cage made of silver, built for monsters. The moment that truth settled into me, I realized another problem. Jane and I had made plans for Frank, plans that depended on the single reinforced cell we had in the basement. And now Autumn was going to occupy it. Even with the partition, I couldn’t put the two of them down there together. The thought of it chilled me. It would be too much. Far too much to have my cursed daughter on one side and my addicted brother on the other.

  We all stood together in the basement, the air thick with exhaustion and dread. The adrenaline from the fight upstairs had drained away, leaving only a hollow weariness in its place. Autumn was still unconscious inside the silver cell, her chest rising and falling steadily, her face deceptively calm behind those bars. It was a cruel sight… my daughter looking peaceful, while all of us knew it was only the drug keeping her down. Patrick stood apart from us, quiet, eyes glued to the floor, like the weight of what had just happened was pressing him into the concrete.

  When the silence became unbearable, I spoke, my voice sharp and deliberate. “Patrick, I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to think very carefully before you answer. Because how you answer it will tell us everything we need to know.” I held his eyes until I was sure the words sank in. “What did Peter say to you when he gave you that brush?”

  Patrick’s shoulders slumped. He stared down at the ground, his messy ponytail coming loose as his trembling hands dragged through it. He looked ragged, strung out, and for the first time, I wondered if maybe Peter’s influence had dug deeper into him than he even realized. Finally, after a long silence, he looked up; first at me, then at his mother, then at Shelta. And then he broke.

  “After he killed Dad…” Patrick’s voice cracked. “He came to me one last time. He brought the brush and told me it was Autumn’s. He didn’t say how exactly it would work, only that I should keep it close. He said it would give me everything I ever wanted. That it would make Sam go away… make him leave somehow… and make Autumn look at me again, like she used to. Like it was supposed to be.” His eyes welled as he stumbled on. “He said he’d come find me later, that he’d train me… teach me things about his power… my power. Things I could do but was being held back…” he stared up at all of us, “by all of you.” His voice collapsed into a whisper. “When he said it, something snapped in me. I got so angry at everyone; at all of you. I don’t even know why. I knew why I hated Sam, but more came. I hated him for everything that had happened. The monsters, the chaos… it all started when he showed up. We never ran into things like Mercy of Phineas until they came looking for him. Peter told me he understood. He followed that… that thing from France.” Patrick referred to Sam as a thing, and he was disgusted by him. “Peter knew he had killed the werewolves over there. He laid it all out for me.”

  Before I could speak, Sarah cut in, her voice sharp, desperate. “To save Alan, Patrick! Don’t twist this! Peter was the one who turned Alan. Don’t you dare forget that!” Her words cracked like a whip, her face twisted with both fear and fury at her son’s blindness.

  Shelta spoke next, her voice cold and deliberate, each word dripping with disgust. “You were too little to remember the Greenwoods, Patrick. You don’t know the history. We killed Peter once before, long before you ever laid eyes on him. He was a manipulator even then. He despised our bloodline, all of us. He poisoned his own family, turned them against us with lies and twisted memories of old grudges he hadn’t even lived through. And in the end, he murdered almost his entire bloodline himself. That’s who you trusted. That’s who you listened to. He is not trustworthy… he never was. That’s the curse talking to you… making you want to believe him… just like it is making Autumn believe certain things about you are the absolute truth, Patrick.”

  The fire rose in me, and I stepped forward, forcing my voice to stay steady despite the anger clawing at my throat. “Patrick, listen to me. Peter didn’t come for Sam. He came for us. He took Alan away in France, targeted him because he was from this family. He came here for the same reason… to destroy us. He killed my cousin Zeke. He killed your father, Bartley. Your grandmother gave her life so Shelta would have the strength to hold him off… long enough for Sam, the one you hate, to put him down for good. You think Sam is the problem? No. The problem is Peter, and he twisted you. Twisted the way you see your own family.”

  Patrick’s eyes flicked around the room, restless, unfocused. At first, I thought he was overwhelmed by the weight of our words. But then I realized… he wasn’t searching for comfort. He was searching for the brush.

  I looked at Shelta, my voice dropping low. “Give it to me. He can still feel it. He wants it back. We need it out of here.”

  Shelta’s eyes flashed with resistance. “I’m the only one who can figure out what this thing is… what to do about it. I need to keep it,” she whispered back, fiercely protective.

  I shook my head, leaning in. “I’ll give it back before you leave. But for now, it needs to be gone. Away from both of them. If he’s had it this whole time with Autumn, maybe separating them from it will break whatever hold it has… weaken it maybe.”

  Reluctantly, Shelta slipped it out of her pocket and handed it to me. I snatched it quickly, refusing to look too closely at the vile little thing in my hand. Just holding it made my skin crawl. Without another word, I turned and left the basement, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

  I stormed into my office on the second floor, moving straight to the bookshelf behind my desk. My fingers brushed along the third shelf until I found the familiar purple spine: Collected Works of H.P. Lovecraft. Pulling it free revealed the small black button recessed into the wood. I pressed it, listening to the soft grind of hidden mechanisms as the bookshelf split apart, the upper half sliding into the ceiling and the lower half sinking into the cabinetry below. Behind it, the steel face of my safe gleamed faintly.

  The door was nearly three feet square and four feet deep inside the wall. I unlocked it quickly, revealing the treasures and horrors already stored there. Family heirlooms, strange artifacts, small bones, and claws I kept as trophies, secrets my parents had charged me to protect, things so dangerous I hadn’t even told Autumn about them. Only Eleanor, Frank, and Clara knew this safe existed. No one else.

  I placed the green hairbrush inside, covering it with a cloth as if even within the safe, I didn’t want its presence visible. Then I shut the heavy door, spun the lock, and pressed the secondary button that slid the shelves back into place. Once the Lovecraft book was returned to its spot, the secret was sealed again.

  I stood there for a moment, my pulse hammering in my ears. Even locked away, I could feel its weight, its pull, like it was still calling to someone in the house. It was like I could feel it… just from holding it for a few moments. Shaking it off, I turned back toward the stairs.

  Halfway down, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, and the name on the screen sent a jolt of unease through me. Jane. I didn’t need to answer to know… it was about Frank.