The knock on the door hit harder than it should have. For a second, I thought it was Sam or Jane, still out searching for Frank. But when I opened it and saw Frank standing there, my fists clenched before I even thought about it. He’d left us again, right when everything with Autumn and Patrick was falling apart. I told him… I had already fucking told him about what Sam suspected. He should have been with us! I wanted to put my fist through his teeth!

  But then I saw his face. He wasn’t here to make excuses. He looked broken, like he was only just now realizing how far things had slipped.

  “What happened to her?” he asked, voice shaking under that thick red beard. It wasn’t the voice of a man with answers. It was the voice of an uncle who knew he’d failed.

  “It’s bad,” I said, quieter than I wanted, and finally let my fists fall.

  We stood there a moment, staring at each other like two men too tired to fight. Then, without thinking, we leaned into a hug. It was complicated… but he was here now… and ultimately, after all the attempts to break the curse, his presence here wouldn’t have helped. It hurt me to say that… but it wouldn’t have done shit.

  We were still failing in every attempt to break Autumn free of the curse. It was almost killing her every single time we tried, all the Wicklow blood and attuned power, all the family ties, and bonds of blood… none of it mattered. As much as it pained me to think it. Frank’s presence wasn't going to help, no matter how much I wished it would.

  “I should’ve stayed,” Frank muttered, anger turned inward. “Shouldn’t have gone chasing another problem.”

  “What were you chasing?” I asked as I closed the door behind him.

  He shook his head, eyes sharp. “Not here. Not yet. Sam told me to wait. I’ve been hunting something, Carter… and it’s not the kind we know. It’s from his world.” Frank's eyes bulged slightly with the obvious fear that didn’t belong to this family.

  It was a fear akin to what we experience when someone first learns about the supernatural world. It was hard to recognize in my older brother… but it was there. It was true fear. The anxiety in his voice drained what little anger I had left. Whatever he’d seen, it had shaken him to his core.

  “Sam knows what you’ve been doing?” I asked, confused.

  “I only told him when he found me. I showed him everything I had… and he saw something I couldn’t…” Frank explained slowly. “But… this is dangerous shit, Carter… you should have seen his face when he recognized something bout it. He was scared… not for himself… but for me. For what it would mean if we did connect with this thing.”

  I nodded, quickly understanding the gravity of what Frank had been doing. He hadn’t abandoned anyone. He was doing what we did… hunting.

  “Why haven’t you told anyone where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing?” I asked my brother.

  Frank shook his head as he looked at the floor. “It’s.. complicated. I couldn’t have everyone in on this. I got a lot of this from Rowdy…”

  I stared at the name… not registering it at first.

  Then Frank added, “Calhoun! The Montana boys.”

  “Oh! Rowdy…” I trailed off for a moment in confusion, because a lot of the Calhouns had been killed this past year. “But they’re…”

  “They were hunting this thing too…” Frank said with fearful eyes. “We wait for Sam,” Frank added before ending the subject and switching gears. “Where’s Autumn?” he asked, moving deeper into the house.

  I followed him down to the basement. Family drifted in and out down there, each of us worn thin, trying and failing to piece together a way forward. Now it was Frank’s turn to face what we’d all been living with, while I delved into these new facts about what he had been living with… and the possibility of yet another threat on the horizon.

  We had all hoped that Frank’s return would change something… that maybe his presence, his unique role in this family, would turn the tide. But when Autumn lifted her head and looked at him, it was with the same cold, hateful stare she’d given the rest of us. No flicker of recognition, no trace of the girl I raised. Just a wild, broken thing glaring at us from behind the bars of her cage, strands of jet-black hair falling into her face like a shroud.

  The rituals had dragged on for days, one after another, each leaving us more exhausted, more hollow. And each time, the curse only dug in deeper… changing Autumn. At first, it was small; her hair darkening, her features sharpening. I told myself it was nothing, just tricks of the light, fatigue playing with my eyes. But then came the eyes. Once warm brown, like Eleanor’s, they had bled into a piercing green. Not bright yet, not glowing like Peter Grimwood’s had in those woods when he first brushed against our family in St. Louis, but close… too close. They looked like they were biding their time, waiting for the last spark of power that would make them burn like his did when he glared at us through fire and smoke.

  And when she looked at me now, through those eyes, I felt it. I didn’t see my daughter anymore… I saw him. Not Peter himself, but what he left behind. His power. His hatred, balled up in a curse and hand-carried by one of us, directly to her. It had found a home in Autumn, twisting her into something unrecognizable.

  The curse wasn’t just binding her. It was becoming her. Every change in her voice, every unnatural shift in her gaze, screamed that she wasn’t mine anymore. She was claimed by the curse. A weapon shaped out of my child, sharpened by Grimwood’s spite even from beyond the grave.

  And I… I was left standing here, helpless, staring at the girl who once clung to my hand when she was afraid of storms. Now, the storm was inside her, and I feared her as much as I feared losing her. Because the truth I could no longer deny was this: maybe I had already lost her… and her body was just lingering.

  With Frank’s return, the house shifted again as Jane came back too, never far from Frank’s side. They kept to themselves more often than not, tucked away on the far side of the house, speaking in low voices that carried through the old wood when the rest of us tried not to listen. They had a distance to bridge, and it showed. Jane wanted to know why Frank had vanished without a word, why he thought he had to shoulder everything alone and keep her in the dark. And Frank… well, he didn’t have a good answer. He kept saying it was too big, and we had to wait for Sam. His silences said more than his words did… terror.

  Still, for all their private reckoning, they never drifted too far from each other. I think that they were both just happy to be back together to face everything crawling over us at the moment. The weight of Autumn’s condition kept them here with the rest of us. They knew our priority had to remain the same: pulling her back, if there was anything left to pull. We’d deal with anything else afterward.

  Martin was the last to return. His absence had stretched long enough that I had begun to wonder if we’d see him again. The black vampire looked thinner somehow, worn down from chasing a ghost of his own. Ever since that night he guided me to Charles, his elusive maker, Martin hadn’t been himself. There was a weariness in him, something deeper than exhaustion, as though his very sense of belonging had been cracked open.

  The truth was, Charles had always been a shadow over Martin’s life. From the moment Martin told us about him, when Mercy and Phineas clawed their way up from the pits, his behavior had shifted. At first, he was hesitant, almost afraid of meeting Charles again. But when he did, something changed. He treated him less like a long-lost enemy and more like blood rediscovered. Sometimes I caught Martin watching Charles with the kind of look a son gives a father he’s finally ready to forgive.

  But Sam’s sudden reappearance had shaken everything loose. Sam hadn’t come quietly; he demanded to see Charles, and whatever lay between them unsettled Martin to his core. From then on, his loyalty bent hard in Charles’s direction.

  Charles was making plans to flee. He and his adoptive family meant to escape before the doom pressing in on the city came crashing down. Martin admitted as much and said the elders below had learned of Charles’s betrayals and that the end was near. He told me plainly he intended to help Charles get out of the city. Part of me just thought that Martin had succeeded and gotten him free of St. Louis, and he just needed time. But when he entered my home… I no longer thought that was the case.

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  The lies Charles spun stretched back years. He had told the elders he had slain the Black-Eyed monster he and the other two immortals were sent to destroy, but it was Sam who had killed Mercy and Phineas. Charles had survived by reconnecting with Martin and then assisting us, weaving half-truths to stay alive down below the city. After Peter’s death, he lied again, this time about the gypsy necromancer the elders wanted dragged back down into the depths.

  Now all of it was unraveling. The elders knew. Their fury was rising. Martin whispered his fears for Charles, saying he hadn’t seen him… couldn’t even feel him anymore.

  It wasn't until about a day after Frank had returned that Martin also came over under the shadow of night. Martin came alone to our house, and he came distraught. He talked about the “bloodline” and that he couldn’t “feel” Charles anymore.

  Martin stood in the doorway, shoulders slumped, his black coat hanging loose on him like it had lost its shape. I could tell before he said a word that something inside him had cracked. His hands shook as he fumbled for a cigarette, then gave up on the idea entirely, just letting it drop from his fingers to the floor.

  “Carter…” his voice rasped, dry and low, like he hadn’t spoken in days. He met my eyes, and in that stare I saw something I’d never seen in him before… real grief. “Charles is gone.”

  The words dropped like a stone in my gut. My breath caught before I could stop it. “Gone?” I managed, though I already knew what he meant.

  “Dead.” Martin swallowed hard. He dragged a hand down his face, like he could claw the truth away if he just pressed hard enough. “Not just him. His family, too. Every last one of them. Men, women… children.” His voice cracked on that word, and he turned his face to the side, ashamed of the way it broke. “They were butchered, Carter. Slaughtered in their own home. None of them were even bitten or tasted on… just murdered in the coldest of blood.”

  I felt my mouth go dry. “All of them?”

  He nodded, a sharp jerk, like forcing himself to confirm it. “I walked through it myself. The walls still smelled of their blood. Charles, the people he loved, the ones who gave him… I don’t know, something close to belonging. All of them were laid open. Not a soul left breathing.”

  I took a step back, leaning against the table behind me. My fists tightened until the wood beneath my knuckles creaked. “Who could’ve done that? Was it the elders?”

  Martin’s eyes flickered, dark and haunted. “I don’t know. Could’ve been them. Could’ve been something worse.” His voice dropped lower, more ragged. “But Carter… it wasn’t clean. It wasn’t a strike of power, not the way the elders would’ve done it. This was cruelty. It was tearing, ripping, burning. It was rage. Whoever did it wanted them to suffer…. Wanted to send a message.”

  His words made my stomach twist. “And Charles? Did you see…”

  “Yeah… I found him, but I didn’t see it happen.” Martin’s lips trembled before he bit them to stop it. His gaze fell to the floor, and when he spoke again, it was almost a whisper. “It was fast…. His heart ripped completely clean from his body. Something with power beyond us killed him… There was nothing he could have done.” Martin looked angry. “My maker… died on his knees in the piss water running through the sewers. I thought he was untouchable, Carter. I thought if anyone could survive this city… it’d be him. But he’s gone…”

  I couldn’t find words for a moment. The room felt heavy, like the air itself was pressing down. Finally, I managed, “Then whatever killed him isn’t something we’ve dealt with before. If it can take someone like him down… and be so cold to kill innocent people… kids… then it might be coming for more.”

  Martin nodded slowly, and when he looked up, his eyes were red, not from bloodlust but from something far rarer in him; real tears. “That’s what I’m afraid of. If Charles couldn’t stand against it, even to save his family… what chance do any of us have?”

  The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was suffocating, both of us weighed down by the same truth. The city was becoming a graveyard, and we weren’t free from its grasp.

  The house had become a fortress of candles, chalk circles, and whispered prayers. For two days straight, we lived in the stench of melted wax and burnt herbs, our voices hoarse from chanting, our nerves pulled taut by the endless strain. Aunt Raven and her girls had pulled out all the stops, performing rites and ceremonies of all kinds to try and get a hold on this thing that held my daughter.

  Martin stayed close, silent most of the time, his black coat hanging off him like a shadow that never left. But when his voice did rise to join the rest of us… deep, gravel-edged, tinged with grief… it carried a weight that made the air feel heavier. It was the loss of his maker, laced with his words.

  Eleanor clutched my hand between her own as we stood at Autumn’s bedside, her whispers breaking between sobs. Clara and Wayland tended to the lines of salt and iron filings that bordered on some of the more strange rituals we tried, muttering to each other in a sort of tired despair. Frank hauled fresh buckets of water, his big frame bent with exhaustion but never once complaining. Frank and Jane took shifts, their shoulders nearly touching even when they worked apart, both of them thankful that Frank's hiatus was over, but mortified at the gravity of the situation with Autumn. Uncle Chris stood guard with a shotgun always within reach, while Aunt Raven hummed old hymns that braided uneasily into the darker chants rising from the circle. River, Rose, and Raine hovered close by, their young faces pale but resolute; they were too old now to be shielded, too young to carry all this weight, and yet they bore it.

  Martin moved between us like a man torn in half. One moment, he pressed cloth to Autumn’s sweating brow, his shifting red eyes somehow soft with something close to paternal sorrow; the next, he’d pace in the corner, fists tightening until I feared his nails might shift to claws and draw blood.

  Every time Autumn’s emerald-green eyes opened, glowing faintly in the candlelight, he flinched.

  “It’s like staring into him,” he whispered once, his voice breaking. “Grimwood’s shadow lives in her.”

  I don’t think he meant for us to hear his words, but we did, and Eleanor wept.

  We worked until our hands shook, until the rooms smelled like sweat and iron, until I wasn’t sure if I was praying or begging. And still, Autumn writhed and gasped in her cage of wards, her dark hair plastered to her face, her voice a low hiss that sometimes came out as words we couldn’t understand. Something… other… had taken her over.

  Two days of this. Two days of false hope and crushing failure. Two days of watching my daughter slip further away.

  Then came the sound. A crash at the front of the house; wood splintering, hinges shrieking.

  We froze. Every head snapped up, and the chant cut short. For a single heartbeat, the silence was worse than the break-in itself. Then chaos erupted.

  Frank grabbed his silvered machete, and Jane was already pulling as much of the inner beast from the depths of her soul, shifting her features to a feral wolf. Uncle Chris loaded shells with practiced, angry clicks. River and Rose each snatched crossbows from the wall, while Raine hissed out an incantation under her breath, iron dust already spilling from her fingers. Eleanor clutched at me, eyes wide, while Martin stepped forward like a panther about to strike, fangs and eyes flashing silently in the glow of candles.

  We stormed up to the surface level of the house as one, weapons raised, hearts pounding. The air smelled of sunlight and warm, sharp, yet it was tangled with something darker. IT was blood.

  And there she was… Alex. The red-haired vampire, the kind you don’t forget even in nightmares. She staggered through the splintered doorframe, her pale arms slick with blood, her clothes torn and blackened like she’d walked through hell to get here. Her hair clung in damp ropes against her face, her eyes wide with something raw and human. It was fear; fear of something similar to what I saw in Frank.

  But that wasn’t what stopped us cold. It was the sunlight.

  It poured through the open doorway, slanting across her skin. Direct, merciless daylight that was supposed to wipe her from the face of the earth… and she stood in it. Not screaming. Not burning. She stood, unblemished inside the light like a normal human woman. Her chest heaved with ragged breaths as she took another step inside.

  Everyone froze. The air went heavy with disbelief. Frank muttered, “Impossible…” under his breath. Rose’s crossbow shook in her hands, bolt trained on Alex’s heart, but her arms faltered. She didn’t know Alex, but she could tell this was a monster in human form.

  Martin moved first, his voice cutting through the stunned silence. “She’s… daywalking.” His tone wasn’t fear… it was confusion and disbelief. His jaw tightened, and his red eyes flicked to me. “Carter… this isn’t supposed to happen. Not to her. Not to anyone.”

  Alex’s knees buckled, her body collapsing onto the ruined floorboards with a hollow thud. She caught herself on trembling hands, blood dripping in bright streaks from her eyes, down her chin. Her lips parted, a hoarse whisper barely breaking through the charged silence.

  “Help… me.”

  The sound of it cut through the room like glass, but no one lowered their weapons. Not yet.

  Martin broke first. His red eyes widened, shock giving way to something softer, desperate. He stepped forward before anyone could stop him, voice trembling as though even speaking might shatter him. “Alex… what’s happened? How are you… How are you even standing in the sun? What is this?” His words tumbled out, jagged, his voice cracking with fear as he avoided the straight rays of sun that came in through the door frame.

  Alex shook her head, strands of blood-matted hair falling into her face. She sucked in a breath, but it hitched in her chest, and when she finally spoke, the words came broken and uneven.

  “Sam…” She choked on his name, like even saying it was ripping something out of her. “He’s… dead.”

  The room exploded with sound.

  Eleanor let out a sharp, strangled cry. “No… no, that’s not… what did you just say?” Her voice was shrill, panicked, disbelieving.

  Frank swore under his breath, stumbling back a step. Jane’s claws shook in her hands. River, Rose, and Raine clutched each other, their crossbows wavering in the air. Clara dropped the iron dust she’d been clutching, her lips moving silently as if she were praying.

  “They killed him…” Alex’s voice broke, shaking uncontrollably now. Her whole body trembled as though she could barely stay upright. “They ate him.” The last words cracked open, raw and jagged, her grief spilling across the room in waves.

  I felt the world tilt. My chest constricted, air refusing to move through my lungs. Sam… dead? No. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t die. He was bound to Death itself. They didn’t know that, not the way I did. But I did. I knew what he was, what he carried. This didn’t make sense.

  “Impossible,” I muttered, my fists curling tight, nails cutting into my palms. “It doesn’t… it can’t…”

  But then Alex lifted her head. Our eyes met, and what I saw there gutted me. It wasn't the red gleam of a vampire’s hunger. Not the cold void of a monster. Her eyes were green… human, raw, and bleeding with pain.

  “Sam’s gone,” she whispered again, weaker this time, as though saying it was killing her all over again.

  The room stood frozen, weapons lowering slowly, and some of our hearts collapsing under the weight of the truth none of us wanted to believe.