Margot dragged in a ragged, coughing breath as the paralysis left her body. Something heavy landed at her feet. She clutched her side as she stared down at the floor. At the axe that had been dropped ahead of her.

“Oh,” Margot whispered, breathing hard. She looked up. The crack was still there, its edges stained, but it had shrunk again. Now, it looked no different from simple water damage marring the ceiling.

Esther had dropped the axe through that hole, though. And it wasn’t the axe Margot herself had brought to her room to keep her safe.

This one was far older. Far wickeder. Its handle curved. Its steel edge looked painfully sharp. This was not designed for cutting wood. This was a weapon.

The axe Ephraim owned. The axe that killed the Hull family.

She understood. She knew why she had been brought to this room. What she needed to do.

Margot picked up the axe. The handle was slick with Esther’s death and crusted in dirt. Margot flexed her hands around it to fix her grip. The head was heavier than she was prepared for. She raised it. She aimed it toward the first of the oak barrels.

She brought it down.

Wood splintered. Vivid red wine, the shade of blood, poured free. It gushed across the floor, over Margot’s feet. The air was thick with its scent. Sweet and cryptic and nauseating.

Margot raised the axe again and then again. The wood was old. It broke easily. The barrel’s front cleaved away, its produce gushing out.

Through the lantern light, Margot could see something inside the barrel.

Fabric drifted in the currents of wine pouring away. A wash of pale hair tangled through splintered wood as it flowed out of the opening. Behind that was uncanny flesh.

Ephraim needed a place to hide the bodies. Somewhere he was certain no one would think to look.

Margot let the axe slump as she stared at Esther’s corpse. Nearly perfectly preserved, and horribly transformed by the wine. Her skin was taut and wrinkled and puckered in strange places. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth, discolored gums glistening as wine trickled out of her open mouth.

Margot had seen that skin before, on herself, in her parents’ mirror.

The body was coiled up, the knees to the chin, rigid hands clasped under the jaw. Bare feet grazed the barrel’s back. She sagged, limp and heartbreakingly small in the shallow pool of remaining wine, but Margot could imagine how she’d looked when she was suspended in the liquid: her nightdress floating about her, her hair like a halo around her split face.

Margot squeezed her eyes shut as tears turned her vision hazy. Then she braced herself and lifted the axe again, bringing it down on the second barrel.