“Quiet,” Lou snapped. The staircase ended with a door directly overhead. She tilted her head again, hesitating, before pushing it open and slipping through. I followed, nearly flattening her when I climbed to my feet. She’d stopped abruptly to take in the final floor: an open room without walls to shield us from the elements. Only a handful of beams held the roof in place, and sun spilled in from every direction, banishing the last of the shadows. I breathed a sigh of relief. The cauchemar wasn’t here. Nothing was here save an enormous fire basin. Built into the center of the stone floor, it stood empty. No wood or ashes. Except—

Lou stood perfectly still, the wind whipping her pale hair across her face.

Except it wasn’t empty at all.

From the basin, an enormous figure rose.

Cloaked in soiled fabric, it charged toward us with blackened, outstretched hands. I lunged to Lou’s side, but she’d already moved, surging forward with lightning quickness. When she lashed out with her blade, clipping the creature’s midsection, it reared backward like a great bear. Though a hood shielded its hair, its face, its teeth, it swiped at Lou with one massive paw, and she sailed through the air. I dove after her—catching her wrist before she could slide from the room’s edge—as the others attacked, their knives and mirrors glinting in the sunlight. “Stop!” The wind carried away my shout. “Don’t hurt it! We’re here to warn the creature, not—stop!”

The cauchemar stumbled back a step, hands still raised, but didn’t hesitate to knock Coco’s glass aside and roar when she slashed its thigh. She danced out of reach before it could wrap its hands around her neck—and then the first terror came.

Though Lou had warned us, nothing could’ve prepared me for the horrifying jolt of fear. Of pain. My vision flashed white, blinding me, and I slipped, crouching down to one knee. From the others’ startled cries, they experienced the same.

A black room, blacker chains. Cold against my skin. Wrong. Blood slides from my wrists to the floor in a steady drip. I count each drop. She returns at the top of each hour. Thirty-six hundred seconds. Thirty-six hundred drops. When the door creaks open at drop thirty-five hundred and sixty-two, I choke back a scream. A saw. A handsaw. She lifts it to the candlelight. “Is it in your bones, I wonder? Like theirs?”

I fell to my hands as the faceless woman advanced. Gasping for breath. Shaking my head. Forcing my eyes to see reality instead of the glint of bone: to see Lou, writhing on the floor beside me, to see Coco in the fetal position, Beau flat on his back, Célie wide-eyed and trembling.