I narrowed my eyes, annoyed he had seen through my façade. “Exactly how long have you been trapped in here?”

This seemed absolutely absurd. I was having a conversation with a man who claimed to be trapped in a cursed house, and who was telling me I was trapped, too. And yet we were trading names as if we were at the local coffee shop. Had he tried digging out through the basement?

“I’m 29.” His eyes locked onto mine, daring me to say anything otherwise. He looked 29, but he hadn’t answered my question.

I tapped my fingers against my thigh. “Not what I asked.”

“Are you sure you want the real answer? Are you sure you can handle it?” Felix didn’t look away, a small smile curving his lips. A challenge if I had ever seen one.

He was going to be sorely disappointed if he expected me to let it go. I never did. “How long have you been trapped in here?”

Felix was quiet for a moment. I half expected another vague answer, another challenge. Instead he answered in a voice little more than a whisper. And before he spoke, just like how I knew he was telling the truth about the curse, I knew what he was going to say. I knew. “My house was cursed in the year 1907.”

Knowing what he was going to say and hearing the truth out loud were two completely separate things. The room spun around me, and I could hear Felix talking to me, but I couldn’t make out his words. 1907. 1907. Holy fuck. 1907 was the year the house was built. And if he was 29 in 1907 that would mean...“You’re telling me you were born in 1878?”

“Yes, that’s right–” He stopped midway in his sentence to answer my shocked question. “Are you okay?”

I rested my hand against the wall, waiting for my heartbeat to stop racing. If I looked half as bad as I felt, I probably looked like a fucking ghost. “I think I need a minute.”

“Take all the time you need.” He was looking at me curiously, but also with a sense of resolve. Like he had done this before. Fuck. Had he done this before? How many people had walked through these doors? Maybe I was one of dozens. I had no idea how this curse worked. Felix looked really good for…144? Maybe he was cursed to be a vampire.

Maybe…maybe I was here to sustain him for another decade or two.

I couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t enough air in this house, and what little there was, was thick. I was breathing in fucking soup. This was a dream. Not a dream, a fucking nightmare. The wall was slick under my sweating palm, and I needed oxygen. Except according to Felix, I would never breathe fresh air again in my life. “Do any of the windows in this godforsaken place open?”