The next room, a white room, was warmer.

There were nine rooms all together. It was like a maze, and he didn’t understand how the center of the House could contain this much space, but he walked through increasingly warm chambers, until, finally, he reached the last room.

It was empty save for the girl.

She was naked, and she smiled slyly at Norton, slowly bending over, grabbing her ankles. “Kiss my ass,” she said.

He stared at her.

“Kiss my ass,” she repeated softly, sensuously. “You know you want to.”

He did want to—even after all he’d been through, even after all that had happened. He could see the small pink puckering between her spread buttocks and he longed to place his mouth there, to touch it with his tongue.

Wasn’t that how the devil was supposed to have sealed his covenant with witches?

Norton closed his eyes. He didn’t know what to think anymore. He was sweating, and he wiped his perspiring brow with the back of his hand. There were no other doors in this room, no way out save for the way he’d come in.

“I’m not the enemy,” she said. “It’s the Houses that are the enemies.”

“Th-that’s not true,” he said.

Her smile grew wider, and it not only looked sensuous to him but curiously friendly. “Yes it is. You know it is. We’re both trapped here. We’re both prisoners. Why do you think you were lured back? You honestly think that the forces of good kidnapped you and planned to make you live out the rest of your life here? Because you’re the only one who can save the world? Does that make any sense at all? Be serious.”

The expression on her face seemed open and honest to him, and he found himself following her logic. Maybe he and the others had been wrong. Maybe they’d been brainwashed by Billings and his Houses.

“I never touched your parents or anyone in your family. I was the one who tried to save them. It was Mr. Billings who did them in. And he’s been trying to keep us apart ever since because he knew I’d tell you the truth.”

The ants.

He pushed that thought out of his mind.

She ran a finger slowly down the opened crack of her buttocks. “Come on,” she said softly. “Kiss it. Kiss my ass. What can it hurt?”

He licked his dry lips and found himself nodding.

“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, Norton.”

He moved forward, knelt behind her, placed his face between the cheeks of her buttocks, closed his eyes, and began licking.

The girl moaned.

When he opened his eyes, he was in a black room, his face buried between two red pillows on the floor. He looked up and saw a marble table set up like an altar.