My Husband Dies Every Midnight

The Key Chooses

The stairway trembled under the approaching footsteps.

Elena's eyes were fixed on the trail of black liquid ink on the page, her name printed there in judgment. Coldness spread through her veins but her pulse quickened, raced, as if her body knew something her mind did not.

"The next death will not be Nathan's."

The words seemed to burn themselves into the very foundation of the chamber.

Nathan tore the notebook from her hands, reading the line over and over again until his jaw was set in an uncharacteristic scowl. "No. No, that's not happening." He turned to Maris. "Tell us this is one of your warnings. Tell us it means something else entirely."

Maris' face was ashen as she reached for Elena's wrist, for the charm dangling from her bracelet, stopping just short of touching either. "I wish it wasn't," she said softly. "But the hollow has begun to choose its vessel."

Lila gave a startled laugh. "Vessel for what?"

"For crossing."

Something in the room seemed to constrict as Maris said the words. All of the air had gone, it seemed, to the stairway, where the rhythmic pounding had quickened to something frantic and wet.

Elena pulled free of Nathan's grip, her voice shaking. "I'm not a vessel for anything."

Even as she spoke, the blue-white light of the charm at her wrist flared, spreading in tendrils of color along her skin, and she fought to remove the bracelet, only to find that the clasp had fused shut.

"Maris," he growled, seizing her wrist. "Fix it."

"I can't," she said, her voice tinged with something close to panic. "The key is awake."

The key. Elena looked down at the brass heart lying on the floor at the pedestal's edge. It hadn't moved, but it felt as if it had, as if it had been pulling at her, her own pulse quickening with the force of it. It was warm, almost feverish.

Another thump reverberated through the stairwell. A shower of dust rained down the walls.

"If something comes up there," Lila muttered, raising the camera instinctively, though her hands were shaking so badly the sight was coming out blurry, "I am not staying to negotiate."

"You won't have to," said Nathan. He scooped up the brass key from the floor and the moment it left the stone, every light in the room seemed to flicker. The charm on Elena's wrist flared to life in response, blinding her for a heartbeat. "Maris!"

"No!" she snapped, grabbing his arm. "Nathan, put it down."

He didn't. "Tell me what it does first."

"It was never meant for you," Maris said finally, her eyes fixed on the key in his outstretched hand. "It was never supposed to be found."

"Too late for that," said Nathan grimly.

He turned the key over in his hands, studying the curve of the heart-shaped handle, the shallow notch at its center. He looked up at the doors, searching the walls, and then Elena realized what he was looking for. The crack in the pedestal.

She took a step forward, her heart hammering, brushing the dust from the narrow seam, and let the key slide into the opening. It fit perfectly, a single, narrow slot running down the middle. For a moment she and Nathan simply stared at each other, breathless, and then, together, they turned the heart-shaped key.

The room responded.

A sound like a great exhalation rolled through the walls, the floor trembling beneath their feet. The notebook in Maris' hands snapped shut with an audible click; the rhythmic pounding on the stairwell ceased so abruptly it sent an almost imperceptible shock through the foundation. And then the pedestal opened.

The sound of it was less a mechanical movement and more a sigh, as if the very room had been waiting for this moment, for the slow uncurling of the great slab of stone to reveal the hollow chamber within. Dust had coated the inside of the pedestal, but within the recessed opening there was clearly a space, lined with deteriorated velvet. And resting within this makeshift altar was a small glass vial.

"That's it?" Lila asked.

"No," said Maris quietly. "That's what it left behind."

Elena stepped forward, fingers hovering above the vial. Before anyone could stop her, she plucked the glass from its resting place and suddenly she was elsewhere.

She was standing in a vast emptiness, an endless black stretch before her with lines of pale stone jutting out like ribs, veins, or roads. There was a sky, but if there was anything beyond the clouds it was hidden beneath a mist of moisture and metal. A bell tolled in the distance, and the sound seemed to echo in her very bones.

She wasn't alone.

"You're not supposed to be here," said a voice at her elbow. A woman, her figure barely more substance than air, stood nearby, her dress dark, her hands folded over her heart. A single silver ring rested on one of her fingers and the wear lines on her face made it clear she'd lived a long, lonely life. "Maris did not want you to find this."

Elena took a cautious step back. "You're from the ledger."

The woman's lips curled into something that might have been a smile. "I am from before the pages were bound."

"I know who you are," said Elena. "You're the ghost in the second entry."

The woman's eyes flashed with amusement. "I am Esme Vale."

That name struck something deep in Elena's bones. It sang through her veins like poison.

"Maris!" she cried, and somewhere far below, she heard Nathan's voice, muffled, distant, as if he was calling down a deep well. "What do you want?"

Esme's gaze drifted to the horizon. "To warn you. The key does not open a door but reveals a choice."

"A choice between what?" demanded Elena.

"Between who walks the hollow and who survives the crossing."

Elena paled. "Crossing where?"

Esme's expression darkened. "You assume the curse is something that takes. It is not. It is a passage. One soul per generation is bound to the hollow, to return to the other side at the witching hour, to carry memories through the veil but the thing below has been waiting for a better offer."

"Me," said Elena hoarsely.

Esme nodded. "Because you remember."

Elena's knees nearly buckled. The ground beneath her feet trembled, the sky growing darker with every heartbeat. Strange shapes moved in the distance, glimpses of stone corridors, the flash of firelight, figures kneeling in the dirt, a woman screaming. Her mother. No, not her mother. A woman just like her mother, with the same storm cloud eyes, clutching the wall to her chest.

Esme stepped closer, her voice low. "Maris knew you would be safest away from the pattern, that you would not know the signs, but she failed to understand that the hollow remembers blood as well as bone."

"Elena!" That was Nathan's voice again, louder this time, closer. "Elena, what are you seeing?"

Esme's eyes narrowed. "If you return with the wrong answer, it will find you."

"What answer?" demanded Elena.

That was when the black sky split, a crack of white light tearing through the expanse until she could see the room again. The chamber stretched before her, but it was different, strange. She could see Nathan crouched over the pedestal, Maris' hand covering her mouth, Lila backing away from the wall. But behind them, another figure had appeared in the doorway, her silver curls half-unwound, her neck a lattice of deep black veins. One hand clutched the pages of the book, the other the edge of the wall itself as if she was bracing against an unseen force. Ingrid Vale looked up at Elena, her expression one of triumph.

"Too late," said Esme.

Elena stumbled backward, the vial slipping from her fingers. But before she could stop, before she could breathe, the world shifted again and she was back on the chamber floor, Nathan kneeling beside her. "Elena."

She took a breath, steadying herself, and looked up at his face. "I saw someone."

Maris was transfixed by the glass vial in her hand. "What did you see?"

"Elena?" asked Lila, her face as white as the pages of the book. "You were gone for ten seconds."

"No," said Elena, rising to her feet. Her voice was hushed, reverent. "It was longer."

The vial in Maris' hand was sealed with a blob of thick dark wax. Inside, a slender tendril of grey smoke curled lazily. Along the vial's surface, in the impossibly small script of a needle's point, were three words.

FOR THE FIRST DOOR.

The chamber above them groaned. The thudding on the stairs had resumed, stronger now, and no longer human.

But the voice of Ingrid Vale rang down the stairwell, lilting and cruel. "Open the next one," she said. "Or I tell your husband what he really is."