Chapter 22
MAUSOLEUM
Poppy
Tears smear the dry blood of my dead friend on the floor of the abandoned chemical factory.
Fiona and I weren’t close, but her murder still feels like a blade in my gut. I’ve been so preoccupied dealing with my family’s demise, I’d barely spoken to her these past months. A fact I’m confident Leviathan knew before choosing to target her.
That cursed poppet they’d shoved down her throat has been haunting my nightmares. I don’t know if Fiona had received it beforehand. From what little I saw of her at Beelzebub’s, she never spoke of it. As is the same old theme with Leviathan, any video evidence was expunged.
I’ve warned my other friends. Castor is lying low with his motorhead crew. Without his lab, Bax is staying with him. Circe and Nik are safe at Indigo, and Emi is sleeping with a dagger under her pillow. They’re as prepared for the reaper as possible.
“I’m sorry I failed you, Fiona,” I murmur, kissing my fingers and pressing them to the floor. “Keep the devil’s bed warm for me, will you?”
I wish I’d feel an impossible breeze. A sign to tell me she forgives me as a final act before moving on to the afterlife. If there even is an afterlife.
But I live in the real world, where those things don’t actually happen.
Wiping my eyes with my sleeve, I navigate the decrepit factory with the same familiarity as home. This place is where my father and Grandpapa Lucian once ran Morgenstern operations.
It’s also where I made my first kill.
I climb up a rusty set of stairs. At the top is an old office space.
I nudge the door open with my boot, the hinges screeching their defiance.
The room is small, cold, and lacking any personality: a simple metal desk, a cracked leather chair, a prehistoric computer, dusty filing cabinets, grimy windows overlooking the industrial space.
All relatively normal for an abandoned chemical plant.
Aside from the old bloodstains on the concrete floor.
I slip off a leather glove and skim a fingertip over the desk. Tug the chair free and sit. Drag on my vape and breathe purple smoke. Try to understand where it all went wrong.
The Morgensterns have been ruling Salem’s underworld since the witch trials, but we weren’t always criminals. My ancestors launched a black market under the authorities’ noses to help people. They sold herbs to ward off demonic influence, weapons to protect against malevolent witchcraft.
You know, the kind of bullshit people back then lapped up like kids with candy.
Then torches turned into bombs, pitchforks into guns, harmless plants into toxic drugs. Somewhere along the way, we forgot who we are and what we stand for.
If it were up to me, I’d have Bax stick to batching strictly vape juice.
I’d sell weaponry to those who wish to defend themselves with something stronger than mace.
Enlist mercenaries to hunt the scum of the earth.
Hire hackers to steal money from the corrupt and donate it to charities and clinics and volunteer organizations.
Dismantle human trafficking rings. The possibilities are endless.
It’s not up to me, though. Even if it was, Leviathan has made achieving such a dream impossible.
I am not the heir of an empire. I am the heir of a mausoleum.
Standing, I push the chair back in and give the bloodstains a wide berth as I leave.
Just once, I let myself glance over my shoulder to blow a kiss at where Fiona took her last breath.
It’s a trick of the light—I know it is—but I swear I see a figure standing at the office window upstairs, watching me through all the layers of dirt, death, and decades of decay.