I grabbed the nearest weapon—a brass candlestick from the hall table—and held it like a bat. My pulse thundered in my ears.
"I'm calling the police," I shouted, hating how my voice shook. "I'm armed, and I know how to—"
"No, you don't."
The man descended the stairs with the casual confidence of someone who owned the place. Each step was measured, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world and knew I wasn't going anywhere.
When he reached the bottom, the weak foyer light caught his features, and my breath hitched.
He was tall—easily over six feet—with dark hair that fell just past his collar in waves that looked deliberately unkempt. Sharp jaw, high cheekbones, the kind of face that belonged on magazine covers or movie screens. He wore all black: jeans, boots, a leather jacket that had seen better days.
But it was his eyes that stopped me cold.
Silver. Not gray or light blue, but actual silver, like molten metal. They caught the light in a way human eyes shouldn't, and when they locked onto mine, I felt pinned in place.
"You gonna hit me with that?" He nodded at the candlestick, one corner of his mouth quirking up. "Or are we going to have a civilized conversation about why you're trespassing?"
"I'm trespassing?" The fear was morphing into anger now, which was better. Anger I could use. "This is my house. Who the hell are you?"
"Adrian Cross. Detective Adrian Cross, technically, though I'm not here in an official capacity." He pulled out a badge from his jacket and flipped it open just long enough for me to see it was real. "And this stopped being your house the moment Vera Caldwell died. It became a crime scene."
"Crime scene? She died of a heart attack."
"Did she?"
The question hung in the air between us, heavy with implication. I lowered the candlestick slightly, trying to process what he was suggesting. "The death certificate said natural causes."
"Death certificates say a lot of things." Adrian moved past me into the parlor, scanning the room like he was cataloging every detail. "Especially in Hollow's End. This town has a talent for making murder look natural."
I followed him, my grip tightening on the candlestick. "You think someone killed my grandmother?"
"I think your grandmother knew things she shouldn't have known. I think she was digging into cases that were closed for good reason. And I think—" He stopped in front of the grandfather clock, his expression darkening. "I think she knew exactly when she was going to die."
"That's insane."
"Is it?" He turned those unsettling silver eyes on me again. "Tell me, Iris—and don't lie, because I'll know—what happened when you touched that photograph in the study?"
My blood turned to ice. "How did you—"
"I've been watching the house since this morning. Saw you arrive, saw you go into the study, saw you run out looking like you'd seen a ghost." He took a step closer. "So I'll ask again. What did you see?"
Every instinct screamed at me not to tell him. This stranger who'd broken into my house, who looked at me like he could see straight through my skin, who had eyes that definitely weren't human.
But that vision—if that's what it was—had terrified me in a way nothing else ever had. And he clearly knew something I didn't.
"A forest," I said finally. "I was running. Someone was chasing me. I felt... everything. The fear, the cold, the certainty I was going to die. Then I was back in the study."
Adrian's jaw tightened. "You're a Seer."
"A what?"
"A Seer. Someone who can experience the final moments of the dead through objects they touched." He said it like he was explaining something as ordinary as eye color. "It runs in families. Your grandmother had it. Your mother probably did too."
I laughed, but it came out bitter and sharp. "That's not real. That's not—people can't do that."
"You just did."
"I imagined it. Stress, grief, this creepy house—"
"Try again." He grabbed a letter opener from the side table and held it out to me. "This belonged to one of Hollow's End's previous murder victims. Thomas Garrett, died in 1997. If you're just imagining things, nothing will happen. But if you're a Seer..."
"I'm not touching that."
"Afraid of what you'll see? Or afraid of being right?"
The challenge in his voice sparked something stubborn in me. I'd never backed down from a dare in my life, and I wasn't about to start now, supernatural bullshit or not.
I snatched the letter opener from his hand.
The vision hit me like a freight train.
I was in an office—wood-paneled walls, diplomas on display, the smell of cigar smoke. My hands—not my hands, someone else's—were rifling through a desk drawer. Looking for something. Evidence. Proof.
The door opened behind me.
I spun around, and that's when I saw him. A man in the doorway, his face shrouded in shadow except for his smile. God, that smile. Wide and eager and wrong.
"You shouldn't have looked," the shadow man said.
I tried to run, but he was faster. The knife came from nowhere, plunging into my chest once, twice, three times. I felt each one—the shock, the pain, the warmth of my own blood spreading across my shirt.
I fell. The shadow man crouched beside me, leaning close enough that I should've seen his face. But there was nothing there. Just darkness.
"Give her my regards," he whispered.
Then everything went black.
I came back to myself on the floor, gasping for air. Adrian was kneeling beside me, his hand on my shoulder—the touch firm but not restricting.
"Breathe," he ordered. "In through your nose, out through your mouth. You're not dying. You're here. You're safe."
I focused on his voice, used it as an anchor to pull myself back to reality. Slowly, the panic subsided enough for me to speak. "He knew my grandmother. The killer. He told the victim to give her his regards."
Adrian's expression went cold. "What did he look like?"
"I couldn't see his face. Just shadow. But his voice..." I shuddered. "He sounded happy."
"Son of a bitch." Adrian stood abruptly, pacing the room like a caged animal. "He's escalating. First Vera, now you. He's drawing you in."
"Drawing me into what? Who is 'he'?"
"We don't have a name. Just a pattern. Murders spanning back over a century, all in Hollow's End, all following the same ritual. Victims are always people who know too much—journalists, private investigators, anyone digging into the town's history. And they all see the same thing before they die. A man made of shadow."
My head was spinning. "That's impossible. No one lives that long."
"No one human lives that long."
The way he said it made my skin crawl. "What are you saying?"
Adrian stopped pacing and looked at me with those silver eyes that caught the light like a predator's. For a long moment, he didn't speak. Then he shrugged off his jacket.
"I'm saying that monsters are real, Iris. And I should know." He rolled up his left sleeve, revealing his forearm.
The skin was covered in scars—not random, but deliberate. Symbols carved into his flesh, some old and faded, others relatively fresh. They formed a pattern I didn't recognize, something ancient and purposeful.
"Binding marks," he said. "Put there when I was sixteen by a demon who wanted a puppet. Turns out I wasn't as easy to control as he thought. Killed him, but the marks stayed. And with them, some of his abilities."
"You're insane."
"I'm half-demon. There's a difference." He said it so matter-of-factly that I almost laughed. Almost. "The marks give me enhanced strength, speed, senses. I can see things normal people can't. Track things they'd never notice. It makes me very good at hunting supernatural killers."
"This isn't real. None of this is real."
"Tell that to the nine bodies they've found in Hollow's End over the past three months. All drained of blood. All arranged in a circle around a single black rose. All with the same message carved into their skin: She's coming home."
The room tilted. "What?"
"Your grandmother knew you'd inherit this place. She knew it would draw you back. And she knew he'd be waiting for you." Adrian's expression softened slightly—not much, but enough that I could see genuine concern underneath the hardness. "Whatever this thing is, it's been obsessed with your family for generations. It killed your ancestors. It probably killed your mother, though they ruled it cancer. And now it's come for you."
"Why?"
"That's what we need to figure out. Before it adds you to its collection."
I wanted to argue, to call him crazy, to grab my bag and run. But I'd seen what I'd seen. Felt what I'd felt. And deep down, in a place I didn't want to acknowledge, some part of me had always known there was something wrong with my family. Something dark that my mother never wanted to talk about.
"Let's say I believe you," I said carefully. "Let's say there really is some shadow demon or whatever targeting me. What am I supposed to do about it?"
"You work with me. You use your abilities to help me track it. And when we find it, we kill it."
"I don't know how to use my abilities. I didn't even know I had abilities until twenty minutes ago."
"Then you learn. Fast." He picked up his jacket and shrugged it back on. "Because right now, you're a beacon. Every supernatural thing within a hundred miles can sense what you are. And the shadow man? He's been waiting a long time for you to come home."
A sound echoed through the house—a long, low creak that came from upstairs. We both froze.
"Did you lock the door when you came in?" Adrian asked quietly.
"Yes."
"Check if it's still locked."
I ran to the front entrance. The door was wide open, swinging gently in the night breeze.
"Adrian—"
"I know." He was beside me in an instant, moving with inhuman speed. "Get behind me. Now."
That's when I smelled it. The same metallic scent from earlier, but stronger now. Overwhelming.
Blood.
And from somewhere deep in the house, a voice—the same voice from the vision—began to sing.
"Iris, Iris, dressed in black... Iris, Iris, never coming back..."