Page 76 of Petrify

“Or,” Baz lowers his voice. “He could’ve blackmailed you. Threatened you with it. Forced you to do what he wanted.”

“Isn’t that what this is?” I face the wall, looking nowhere else but the painted wooden paneling. My fingers are numb, my lungs too small to catch any air. I’ve never felt so untethered, until I came here. It’s his fault,it’s his fault, not my fault?—

“No, it’s not.” Baz speaks softly, maybe because he can sense my racing heart. Maybe he likes it. “You agreed to this. You want this.”

And suddenly I’m suffocating, the room shrinking, and he’s advancing on me, stalking closer, and I do the first thing that comes to mind to stop him.

I reach up and tear the mask off his face.

Chapter 39

The Pianist

The silence growsto a deafening roar as the Ghost and I stare at each other in the dark.

The moonlight doesn’t reach this far into the room. It might be the only thing that saves me, that it’s too dark to see clearly the face of my tormentor. Only his sharp cheekbone, the dark hair dusting an angular jaw, a lowered brow over a pitch-black, shadowed eye.

And I can see the flash of rage in that eye.

I’ve stormed past a threshold I shouldn’t have crossed, and now I’ll pay for it.

I run.

I run with my heart in my throat, throwing the mask, hoping he will lunge after that and notme. He curses under his breath at the sound of the plaster hitting the ground.

I don’t waste a second bolting from the room.

The east wing is empty. On purpose, I realize—so that shouldthishappen, there are no witnesses. No one to save me.

Terror pushes me forward, adrenaline already flushing through every little blood vessel, burning through my flesh. I run until I am across the house. I run until I’m at the front door.

If I can get outside, then he can’t corner me. The grounds are too large for him to easily find me. There are tombs in the cemetery; there’s the dead gray wood that encases the estate. I could hideanywhere.

My fingers brush the door handle?—

Only for his hand to roughly cover my mouth, dragging me back against him. The scream dies in my throat, and I freeze, losing my balance and falling into his chest. I’m stumbling, but his hold on me is too strong, holding me up.

“That wasn’t very nice, Mallary.”

I don’t fight him, even when my mind screams at me tomove. He’s dragging me backward, away from the door, from freedom. Into a shadowed alcove off the foyer, the light diminishing so suddenly I begin to wonder if I’ve fainted. But his breathing is ragged next to my ear, his fingers digging into my skin, and I realize we are just in a dark room.

A dark room I’ve never seen before. No, not a room.

I’m almost blind in the pitch-black of the narrow passageway. He has no issue, leading me through the dark like he knows exactly where he’s going.

Like he walks through these walls all the time.

He lets go of my mouth. He knows I won’t scream.

There’s a creaking staircase he pushes me up, and somehow I don’t fall, and in seconds, he’s shoving me into a small attic-like room. There’s one window—the window looking over the front lawn. Bars encase the outside.

To keep something—someone—in.

My steps falter. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m seeing something forbidden. Something I’m not supposed to. Just like the maintenance worker he killed.

A small disheveled bed in one corner, and paper scattered everywhere. Lined paper, all handwritten—it’s music.Hismusic. Books stacked in piles along the wall, the rug threadbare andold, a single exposed lightbulb hanging from the ceiling to illuminate the tiny room, a small table lamp in the corner.

He’s still behind me. His cock is pressed against me, one arm still around my waist, the other gripping my throat. Threatening to steal my air, but I can’t breathe anyway. My mind is spinning with—allof this. The fear for my life, the thrill humming in my limbs, the truth in front of me.