THE SON-IN-LAW WHO WOULDN'T BURN

CHAPTER 7: HOUSE RULES

Cole stood in the grey light with the broken cheese rind in his fist until the rain outside thinned to a drip. His eyes were still on the door. It had been shut for ten minutes, but he could still hear Elise's last words, flat and steady, the way she said everything that cost her the most.

*The fire will find me by itself.*

"You're thinking of running," Hollow said.

"I'm thinking about a lot of things." Cole dropped the rind in the bucket and sat down on the mat. "Running is one of them."

"It's the obvious one. The cave is open, the guards are tired, and the tunnels under this house lead all the way to the docks. If you left tonight, you'd be three miles away by dawn."

"And she'd be on the altar by dawn."

"Probably."

"Probably?"

"The oath is a Vance oath. I can't read it from here." Hollow paused. "But I've watched families like this for a very long time. They don't make threats they won't carry out. It's the only thing they're honest about."

Cole rubbed his face with both hands. His skin felt strange, tight, like it belonged to someone slightly bigger. "So I stay."

"You stay."

"And hide a thirty-day soul-eating clock from a family that tried to burn me alive."

"Twenty-nine days at dawn."

"Thank you. That helps."

"You're welcome." The voice was dry, but not unkind. "I'll be honest, Cole. It's a bad plan. It's also the only one where nobody you care about dies tonight."

Cole let out a long breath. He thought about the bruises on Elise's arm, the ring of fingers around the bone. He thought about the way she'd said *I'm bad at it.* Three years of food she hadn't been able to spare.

"Then teach me how to be dead," he said.

Hollow laughed, short and surprised. "Not dead. Dull. A man who survived a fluke, and nothing else. Start by sitting up straight."

Cole sat up.

"Now close your eyes. Put your hand on your chest. Do you feel that?"

"My heart."

"How fast?"

"Fast." He paused. "Really fast."

"It should be slow. Not stopped. Slow, like a man with cold blood. You told them your mother had that, and they'll check. Breathe in through your nose for four counts. Hold for four. Out for six."

Cole tried. His chest stuttered on the second hold, and the heartbeat under his palm jumped like a rabbit. "It won't go down."

"Because you're afraid."

"Of course I'm afraid."

"Good. That's honest. Now breathe anyway."

They spent the night like that. Hollow's voice went on in the dark, patient and exact, correcting the count when Cole rushed it, telling him to drop his shoulders when they crept up. Around the third hour, Cole's heart began to drag at the edges, slow and heavy, like a drum with a wet skin. His fingers went cold. A shiver ran down his back.

"There," Hollow said. "Hold that."

"I can't feel my toes."

"You're not supposed to. Warmth leaks out of a body like yours. Even through the skin. A healer can feel it from a foot away, and a strong cultivator from across a room. Keep it in."

"How?"

"Think of a closed door. Picture the heat inside you, and picture a door."

"I'm picturing a door."

"What color?"

"Brown. With a crack in it."

"Close the crack."

Cole closed the crack. A strange chill spread across his skin, as if somebody had pulled a thin sheet over him. His breathing leveled out. Somewhere far down the corridor, a guard coughed.

"Better," Hollow said. "Much better."

When the strip of window above his head turned from black to gray, the ring on his wrist gave a tiny click. The number inside it changed.

**29**

Cole watched it with his stomach turning over.

"That's one," he said.

"That's one."

They did the same thing the next night, and the night after. In between, a guard slid food through the flap twice a day, thin gruel and stale bread, and Cole practiced his act on the guards. He let his hands tremble. He let his lips go dry. On the second afternoon, the guard crouched at the flap with a lantern and squinted at him, and Cole sat with his head against the wall and his eyes half lidded, heart ticking at a slow crawl.

"Looks like death warmed over," the guard muttered, and left.

"That was good," Hollow said. "But you slipped."

"I did not."

"You moved your thumb."

"I have an itch."

"No. You were looking at his sword."

Cole made a face. "Okay. I was looking at his sword."

"Don't. A man who has been burned and dropped a hundred feet doesn't look at weapons. He looks at the floor."

"Noted."

On the third night, Hollow dripped a little cold water into his sleeve. It came from nowhere, a tiny bead that slid down his forearm and over the ring. Cole flinched.

"Again."

"You didn't warn me."

"Nobody will warn you either."

The drops kept coming. Cole bit the inside of his cheek and held still. By the fifth drop, his shoulders had stopped jumping. By the tenth, he barely blinked. His whole body felt like a locked room.

Dawn came. The ring clicked.

**27**

"Twenty-seven," Cole muttered, and flopped back on the mat. His head was heavy and his fingers ached. "Three days. It feels like three weeks."

"You're doing well."

"Are you being nice to me?"

"I'm being accurate." A pause. "You've done something most men can't in a year. You made fear work for you."

"That's because I've had a lot of practice being afraid."

"I know. I've been listening to your heart for three nights."

Cole turned his head against the cold wall. There was a thin crack in the stone near his cheek, and it ran down to the floor like a hairline. He traced it with his finger, thinking. "Hollow. If I'm dead, what's the point of Gate One?"

"You won't stay dead forever. You'll stay hidden. When the time comes, you'll break it quietly, in a place no one can find you. The elders will feel nothing. They'll think the house settled."

"Where?"

"I'll show you."

"Not here."

"Not here." Hollow's voice dropped. "There's a place under the house that the Vances don't visit often. The old brine tunnels. But we'll need a guide. Somebody who knows them well."

"Somebody I can trust."

"If one exists."

Cole shut his eyes. He thought about Elise, her bandaged hand curled against her ribs. He thought about the way she had stopped Orla with one quiet pull of his sleeve. *If one exists.* He thought she did.

He was almost asleep when the sound reached him.

It was small. A scrape, then a click, then the soft, careful rasp of metal sliding into a lock. Not Dennis's key. Dennis always whistled.

Cole's heart slowed on instinct. His fingers went cold. He lay perfectly still with his eyes half open and his breath shallow, the way Hollow had taught him.

The bolt slid back. The door swung inward on its old hinge, and lantern light fell across the salt floor.

Garrick stood in the doorway with a bunch of keys in one hand and a clay teapot in the other. Steam curled from the spout.

"Evening, miracle," he said.