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Again, she peeked over the edge. It was very, very far down. Did the thing want to hurt her? Kill her? Her breath came short and she stumbled back, her feet slipping in the gravel and coming out from under her, pitching her forward. With a cry of fear, she threw her body sideways, landing on her stomach, the air knocked out of her lungs.
For several minutes she lay there, gripping the ground and sucking in lungfuls of dusty air. When she’d finally managed to calm herself, she began to push back from the edge, the rocky ground scraping her bare legs.
Something caught her eye on a ledge below. A reddish rock. Haddie stilled, glancing around at the windless night. She scooted herself forward just enough to hang her head over the edge, her hand finding a prickly plant and wrapping around its strong root.
She eyed the reddish rock on the small ledge below, her gaze moving to a similar one on a wider ledge beneath, plants and brush growing near the wall of the cliff.
Haddie’s bones squeezed tight, growing leaden in her body. She cried out softly, her head falling limply over the edge of the cliff, her eyes glued to that second ledge. This place was like that room on the second floor of Lilith House. It had weight. She didn’t know if the weight was bad or sad, it wasn’t like that with places. Places weren’t clear like people. Places held their weight different.
Haddie caught her breath, lifting her head, willing the feel of the weight to leave her bones, but remain in her mind. She’d been practicing that lately, and sometimes it worked. Mostly, it didn’t, but Haddie didn’t want the weight of badness to make it so she couldn’t move.
That scared her, and she didn’t want to be scared. She wanted to be brave.
She peered below the weighty ledge. There were no more rocks beneath.
Haddie paused, lifting her head higher and peering around again. The distant sound of a drumbeat started up again. She couldn’t tell if it was moving closer or farther away.
Haddie looked down again. She knew what she had to do. She knew she had been led here for a reason. Haddie came up on her knees, gathering every ounce of courage in her small, skinny, seven-year-old body. And then Haddie turned around, lowering herself backward over the cliff.CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTGeorgia sat on the couch, legs drawn up, arms linked around them, a scowl on her face that Camden knew hid her hurt. He sat down next to her. “Georgie,” he implored. “Look at me.”
She turned away. “You shouldn’t have told her,” she said. “I can’t believe you told her.”
Mason cleared his throat from where he sat on the easy chair across from the sofa. “He had to, Georgia,” Mason said.
She whipped her head toward him. “Now you’re on her side too?”
He let out a breath. “There don’t always have to be sides,” he said. “What was Camden supposed to do? Deny what she’d already discovered?” He glanced at Camden. “He has feelings for her. He trusted her. And she wants to help.”
“Help, my ass!” Georgia said. “What can she do to help?”
“She can give us complete access to the house,” Camden said. “The property.”
“We could have had complete access to that property ourselves if you’d have let us do whatever it took to get rid of her.”
“God, Georgie, listen to you,” Camden said, his voice a low growl of frustration. “Do whatever it took to get rid of her? You sound like Ms. Wykes.”
Georgia let out a gasp. “How dare you? Until five minutes ago, you were just as on board with this plan as we were.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, well, things changed.” My priorities changed.
“Yeah, because Scarlett Lattimore opened her legs for you. What a good guild member you are.”
“For the love of God, stop this, you two,” Mason said, standing up and lacing his hands behind his head as he paced. “This is ridiculous. Georgia,” he said, turning to her. “I’m sorry, but I’m with Camden. Our plan . . . it needs to be adjusted. We can still seek answers, justice. That’s not going to change, okay? That part is bigger than just us. But I don’t want to be ruled by vengeance either. I want . . . more.” He looked at her so adoringly that Camden glanced away. He sometimes wondered if Mason ever admitted his longing for Georgia, even in his own head. What he did know was that Mason was inspired by the work he was doing on Lilith House. It’d become a passion project for him, not only because he was good at what he did, but because it was filling something inside him to be given reign over the structure that had imprisoned him for most of his life. He was turning Lilith House into something different than she’d been, inspired by the vision he had for her. Camden could see that it provided a cleansing for Mason, one long past due, one taking the place of what they had previously planned. This one feeding the good wolf inside, he could see it in Mason’s eyes. “Don’t you want more, Georgie?” Mason asked softly.
