Page 39 of Housesitter

“Even better,” Shepherd said. “Perfidious intent, hoist by your own petard, and conned in the contract by the person you were trying to con. The silver lining is that somewhere an infernal underwriter was able to leave work early and catch his kid’s play. Because you did all the work for them.”

Kel clenched his hand into a fist and punched his thigh, grinding his knuckles into the clenched muscle. It was technically to loosen it up, but it got his frustration out as well. Some of it.

“Dio Madden owed me,” he said. “All of this? The only reason he had this was because his father got my grandad run out of town rather than honor his debts. All I did was make that right.”

Shepherd shook his head. “That’s not what happened,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time that Kel had heard that. He’d thought better of Shepherd, although he didn’t know why. A snort escaped him as he jabbed a finger at Shepherd’s chest.

“And how the hell would you know?” he asked.

Shepherd grabbed Kel’s wrist. He was faster than Kel had thought, and stronger than he looked.

“Because I know how long Dio Madden has been on Renfield’s books,” he said. “I don’t know what happened back then, but as for ‘who’? It wasn’t Dio’s father. It was Dio.”

Kel stared at him.

“No,” he said. “Dio inherited this place after the old man died. Everyone in town was talking about it.”

Shepherd nodded. “Yeah, probably because no one had ever heard of this kid before. Right?”

It was. Kel resented having to admit it, because…goddamnit, the con had been see through.

“That’s not…” he said. “Dio was only a few years older than me.”

“Huh,” Shepherd said. “Did people mention how much he looked like his dad at that age?”

They had. Ruby had scalded three people at the cafe when they’d kept pointing it out to her. It had gotten her fired. Not for long. Only until her boss had come up short on staff to take the late shift. Still…

“How?” Kel asked. Then closed his eyes and held up a hand to stop Shepherd before he answered. “Stupid question. Magic.”

Shepherd made an ‘eh’ noise in the back of his throat.

“Close enough,” he said. “You feed the House, the House feeds you.”

That made Kel shudder. He had grown up with stories about Hell House. Ruby had chewed over them like gossip, the proof that being a bastard was in a Madden’s bones. Some of the older atrocities—the tribe slaughtered for their land, the father who came back from the war to find his pigs well-fed and his children missing toes—were folklore, but a lot of them had evidence to back up the stories.

Murder. Missing children. Madness.

“Does that mean I’m supposed to…that Dio was killing people?” he asked, changing direction mid-question.

“No,” Shepherd said confidently. Then he paused and wrinkled his nose. “I mean, maybe. People have hobbies. That’s not something the House demands. It doesn’t need to. Just by virtue of what it is, it attracts and corrupts that sort of thing, those sort of people. Most Keepers don’t encourage it; that way lies pitchforks and torches. Or, these days, abatement notices and TikTokers.”

Kel glanced at the house. Sunlight glinted from the windows. From the attic, something wet and raggedy pressed against the window. It might have waved. Kel didn’t want to deal with that.

“So what does it want?”

“A return on its investment,” Shepherd said. “What it gives you, doubled and deposited back into its coffers. In Dio’s case, it gave him power over the dead.”

“And in mine?”

Shepherd just tilted his head to the side, raised an eyebrow, and waited. The attitude was the same one that Kel’s teachers used to get in school when they thought he should already know the answer to a question. The difference was…this time he thought he did, too.

He licked his lips. “The smoke,” he said. “It tells me people’s secrets, what they really think.”

“Think?” Shepherd asked.

“...want,” Kel acknowledged. “It tells me what people want. Most people, anyhow. Not you.”