Penelope Bauregard's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Penelope stepped onto the porch at dawn to feed the pegicorns and found a body instead. The woman lay twisted against the door frame, breathing shallow and fast. Her fingers clutched something bound in river reeds — the kind that only grew deep in the swamp where Penelope's grandmother used to take her. When Penelope knelt down, the stranger's eyes opened. Her lips moved, shaping a single word. "Claudine." Penelope's blood went cold. That was her grandmother's name, and her grandmother had been dead for three years. Penelope caught the woman as she slumped forward. The bundle fell from her grip and rolled across the porch. The reeds split open, revealing a journal with a faded floral cover. Penelope knew it instantly — her grandmother's journal, the one that had been buried with her. The woman gasped once more and went still. Penelope's hands shook as she reached for the journal. Inside, new entries filled pages that had been blank at the funeral. The ink was fresh. Her grandmother's handwriting spelled out instructions for binding a soul drinker, the very knowledge she'd refused to share when she was alive. But at the bottom of the first page, written in different ink, darker and still wet: "What you take from the dead, the dead will take from you."