Big Bang: I With Thee Have Fixed My Lot [Ready or Not | M | Grace/Daniel]

[jedibuttercup]

Title: I With Thee Have Fixed My Lot
Author: jedibuttercup
Fandom: Ready or Not (2019)
Rating: M; Grace/Daniel, past Grace/Alex
Warnings/Notes: For the 2024 iddyiddybangbang. Begun for a NYR request for Othalla, finished for Iddy Iddy Bang Bang 2024. (In which Grace knew what she was getting into with the Le Domases, and she's come to ruin them.) Titled from a line in Paradise Lost.

Summary: Forget justice for Uncle Charlie; Grace was furious enough now to want justice for herself, and every other Le Domas spouse betrayed to their deaths over the years. If she could somehow choose to exempt any of them from whatever justice fucking up their ritual would deliver, Alex would not be that one. (Daniel, though; he was another story entirely.) 14,800 words

---

Of all the regrets that could have been haunting her on her wedding day, the truly ridiculous thing was that she'd actually liked him.

Grace Shepherd had gone on her first date with Alex Le Domas fully aware of who and what his family were, because she'd known who and what the Le Domases were and planned to grit her teeth just long enough for him to bring her home to meet his murderous family. But then he'd turned out to be effortlessly charming, endlessly fascinated by everything ordinary in a way that invited her to share rather than coming off as condescending, and even appeared to pass the 'it's not all about me' test with flying colors. That was fucking rare to encounter in her own tax bracket, never mind from a top tenth-of-a-percenter.

Maybe, she'd occasionally found herself thinking, he might be worth making the effort to hold onto after it was all over, despite how much that would complicate her plans. How old could he really have been when the Le Domases had killed her uncle, anyway? Five or six years old? She'd only been an infant at the time herself: an about-to-be orphaned little girl who really could have used another relative around when she'd gone into the foster system. It had taken her more than a decade to learn that there'd been more to it than her mother's brother just being a deadbeat, after she'd landed with a family in her teens whose patriarch was a detective. The old man had helped her look up the official records on Charles Sparks, the guy who'd completely failed to turn up any of the times people had tried to track him down to take custody of her over the years, and revealed the first few clues to the truth that she'd spent the next several years fleshing out on her own.

Helene Le Domas, Grace had discovered, was the daughter of a blue-blooded old family that had made their fortune in games in the eighteen hundreds and seemingly turned everything they touched to gold over the generations since. She wasn't sure how her uncle had attracted the woman's attention, but the result had been a long courtship followed by a fairy-tale wedding at the grand Le Domas estate. The wedding announcement had been in all the big-name papers ... but interestingly enough, the honeymoon hadn't, not even to mention its location. And when someone had finally noticed Helene never appeared in public with her new husband and asked her what was up, she'd claimed to have been jilted and refused to speak of him any further.

Which was bullshit, of course. The definition of a jilting was to leave someone standing at the altar, and Charlie had clearly done no such thing. He'd disappeared afterward, and no Le Domas had been willing to go on record saying why that was. What they were on record for was a much stranger collection of facts that belonged on one of those procedural shows about serial killers: a file of other missing persons cases scattered across the last century and a half whose last known location was at a Le Domas family wedding; a stable full of goats instead of the usual horses; financial records too pristine and too faultlessly successful to be taken at face value; and close associations with a number of other families with similarly dubious histories.

One of those families – the Van Horns – had been wiped out in a suspicious house fire about a year before Grace decided to put herself in Alex's path, and out of curiosity, she'd gone to the estate sale to poke around. Not much had survived the flames, but she'd picked up an interesting-looking old leatherbound book that had turned out to be one of the Van Horn daughters' personal journals. And that was where she'd finally found the smoking gun of why, amid a discussion of potential boyfriends that detailed exactly what separated 'one of them' from 'one of us'. Namely, just how they went about turning the one into the other.

Fucking Satanists. Who would ever expect to meet one in this day and age? A real one, not one of those compassionate atheist types who'd co-opted the label to fuck with the government and the media. The details of the old school initiation ritual apparently varied, but the risks and consequences didn't, and as unbelievable as it seemed, it fit the evidence all too well. Her Uncle Charlie had to have either tried to run away after finding out about the Le Domas' ritual, or failed it, and whichever way it fell out the family must've murdered him for it.

Grace had known all that long before her first date with Alex and had planned accordingly. So she really had no business being so disappointed that the son of a family who semi-regularly sacrificed innocents to Beelzebub had not made any effort – other than the obvious, and really, what use was a God who'd damn people for something as fun as premarital sex, anyway? – to improve her chances of escaping that category.

"That's it?" she asked aloud as her new husband finished 'explaining' why his aunt had interrupted their wedding night to summon them to a family meeting. They were married now; Grace's own initiation was apparently in half an hour; every other family member in the house was definitely 'one of us'; and Alex still hadn't breathed a single word of actual warning. That half-assed offer to run away before the ceremony didn't count.

"Yeah, that's it," he replied, expression as guileless as if he really were as innocent as he pretended. "I know it's ridiculous. It's just a weird family ritual. And we only have to do it once. All right?"

Spineless fucker. For the first several months they'd dated, it had seemed so unbelievable that he could really be a part of some fucked up murderous cult. He'd just seemed so sweet; in every respect, he'd been a step up over any boyfriend Grace had ever had before. The only fly in the ointment of their growing domesticity had been that he'd ignored all her hints to introduce her to the rest of his family; all he'd been willing to say about them when she'd pressed was that they were horrible people. It had taken him a full year to finally catch a clue and propose, and even then he'd insisted on letting his mother take care of all the planning so they wouldn't have to spend more than a day and a night in his ancestral brickpile. There'd still been a fraction of a chance that he really was innocent and she was the one living in a nightmare built of her own fucked up imagination.

That meant if Grace was going to confirm what had really happened to her Uncle Charlie, she would have to go all the way to the finish line ... and for a while, she'd thought she'd be okay with that. She really had liked Alex. But as the wedding got closer and closer, he still never said anything, not even to better define what he meant by 'horrible people' so she could know what to be on guard for around the rest of the Le Domases. And more than that: he'd actively ignored or deflected any hint or question that might give her any cause to hesitate or doubt their relationship. He only cared about keeping her with him, not whether that was best for her.

The only person, in fact, who had tried to warn her about anything at all had been Alex's older brother Daniel, and even he had waited until less than an hour before the wedding. He'd been vague about it, too; obviously, he hadn't wanted to drop the whole toxic kit and caboodle on a woman he barely knew, when for all he knew she was already clued in and had willingly made the choice. But it had been enough to settle her last reservations and make her regret that he hadn't been the single one when she'd gone looking for an available Le Domas.

Instead, she'd let herself be fooled by Alex's 'you make me a better man' routine, basking in finally being really wanted by someone, and now she was paying the consequences.

"Okay," she said, smiling through the death of her ill-advised dreams.

"Yeah?" Alex looked like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar given a reprieve; Grace swallowed past a sudden wave of nausea and nodded back.

"If it gets your family to accept me, I will play the shit out of Go. Just buy me ten minutes, all right? If I'm going to be seen in public again tonight, I gotta put on ... my game face."

She managed to keep a grin on her face through the laughter and instructions that followed, until Alex finally, finally left her alone. Then Grace turned to her suitcase, scooping her honeymoon clothes out all over the bed to expose the catches for the false bottom. She hadn't been sure what to expect that day – the Van Horns' family ritual hadn't had anything to do with games – so she'd tried to prepare for a wide variety of possible threats. Fortunately, one good thing about a wedding dress with a voluminous skirt covered in a distracting amount of lace and tulle was that you could use it to hide a lot without being obvious about it.

It wasn't super comfortable, of course, but the security would be worth it. And she'd even brought a pair of sparkly white Converse and added a pocket to the dress for vital things like her phone and ID. Like fuck were they going to disappear her, no matter what happened in their fucking music room, whether Grace failed the ritual herself or she had to force things by asking directly about her uncle. Either way, since Alex had passed up his last chance to come clean, her marriage would be ending in the morning, and nothing left in the room was worth coming back for. Just in case someone else snooped before then, though, Grace hastily threw everything back in the suitcase and dropped it on the far side of the bed.

Then she took a deep breath, tidied a few wisps of hair out of her face, and finally headed for the stairs.

---

The thing about finally screwing her nerves to the sticking place, though, was that any kind of delay just wound her tension even further, and it wasn't quite midnight just yet. Alex and Daniel's younger sister hadn't arrived yet either, and the awkward conversation their mother dragged her into as they waited was just as uncomfortable as the holsters pressing against Grace's thighs under her skirt. She could tell Becky thought she was being kind, but all the condescension Grace had once thought missing in Alex was on full display from his mother; Becky might not have been born 'one of them' either, but she'd obviously been thoroughly assimilated.

Grace fumbled her way through a series of cautious answers that somehow ended in the woman pressing her to try to bring him back into the fold. That at least made her feel a little better about Alex having fooled her so long; it wasn't that he'd been hiding his cult practices from Grace; he'd actually run away from his family. There'd just been this one last hurdle he hadn't been able to bring himself to skip. That didn't mean she'd forgive him, though; conspiring to force her into a contract with the Devil without her knowledge, whether the Devil was an actual being or just an object of their belief, was not the act of someone who truly loved her.

After Alex's mom, she next had to fend off Alex himself – obviously concerned that she might have spilled the beans – followed by Daniel, who seemed to be the only one out of all of them to notice her increasing tension.

"Are you okay?" her new brother-in-law asked, brow furrowed in concern as he handed her a glass of something golden-colored and a lot higher-proof than champagne. "It's not a great thing to look forward to, I know; even Charity was nauseous when it came down to it, don't let her fool you. But you know it's the price of entry."

So he'd warned his wife, had he? Long enough in advance for her to have second thoughts, even. It figured. "I do look forward to the day when all of this is just a distant memory," Grace replied dryly, giving him a crooked smile in return. "But it's just a game, right? However inconveniently timed it might be."

She could see the sudden worry dawning in the back of his eyes at her apparently clueless reply, and was very curious about what he might say next. But of course his sister picked that moment to finally arrive with her family, sweeping into the room in a cloud of disruption. If Grace had ever wondered how young the Le Domases started the indoctrination, the charming sight of Emilie's kids wearing obvious ritual masks and chanting 'kill, kill, kill' answered that question for her: way too young for them to be able to respect the secret. Did families like theirs homeschool too, or did they send them to whole schools full of Satan worshipers, or what? She'd love to be able to say it boggled the mind, but it actually made too much sense that they indoctrinated them that young. That way, they'd grow up thinking it was normal and never try to leave.

They weren't just Satanists; they were Fundamentalist Satanists. It was like something out of the setup for a particularly bad joke.

In that context, Alex staying away from them so long was honestly even more baffling. But when finally asked to cross a line in the sand that might put him firmly on the wrong side of his family instead of just temporarily being 'out of the fold', he'd still cleaved to the people he called horrible instead of the woman he claimed to love. So in the end, he was worse than the drunken brother who flirted with her and badmouthed his own wife; the already-high sister with the frat-bro husband and hellion children; the gargoyle aunt who'd led Uncle Charlie to his doom; and the obviously disapproving parents. If Grace could somehow choose to exempt any of them from whatever justice fucking up their ritual would deliver, Alex would sadly not be that one.

She tossed back the glass of liquor, coughing through the burn as it hit the back of her throat, and shared a rueful smile with Daniel as his father moved toward a pair of ornate doors marked with the family's name.

After all of that build-up, the revelation of the game room and the ritual itself was something of a letdown. They put a card in a box, supposedly gifted to their ancestor by Le Bail. The box printed the name of a game on the card. And they just ... played that game. Where was the inherent Satanism in that? Was there some contract written on the cards in invisible ink, activated by the touch of someone new, to take their soul? Grace found it hard to take seriously as she drew her own card, last-second doubts cropping up again as she read it.

Those doubts died again, though, the moment she spoke the words 'hide and seek' aloud and saw the reactions on everyone's faces. Alex didn't even look at her at first; he stared wide-eyed across the table at his parents, expression blank with shock, as if someone had walked over his grave. Daniel stared at her, expression creased with dismay. And the others looked ... the only thing she could think of was 'unpleasantly surprised', as if they'd just stepped in something disgusting or been asked to take care of a distasteful chore off-schedule.

She tried prompting Alex's dad for more details, feigning clueless enthusiasm, and got only a fumbling half-assed description of the rules in reply. Alex himself said nothing more than to meet him in their room even with that sick look on his face, and the others uttered not a peep even when she tried shaking things up with a toast to Le Bail and outright asking Tony how she was supposed to win. They really were just going to hunt her without any further explanation, weren't they? Forget justice for Uncle Charlie; now she was furious enough to want justice for herself, and every other Le Domas spouse betrayed to their deaths over the years.

But now that she was in the moment, she thought better of confronting them outright. Why give them the warning? It was really clear now exactly how Uncle Charlie's last night on Earth had begun, and Grace wanted to see the looks on their faces when she deviated sharply from that script.

She gave the Le Domas patriarch a tight smile as he closed the music room door in her face, then turned and strode firmly away as a creepy Hide and Seek song started to play behind her. The house had like half a dozen stories not counting cellars, attics and basements, more than sixty thousand square feet of space, and at least ten rooms for every Le Domas who'd been sitting at that table. There were endless places to hide, and even more to sit in ambush. A lot would depend on how they acted when the song ended and they came out of the room, but if they came at her with any kind of obvious negative intent – as she was pretty sure they would – she wanted the chance to make them deeply regret it without risking ending up in her uncle's missing footsteps.

So ... not right outside the music room, but maybe a few stories up the winding staircase on the landing near Alex's bedroom, where she could peer down at the family when they emerged and decide on her next move. Grace had gleaned a lot of information about the grounds from various celebrity stalking sites – that was how she knew about the goats, for example – and another private detective had got her a copy of the house's layout, at least what was on public record. But none of that information had shown the old servants' corridors Helene had inadvertently revealed, and she'd only seen the one entrance. She hadn't decided yet if using them would give her an advantage, but she didn't want to cut off the possibility.

First things first, though, before she went anywhere: better make it easier to run. Grace drew her tactical knife from its sheath under her skirt, then quickly sheared the mass of tulle off just below the knee, kicking the shed fabric into the shadows behind the piano. Then she tiptoed out of the room and headed for the stairs, knife still clutched comfortingly in hand.

About two minutes later, the song finally petered out – like a frog inside a skillet, like a lobster in a pan, had they really thought that Grace would fail to catch a clue? – and she watched with grim satisfaction as the Le Domases fanned out into the hallways, armed. Oddly, none of their weapons seemed modern; apparently the family was serious about playing the game as it would've been 'in Great-Grandfather's time'. Some of them had guns, but they were all nineteenth-century models, and she saw two different kinds of bows and an axe as well. Advantage her, as long as none of them surprised her at close range.

Alex wasn't with them; they'd undoubtedly thought better of asking him to participate, and from the way Charity was hanging back, they were worried he might try to help her. Hah. The kids weren't with them either; they'd been sent upstairs with the nanny before the card was drawn. That left her up against Alex's dad, mom, aunt, sister, brother-in-law, and Daniel: six seekers to one hider. Or, maybe just five? She watched Daniel trail behind the rest, frowning, as he passed the fabric she'd kicked aside; he certainly wasn't in any hurry to catch her. The rest, though, wore expressions running the gamut from eager to resolute to frustrated as they spread out.

Her gut wobbled briefly as it occurred to her that people really were about to die, and that if they didn't get her first, she'd be the one doing the killing. But if there'd been any other possible way to bring them to justice, Grace wouldn't be there at all. They'd been much too good at burying the evidence – and buying the blind eyes of the law – over the years. Marrying in, theoretically condemning her own soul in the process, had been her last resort. Alex himself had said she didn't have to win to join their cult; she just had to play, and the game had already begun. So – if she was going to hell anyway, she was damn well going to earn her admission.

A grim smile formed on her face as she faded back into the long corridor of bedrooms, watching as the least competent of the Le Domases – Emilie – headed for the staircase first. She would have preferred to start with Helene, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Grace eyed the various doors, considering and dismissing Alex's whispered instruction to meet him in his room, and ducked behind the next one down instead. Even if he got past Charity, he'd had all the chances she was willing to give him; she wasn't going to risk putting herself back in his power, and if there was a hidden entrance in one bedroom, there was probably one in all of them.

The room she chose smelled distractingly like Daniel's cologne; only one set of luggage was in there, though, nothing that looked like it might belong to his wife. Grace wondered about that, but didn't have time to investigate more deeply. A second set of footsteps sounded in the hall almost as soon as she was tucked behind the door, obscuring the sounds of Emilie's approach. She held her breath as the second presence – the nanny – called for Georgie, Emilie's older son, and lifted her knife, ready to act.

"Georgie, I know you're in here...." the voice called again, and the door of Daniel's room creaked open, revealing a frustrated-looking Clara whose eyes widened abruptly at the sight of Grace.

Grace lunged for her, grabbing the maid by the scalloped neckline of her dress and pulling her further into the room. Then she set the point of her knife at the woman's throat and backed her slowly up again, closing the door behind her.

"Shhhh," she hissed in Clara's ear as the woman's breathing shortened. "Scream, and it'll be the last thing you do. You're going to come into the room now and find something to tie yourself up with. Understand me?"

The staff might not be part of the cult themselves, but she had no qualms about tying them up and gagging them to get them out of the way. They willingly worked here, after all; they had to be in the know. She had no doubt they'd choose the family over her if it came down to it.

Clara nodded nervously, inching toward the bed and its ornate trappings while Grace followed her with the knife, one ear still cocked toward events in the hall. If Emilie came this far....

No sooner had that thought crossed her mind when a loud gunshot carried through the wall, followed by an exultant feminine shriek. "Over here, over here, I – oh shit!" The joy in Emilie's voice changed to sudden dismay. "Shit, shit, shit! Alex! What are you doing in here?"

"Emilie, what the fuck!" Grace's husband's voice replied, tight and pained.

Her eyes flew wide as she realized what must have happened ... and in the instant she looked away from Clara, the maid turned and ran, throwing the door open and bursting out into the hall.

"Fuck," Grace hissed, echoing Alex, torn between wanting to see what had happened and getting the fuck away before Clara led them in. Practicality won, and she ran for the panel at the back of the room that looked like the one Helene had stepped out of in Alex's, fumbling at the wall until it yielded. She closed the panel as carefully as she could behind her, hands trembling, then swore again and leaned her forehead briefly against the wood. Her plan was already falling apart; so much for all that strategizing. She'd come too far to give up now, though.

"Fucking Le Domases," she murmured again, then took a deep breath, shook herself, and padded quickly off down the corridor in her sparkly bridal Chucks.

The heavy wood and brick structure of the house muted most of the sound, but she had no doubt the others had converged on whatever just happened. They'd scatter again sooner or later and give her another chance to pick someone off, but first she had to find a way out without drawing any more attention. Luckily, some Le Domas servant or offspring in generations past must've found the maze as confusing as she did, because there were marks drawn in graphite on the backs of most of the exit panels. They showed up even better when she held up her phone in flashlight mode, signposting landmarks like the entry hall and service kitchen. Easy to miss in a hurry, but there to help if you took the time to look. The servants' stairs that connected one level of corridors to another were narrow and steep, all the fanciness of the main house stripped away, but they did the job just as well as the main stairs, and no footsteps followed her as she picked her way down them.

Back on the main floor, she bit her lip, then mentally rolled the dice and eased the door into the entry hall open a crack. She caught a glimpse of a pair of figures heading back through the doors into the music room – Alex, it looked like, clutching his shoulder and leaning heavily against his mother – but it seemed otherwise clear; even Charity was out of sight now. Grace waited a second, then eased out and started looking for a shadowy corner.

There was plenty of other noise echoing through the house to cover her movements; an angry male voice echoed down the stairs in counterpart to a higher pitched voice shouting petulant excuses in return. That was Grace's only excuse for the error she made next, turning into one of the public cross-halls without checking carefully first. She'd half-assumed everyone else was still up by Alex's bedroom too, giving her plenty of time to set up her next blind. Instead, she found herself face-to-face with a disturbed-looking Daniel, hunting rifle clutched loosely in his arms and blood smeared up one sleeve.

Alex's, obviously. Who had thought it was a good idea to give the cokehead the ancient pepperbox pistol?

"Shit," Grace hissed, grip tightening on the tactical knife still clutched in her hand.

"Shit," Daniel echoed, half-raising the rifle as he eyed the knife in her hand, then her comfortable shoes and the obvious alteration to her dress. "Did Alex give that to you?"

Grace snorted, edging toward the side of the hall to give herself a little more cover if anyone else surprised them. The overhead lights had been turned off with the security system; the candelabras spread liberally through the rooms threw deep shadows around every bookcase and piece of ornate artwork lining the walls. "Would it make you feel better if he had? But no, your precious little brother didn't tell me a damn thing."

Daniel's frown deepened; apparently that wasn't the answer he'd been looking for. "I wondered, after what you said earlier. But then, how did you...?"

Grace risked a glance back over her shoulder, but they still seemed alone for the moment, and armed or not he didn't seem all that eager to shoot her. He was still a Le Domas, though, and had even less reason to put her first than Alex did. Why was he hesitating? Why was she hesitating right back? It was distracting, and she wanted to know.

"Do you really care?" She gestured toward the rifle in his arms, keeping her voice low.

He glanced down at it, then gave her a crooked smile. "I guess it probably doesn't seem that way, does it."

"Probably didn't seem that way to my uncle, either," she replied, leadingly.

"Wait," Daniel frowned, a line wrinkling between his brows. "I thought you said you didn't have any family."

"I don't. Now. Because Charlie Sparks got married at this house thirty years ago and was never seen again," she scoffed. "A few months later, my mom – his sister – tried to get someone to investigate. Guess how long it took me to end up an orphan after that."

The blood drained visibly out of his face at the mention of her uncle's name, and the barrel of the rifle drooped toward the floor. So he did remember him. "You – you're Charlie's niece?"

"Funny coincidence, huh," Grace continued, pointedly. "I thought, when I first met Alex, that maybe not all of you deserved vengeance. That maybe it had just been Helene and not all of you were in on it. But so much for that idea. Fuck your family, seriously."

Daniel looked away, licking his lips as though he very much wished he had a drink in his hands instead of a gun. "I guess I always figured somebody would burn it all down one day. But you know, even if I wanted to help you ... they're my family, Grace. And every last one of them believes that if you don't die by dawn, Mr. Le Bail will take the rest of us instead. Best I can do is offer you a head start."

"Yeah, I figured," Grace said, feeling disappointed – and irritated at herself for that disappointment. If even Alex hadn't been able to put her first, even that little was already more than any of the rest of them would probably give her. "So I'll do the same. Since you were the only one to try to warn or comfort me even a little, maybe tuck yourself somewhere out of the way? I won't kill you if you don't try to kill me first. But judging by what just happened upstairs, I figure most of the others will end up fair game. Sorry." She shrugged.

Daniel chuckled roughly, meeting her gaze again. She wasn't sure whether to call the look he was giving her relieved or resigned, but he still didn't raise the rifle. "I don't think I'm the one you should be apologizing to. If you knew who we were ... you sought out Alex, didn't you? Did you tell him about your uncle?"

She lifted a scornful eyebrow. "I would have, if he'd ever given me the opportunity. But if he wasn't going to prepare me at all, then I certainly wasn't going to prepare him. If he lives through the night, I think I'm well within my rights to ask for a divorce."

"If you believe my parents, if you live through the night, then it's not going to matter," he replied, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. "But if it did, I wouldn't blame you for wanting to try. If I could divorce my family instead and let them keep Charity, believe me, I would. But it doesn't work that way. It is what it is, and all the regrets in the world won't change it."

He seemed to mean that, which was even sadder. "Convenient that they indoctrinate you to believe that, huh," Grace replied, rolling her eyes. Then the voices echoing through the house started getting closer, and a creaking sound like an opening door came from the direction of the music room. The family was back on the hunt. "So are you going to call out to them or what?"

Daniel opened his mouth, glancing toward the voices, and took a deep breath – then hesitated again, a pained expression moving over his face as if the words had caught in his throat. "I ... just fucking go, all right?" he said, stepping aside. "I can't save you, but I don't want to be the one to serve you up either. Not again."

"Not again?" Grace froze briefly at the implication, and a sharp stab of sorrow and anger burned through her. Then she swore and lunged forward into Daniel's space, empty fist swinging. "You fucker."

The blow caught him by surprise; he stumbled backward, clutching his face, and dropped the rifle entirely, letting it clatter to the floor between them. She didn't think she'd punched hard enough to crack his cheekbone, just give him a bruise, but seriously, what the fuck. Was he asking her to kill him?

If so, the joke was on him; it mostly made her want to kill his parents even more. She already knew from meeting Emilie's kids that they started the brainwashing early, but to have let a six- or seven-year-old actually participate? And if Daniel had been there when Charlie was hiding for his life, his brother probably had been, too. No wonder the wedding had been the one line Alex wouldn't cross. They'd been made to join in on this bullshit before they were even old enough to truly understand right from wrong, and it had left a mark too deep for mere romance to erase. More fool her for ever hoping otherwise; she knew from childhood trauma, after all.

But if Daniel couldn't stand the guilt anymore, he should have gone and got therapy like a normal human being, rather than trying to make her put him out of his misery. At least he did still have something of a conscience left, unlike most of the rest of his family.

"I deserved that," Daniel said with a wince, looking up at her.

"No fucking duh," Grace replied, snorting. "If you're feeling that fucking sorry, then why are you even helping? You do know that traditional hide and seek – since like ancient Greece, never mind your ancestor's time – usually has only one seeker, right? One of my foster families even played a team version, where when someone finds the hider, they team up to go after the rest. Did your Mr. Le Bail write down all the rules in advance, or are your family just making shit up as they go along and assuming they got it right?"

"That's ... actually a good question," Daniel said slowly, something like a cross between dread and reluctant hope warring in his tone. "I've never actually seen any rules written down. I guess we've always just assumed it's all versus one, given the way it has to end. Except for whoever hangs back to stop the spouse from interfering...."

She bared her teeth at him in a fierce smile. Not the kind of vengeance she'd had in mind, but the idea of prying one of the next generation away from the family – especially Daniel, for several reasons she wasn't looking too closely at at the moment – soothed that raw place in her that had been stinging ever since Alex made it clear he wasn't putting her first. "If they're worried about team-ups at all, then it must be possible, right? So, since you actually give a damn, I'm declaring you're on my team. You wanna prove your worth to Le Bail, now you gotta help me win."

He gaped at her, dropping his hand from his chin. "You can't just decide that. Are you serious? Just because I don't want to kill you doesn't mean I want the rest of my family to die!"

"Hey, you were the one who just said you'd divorce your family if you could. Or, I dunno, try and convince them to join me too, I don't give a fuck as long as it's not your Aunt Helene. Think about it," she said, shrugging. Then she threw a wary glance back over her shoulder as the voices started getting louder, and began running again, darting around Daniel and heading for the next turn in the hall.

She didn't bother to look back. Maybe her argument would bear fruit, and maybe it wouldn't; she had her hopes, but she wouldn't put all her chips on it. In her experience, people who'd done truly fucked up things and somehow managed to justify it to themselves had a tendency to double down rather than take the out when presented with a come to Jesus moment. But the possibility might keep Daniel out of her way, if he was serious about not wanting to kill her. It was the only chance she was willing to give any of them after Alex had let her down. And in the meantime, she had better things to be doing.

Doors branched off in every direction down the new section of corridor, in a glossy ornate mirror of the servants' passageways. Most of the doors were shut, but one was cracked open a few inches, and she thought she'd seen Fitch head that way when the family had spread out earlier. Emilie's husband slash enabler hadn't seemed very familiar with his crossbow, and Grace's first impression of him had been of a man a little too comfortable paying other people to do everything for him. So if he'd picked somewhere out of the way to relax and pretend he'd been searching while the others did the hard parts ... a room somewhere down here away from the more heavily trafficked areas seemed about right.

She sidled over to the door, then placed her hand flat on the wood and listened. There were faint sounds inside, like the murmur of a television; maybe Fitch was watching something on his phone? Grace snorted quietly to herself, then eased the door open further, grip tightening on the tactical knife she still held at the ready.

At the far end of the ornately furnished room – a parlor? a sitting room? fuck if she knew the names for all the specialized fancy spaces in a manor house like this – Fitch was tucked back into a corner, frowning down at the device in his hands. He was totally engrossed in it, whatever he was watching; he didn't even look up as she cautiously edged her way through the half-open door, or when she started padding across the room. Granted, she was being careful not to let the hinges creak or walk directly in his line of sight, but still. Some evil cultist he was. She was practically within arm's reach by the time he looked up from the screen to glance warily toward the door, forehead creasing in a frown as he realized it wasn't quite as he'd left it. Then he finally noticed her, phone clattering to the floor as he gave a full-bodied flinch. "What – Grace!"

"Not exactly the kind of initiation ceremony you grew up with, huh," she mused faux-sympathetically as Fitch fumbled awkwardly for the crossbow. She didn't know for sure, but she thought it was a pretty solid guess; she had noticed the board-game company theme with the Bradley last name, and he seemed awfully copacetic with the whole Satan-worshiping aspect if not necessarily the Le Domas specifics.

Fitch reacted to the comment as if she'd prodded him with a goad, chin firming up as he finally got the crossbow straightened out and aimed her way. "Hey, now. Becky might get away with talking down to me like that, but I don't have to take it from you too. At least Le Bail picked me; you're the one he chose for sacrifice."

"You sure about that?" she said tartly, cocking her head at him. Good effort, finally, but he was standing way too close for that weapon. "Seems to me maybe he picked me, and you all are the ones he's testing. Maybe he thought your pathetic family needed a little shaking up."

That finally pushed him far enough to remind him what he was supposed to be doing, tightening his finger on the crossbow's trigger as he raised his voice to yell. "Bitch! She's in here--"

Grace was ready for that; she had plenty of time to knock the bow aside with her forearm before it even finished firing. Somewhere behind her, there was a solid thwock as the bolt embedded itself in a random wall. It was almost a reflex after that to step straight into him, leading with the blade of her knife. The edge slid across his throat with a sickening sound, and she gasped in reaction as blood sprayed all over her dress.

"Oh, gross," she said, shuddering as she pulled the knife away and watched Fitch slump to the floor, panic in his eyes as he grabbed at the spurting wound. Somehow she'd completely overlooked how messy this was going to be; her trainer had told her that experience would be the real teacher, and fuck if the woman hadn't been right.

There wasn't any guilt mixed in with the disgust, though. Grace had been worried about that. But all she felt, looking down at Alex's dying brother-in-law, was grim satisfaction. One less literal Satan-worshipper leeching on society, and he'd been trying to kill her first. She was no angel either, but so far, her conscience was clear.

She backed away from the spreading blood pool, then snagged his weapon from where he'd dropped it and headed toward the other side of the room. Someone had started calling Fitch's name from the hall; there must have been someone near enough to hear his yell. But Grace was starting to recognize the panels that led into the servants' corridors, each of them marked with a vaguely Scandinavian pattern, and there was one tucked into a corner there, probably so the maids or whoever could bring snacks in from the kitchen without being seen.

Another one of the many traditions this family was stuck on. Really, the most modern thing any of them ever had done was marry outside of their class, and not just Grace, but also her uncle, and from what Becky had said before the wedding, her too. Maybe even Charity, depending on how literal Daniel had been about his gold-digging comment. Was the pool of other Satanists to choose from that small? Well, that followed, actually; if they wanted to keep their family tree from turning into a bowl of spaghetti, then they'd have to occasionally branch out to people who wouldn't be too much trouble to make disappear if things went the wrong way.

In other words, desperate people. Well, if the shoe fit. Grace smiled bitterly as she closed the secret door behind her, flexing her feet again in her sparkly Chucks. Then she paused, pressing her ear to the panel to see if this might be another opportunity. One person she could probably take; more than that might be too much of a risk. She bent to resheathe her knife, tucking it away again under her skirt, then checked over the crossbow and fixed the spare bolt into place. Waste not, want not, right?

She heard the door in the other room creak open, followed by an audibly caught breath. "Oh, damn it," she heard Becky say. "Couldn't do anything right even in death, could you, Fitch? I loved that carpet."

"Forget the carpet," Tony replied, voice tight. "First Emilie shoots Alex, then Daniel starts dragging his feet, and now this. And he doesn't even have the crossbow with him. Did he drop it somewhere or what? So much for the next generation."

"We'll just have to hope for better from the next," Becky replied tiredly. "Granted, George and Milton might not have had the best foundation so far, but maybe with Fitch gone Emilie will think about moving back home."

"Provided she survives the night. How the hell did that little blonde twig manage this, anyway? She said she was brought up in foster homes, not a war zone. Does she carry a switchblade in her bra or something?"

Grace clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a snort. The last thing she needed was to get caught listening; undoubtedly Tony had grown up using the passageways just like his sons had. She should probably get her ass in gear, actually; but where to next? If she were a crazy axe-wielding uncle-killer, or a cokehead who'd somehow mistaken her own brother for a woman in a wedding dress, where would she think to look? Back door, maybe?

"Well, however she did it, we'd better get him out of the way," Becky answered her husband, interrupting Grace's train of thought. "I don't want the kids wandering down and seeing this. If they're anything like Daniel and Alex were, thirty years ago...."

"With our luck," Tony agreed dryly, then sighed. "I'll go get Daniel; the sooner he wakes up to which side he's on here, the better. You check for Fitch's phone – this is complicated enough already with just Grace to deal with, we don't want her bringing anyone else into it."

...She had forgotten Fitch's phone, hadn't she? Damn. If Grace really had gone into this evening blind, that would probably have seemed more useful than his weapon. But there was a reason she hadn't used her own; she seriously doubted any local law enforcement would be on her side. At least she had some confirmation that it was possible to bring others in. Not that she'd be offering leniency to Becky and Tony, even if they were willing to defect and be that help, like she'd bullshitted to Daniel. He and Alex might have been too young to be responsible thirty years ago, but their parents certainly hadn't been. Luckily – judging by the sound of the door creaking again – they weren't very genre-savvy, either. They'd actually split up after finding a dead body.

Grace took a deep breath to calm her nerves, then pushed the panel open again into the room, crossbow down at her side half-obscured by her shortened skirt. Becky was still standing by the body, but the minute she heard the passageway opening she whirled around, lifting an arrow to the string of her longbow. It wobbled a little as she aimed it in Grace's direction, but she clearly had at least some experience with it.

"There you are, my dear," the older woman said, mouth set in a tight smile. "You know, I thought you might have a chance at being the new me, but this is on another level. It's too bad you drew that card; I would like to have seen where your strength would take the family."

"Yeah, so sorry to inconvenience your plans for the next generation," Grace parried dryly, gesturing toward her fallen brother-in-law with her free hand. "Or any generation of Le Domases, really. How many branches of the family tree have they pruned off this way over the years, I wonder? You'd think Le Bail would find it counter-productive to deprive himself of future worshipers. Unless, of course, the point is chaos and bloodshed done in his name, not who sheds it. There's always more suckers ready to take the next Faustian bargain, after all."

Becky's expression darkened, but she didn't call out; instead, she drew the bowstring back to her ear. "You would know, since you're here," she said, fiercely. "But you've done enough damage to this family."

"Funny, I was just gonna say the same thing," Grace replied, lifting the crossbow from the folds of her wedding dress to return the favor. It took barely any pressure to pull the trigger; the bigger hazard was ducking the arrow loosed from Becky's bow as the woman lost her grip on the string, clutching at the bolt that had sprouted from the notch between her collarbones. "That's for my uncle Charlie."

Even through the panic in her eyes, Grace saw that knowledge land; the way 'what the fuck' melted into 'oh shit' as Becky struggled and failed to take another breath. Then the woman collapsed to the floor as the sound of approaching footsteps returned outside the room.

Grace dropped the crossbow, aware there was no time to worry about finding Fitch's phone or setting another bolt or trying to salvage Becky's even more archaic weapon, and bolted back toward the passageway entrance. Two seekers down, a handful more to go, plus or minus the possibility of the staff interfering again. Maybe she was starting to get the hang of this after all.

She was too far away to make out what Tony said upon discovering his wife, but his anguished, furious tone carried, and the sound of more footsteps thundering through the house followed. She would rather not run into them all at once, but it would probably be counter-productive to go back upstairs; she decided to follow up on her earlier thought about the back door instead, since it seemed as good a place to set another ambush as any. The faint marks on the secret panels pointed her toward the concealed door into the service kitchen, and Grace paused to draw her handgun from its concealed holster before pushing it open. It would have spoiled the surprise to use it instead of the knife at the beginning – even a silenced gunshot made an unmistakable sound – but they were past that point now, and why take more of a risk than she had to?

The kitchen was empty, all its usual occupants scattered throughout the rest of the house. It was all white tile and silver appliances with a big wooden-topped kitchen island in the center, with things like fruit bowls and utensil holders and knife blocks placed on the various surfaces. A very utilitarian space, compared to all the ostentatious rooms Grace had seen in the rest of the house ... except for the security camera, currently dark, and the bright red eye of the electronic lock on the exterior door. A nicely creepy touch.

Unfortunately, her visions of setting up another ambush were moot; the only good place to hide in that room was down on the floor behind the kitchen island. Grace pictured crouching down to tuck herself into place, knees up and handgun propped at the ready, and decided that it was a disaster waiting to happen. She'd stiffen up if it took too long for anyone to come, and once they did, whoever found her would be between her and any viable exit. Better to head back into the passageways and look for another opportunity. She sighed, then stiffened at a quiet sound behind her and whirled around, aiming toward the slowly opening main door.

"Fuck," she muttered, staring into the butler's steely face. Grey-haired, impeccably groomed, and always humming Beethoven under his breath when not wielding a camera or a piano keyboard or a champagne tray at the direction of various Le Domases, Stevens had looked down his nose at Grace from the moment they'd met, and his attitude had not improved with her transformation from new family member to ritual sacrifice. His startled look transformed into a snarl of genuine hatred as he caught sight of her, and if she hadn't already been on edge, his quick dart toward a knife block might have taken her by surprise. She fired immediately, knowing she probably wouldn't hit but aiming to discourage, and tried to dodge around him toward the doors.

He stepped into her way, actually wagging a finger like he had any fucking business disapproving of her, and Grace snarled back at him.

"Get the fuck out of my way. I didn't come here to kill you, I just want justice for my uncle. But I'm not going to bend my throat for the knife. Don't you even give a shit that they're killing innocent people?"

Stevens gave a disdainful snort. "Haven't you ever read a newspaper, or turned on a TV? This is the way the world works. It's better to be the right hand of the devil than in his path." He lunged in the direction of the counter again.

The quote was so incongruous with everything else about the man that it knocked Grace off her stride, just enough that she missed again as he pulled back with a knife in hand. "Did you just quote The Mummy at me? Try this one on for size, then. 'Nasty little vermin such as yourself always get their comeuppance'."

He set his stance, expression darkening with fury, gripping the knife as if about to charge with it; but she knew better than to let him get any closer, especially when the sound of the first gunshots might draw another hunter at any time. She fired twice more, once to center mass and the second higher just in case Stevens had a bulletproof vest on under his uniform – she would have, working in a place like this on a night like this one – and swallowed back the instinctive lurch of nausea at the results. No time for her to get squeamish now; she shook herself, then ran toward the secret door again, closing it behind her and heading off at a run.

---

There weren't any cameras anywhere in the servants' corridors, thank fuck, so even if they turned the system back on to try to claw back the advantage, Grace was still safer in there than in the main halls. But they had to know she was using them by now and the general area she was in given the encounters so far, and the last thing she wanted was to give anyone time to set up an ambush for her. Once someone else followed her in, there'd be no cover inside the passages. So where could she go? A room with a better layout than the kitchen, obviously, but which one? Her pulse was coming a lot faster now, and it was hard to think clearly past the rush of adrenaline in her system.

She hurried past a few more rough brick corners and dusty doors, then paused and made herself think, struggling to reign in her panicky breathing. "You put yourself in this position on purpose, Grace," she reminded herself in a sharp whisper. "Settle the fuck down and finish it! Now, where am I?"

The nearest panel read study, whatever the fuck that meant in a place like this. Grace pressed her fingers to it, making herself take a moment to listen, then relaxed slightly when she didn't hear anything on the other side. She vaguely remembered from the blueprints that a room with that name abutted the outer wall, with a fireplace and more than one set of regular doors; it would have to do. She took another deep breath, scrubbed a lacy sleeve across her face to wipe off some of the drying blood, then set her jaw and pushed her way inside.

The room was all paneled wood, lit by the golden glow from the fireplace and several tall branching candelabras. The whole house had been like that so far; whatever the Le Domases might have saved in turning the electricity off that night, their chandler's bill had to be enormous. Big flowing drapes bracketed several windows, and a billiard table stood in the middle of the room, apparently abandoned in the middle of a game; several colorful balls – and an incongruous bottle of whiskey – were scattered across the green baize top. An old-fashioned desk to one side of the room sported an equally old-fashioned lamp and inkwell, and several antique knickknacks they probably used a fancy word like bibelots to describe sat atop the ornate mantelpiece. The only incongruous note was the quiescent dome of another camera, overlooking the whole room from its perch above a built-in bookcase. Somehow, she doubted it would stay dark much longer.

If only she could say the same about the horizon outside. She'd barely begun trying to calculate how much time she had left until dawn when the door on the far side of the room began to swing open, sending her adrenaline surging yet again. Grace braced herself, sucking in a sharp breath, and lifted the handgun to aim it over the billiard table. But the intruder turned out to be Daniel again, eyes opening wide as he caught sight of her.

"Shit," he said, raising his hands away from his antique rifle. He'd slung it over his shoulder by the carry strap; he looked more disheveled than he'd been when she'd seen him earlier, not to mention bloodier, but as before, none of it seemed to be his. Wherever his sister was, she'd managed to avoid shooting any more siblings in her coke-fueled frenzy. "I just came for the whiskey. What the fuck are you doing in here?"

Grace relaxed a little, letting her aim droop a little, but kept the gun pointed in his general direction. He might not have been eager to kill her before, but that might have changed after what she'd done to Becky, and he was still standing in front of the door. Someone else might follow him through it. "More passing through, actually; I haven't found your aunt yet, and the sooner the better before they turn the cameras back on."

That startled him; Daniel jerked his gaze up toward the ceiling, then gave a crooked smile and stepped further into the room, carefully lowering his hands again. He closed the door behind him, then reached for the bottle next, taking a long swig. "Yeah, that won't take long. After all, as my dad just said, it isn't tradition that Victor was born before cameras." He paused there, pained lines bracketing his eyes, then took a sharp breath and addressed the elephant in the room directly. "Especially after what you just did to my mom. And Fitch."

Grace felt for him on the mom front, but everyone was someone's mother ... or uncle. "Yeah," she said warily. "And Stevens too, just now. I'd apologize, but I'd be lying if I did. I told you I'd kill whoever tried to kill me first."

"Stevens, too?" Daniel winced and took another long pull. "Him, I'll buy. He's been a part of this for as long as I can remember. Even my mom; she's always believed in doing what she had to do for the family. But you're telling me Fitch tried to kill you?"

"Yeah, he actually managed to find his balls; I was kind of surprised myself," Grace replied, one corner of her mouth tucking back in a faint smile. "Of course, he wasn't any better at it than his wife. How's Alex doing?"

Daniel accepted the subject change wearily, echoing her crooked smile. "Bleeding from the shoulder, a little distraught he didn't find you in his room, and in total denial about everything else. He keeps insisting that you're the good one; that something else must have happened."

"He really wants to believe that, doesn't he?" Grace shook her head. "Like somehow I'm the measuring stick of all his choices. That was cuter before I knew he meant it so literally. Did you get a chance to talk to him alone? Not that I'm rethinking staying with him, but I really don't care how much he rants if he just stays out of it. He can keep all the wedding presents and start looking for the next savior girlfriend, for all I care."

"Not with Aunt Helene hovering over him, ranting at him about facing his fears and accepting the truth," Daniel shrugged. "He's the good son, though; the one who got out. You're more likely to have to worry about him agreeing to let you go than picking up an athame. I did try to talk to Charity, though; not that I really believe it's possible, but I figured I at least owe her that much. She laughed in my face; it was all of this she married, after all, not me. She'd rather die than give any of it up." He gestured vaguely around the room with the bottle.

"Well, you're the one who made that bed," Grace reminded him, raising two fingers and rubbing them together in an imitation of the world's smallest violin. "But I figured. What with all the glares and dirty looks even before we sat down in the game room. I never cared about the money or the power and the connections, you know, even when I thought I might be able to make it work with Alex. What I cared about was making a family. But to people like your family, the money and the power and the connections are all that matters; everyone else might as well be goats to them."

Something in Daniel's expression cracked, and he looked away, letting the bottle fall to his side. "Ouch," he said. "You're not wrong, though."

"Notice I said them, and not you," Grace snorted. "Not that you aren't fucked up in your own way, but lack of empathy doesn't seem to be your problem. And if Charity doesn't know how to value that, I guess her loss is my gain. Unless you're just talking to keep me here while the rest of them sneak up on me? I get it if things have changed for you, but I'd rather get backstabbed to my face."

He looked back up at her then, and the depth of the hollow pain in his eyes caught at her breath. "Why do you even care?" he asked plaintively, shaking his head. "The only other person in this family who has ever looked at me like I matter is Alex, and he has the excuse of being my little brother. You should have taken me out twice over by now. Why haven't you?"

"Why haven't you?" she fired back, in lieu of having to answer. She wasn't sure she actually knew why herself – except that something about Daniel had caught at her from the moment they'd met, and unlike Alex, whose perfect shine had quickly tarnished, he'd never pretended to be anything other than a man whose basically decent heart was paired with feet of clay. "I could say the same to you, on pretty much all counts."

He stared at her a moment longer, gaze slowly moving over her as if searching for something, briefly lingering on the discolorations marring her sleeve and the darker red streaks across the bodice of her gown. Then he set the bottle of whiskey back on the billiard table, swallowing thickly. "I don't know how much Alex told you, but ... you know he worked for the family company for a while, right? But it was always like he was going through the motions. He was pulling away for years before he finally resigned and stopped coming home for the seasonal rituals, and one of the ways he did that was by refusing to date any of the girls Mom tried to set him up with. After a while, it was – let's say – made clear to me that the one thing I might actually be good for was to continue the Le Domas name, if it bothered me so much that they were pushing Alex. It seemed a small enough thing to do for him, since I didn't think there was a chance I'd ever find anything like happiness for myself."

Clearly, that had worked out even less well than he'd thought, given what Grace had seen in his bedroom and the complete lack of any actual Le Domas children. For the kind of dynastic purposes Daniel was talking about, Grace doubted Emilie's little Bradleys counted; after all, Alex had introduced her to a lot of other cousins at the wedding, but none of them had carried the name or stuck around for the main family's induction ritual. "Because Mr. Le Bail doesn't believe in divorce?" she said slowly, connecting that with his earlier comments. "Fuck. You really are fundamentalist Satanists."

Daniel gave a startled chuckle, then smiled at her: the first unclouded smile she'd seen from him that evening. "I guess so. But now I wonder ... if I'd just waited. If I'd still been single when you went looking for us...."

Grace couldn't help it; she smiled back, feeling abruptly as though she was on the verge of tears. "Even though I came here looking to kill everyone responsible for my uncle's death?"

"Even though," he agreed, ruefully. "Like I said, I knew it all had to end eventually. At least they made their choice. You didn't. Charlie didn't. Pretty sure that's why you drew that card, actually; you still have a soul."

Grace rolled her eyes at him, charmed despite everything. As Jane Austen once said, one has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it. "Yeah, I would totally have picked you. Well, maybe after drying you out first and getting you all the therapy. Because let's be real, here."

"Yeah, probably. But I wasn't," he said, smile fading a little.

"So I didn't," she agreed, sighing. "And here we are."

Daniel glanced at the bottle in his hand again, then set his jaw and thunked it back down on the billiard table. "Well, fuck that. If this is going to be the end one way or another, then I'll end it making the right choice for once." Then he stepped forward into her personal space, reaching up to cup one cheek in his warm hand and lowering his mouth to meet hers.

There were maybe six inches of height between them, a more significant gap now that she was wearing Chucks instead of her fancy heels; Grace found herself stretching up just a little on her toes as she leaned into the kiss. She absently tossed her gun to join the whiskey bottle on the table, the better to hold onto him; somewhere in the back of her mind she knew they didn't have time for this, but he kissed like the world was ending, like nothing else mattered, and fuck if she wasn't feeling the exact same way.

Wherever Mr. Le Bail was watching from, though, if he was real, he sure had a sense of timing. Grace had just twined one hand up into Daniel's short, messy hair when the door behind him swung open once more.

"Traitor!" the strident voice of Helene Le Domas shrieked at close range. "She is here!"

Grace barely had time to gasp and unvelcro herself from Daniel before the white-haired, mad-eyed old lady recovered from her shock and lunged forward, axe-blade first. She didn't seem to care one bit that Daniel was in her way, and there was no time to grab Daniel's rifle or lunge for her own gun. Grace shoved, pushing Daniel to the side and out of her way, then grabbed for the only thing within arm's reach: the nearest silver candelabra, its white tapers still only half burned down. It weighed heavily in her hand as she snatched it off the floor, like some kind of unbalanced spear; she didn't have time to figure out how best to wield it, though, all she could do was swivel it to meet her oncoming attacker.

The blade of the battleaxe swung down just as the burning end of the central taper went straight into Helene's face, splashing hot wax all over one eye and cheek. One of the other tapers went straight into her stiffly arranged hair, near-instantly catching it on fire; the last one came out of its holder, toppling down onto Helene's purple velvet cape and setting it alight, too. Grace wasn't sure which one of them was shrieking louder; Helene had managed to get close enough before Grace's desperate move intercepted her that the last inch or so of the axe blade had still gashed right into the meat of Grace's shoulder. Both of them staggered backward, clutching at their injuries.

"Oh fuck!" Daniel gasped, climbing back to his feet. "Holy fucking shit. Grace?"

Grace had no time to worry about his feelings; the searing pain was making it hard to use her left arm, but she didn't give a fuck, her uncle's murderess was right in front of her and she needed her fucking gun. She dislodged the axe, then staggered over to the billiard table and swung around to aim just as Helene regained her balance. Haloed in flame and half blinded, the aging widow was running on pure fury, stooping to grab at her axe again and gather herself for another charge.

Grace fired on pure instinct, pulling the trigger again and again and again until it clicked on empty; Helene jerked with every shot, but it took until the last one for her to finally drop the axe again and follow it to the floor. Grace stood over her a moment more, pulling the trigger futilely a few more times as the reaction shuddered through her; then she dropped the weapon and swayed dizzily on her feet, bracing herself against the billiard table.

"Helene?" she could hear Tony calling from somewhere up the hall. Other voices followed, but they all blurred together uneasily in her ears, half-drowned out by the rushing of her own heart. She thought she heard more swearing and several loud thuds; then Daniel was back up in her space again, breath sounding as shaky as hers as he hastily stripped off his jacket.

"Grace? Can you hear me? This is going to hurt, but we need to get moving, and you're bleeding."

"Gee, I hadn't noticed," she managed, hissing out a sharp breath as he tied the makeshift bandage in place, putting pressure on her wounded shoulder. "I can't believe I actually got her. What the fuck do I do now?"

"Survive, I hope," he said dryly as he slid an arm around her for support. "You have your vengeance; the house isn't going to burn; and everything else can wait until dawn. And I think I actually know a place where we can go. The locks don't cover the whole house, just the parts you can escape from."

The servant's door had just finished closing behind them when she heard the shocked gasp of someone stumbling into the study. "Helene? Fuck. I don't fucking believe this! She's got to be using the passageways. Where the hell is Daniel?" Grace heard Tony yell, voice hoarse, as they hurried further and further away.

"They're going to come in after us," she murmured as they shuffled along. Blood was still trickling down her arm and dripping to the floor, but much less than it had been before Daniel's hasty first aid; she was starting to regain her equilibrium. "And I'm pretty sure I'm leaving a trail. Want to tell me the plan now?"

"We're going up," Daniel replied tersely. "They remodeled the servant's attic a generation or two ago to make it actually livable, but when they did that, they couldn't quite get all the rooms a uniform size, so the construction crew ended up walling off a chunk of space at one end under the eaves. You can't get into it from the corridors or the main hall; you have to go out onto the roof and in through the old shutters. But Alex and I are the only people who know that space is there, and like I said, there aren't any electric locks on that floor. Or cameras, either; nothing they care about anyone stealing up there, after all." His voice was very dry.

How detached and traumatic did a childhood have to be for someone to react less to their mother and aunt dying than about whether their family protected their servants' stuff the way they did their own? Grace's childhood had hardly been idyllic, but at least her foster parents – the better ones – had tried. At least he and Alex had had each other, even if neither one of them seemed to see each other clearly. They at least had some concept of human attachment.

"It's cute that you had your own secret fort, but out on the roof?" she hissed back at him.

"Yeah, if they even manage to track us that far, hopefully they'll think you were looking for a way down and that you jumped off somewhere. It'll take them awhile to check the perimeter of the house, and meanwhile, there's only a few hours left until dawn."

Grace had meant more that she was afraid she would fall off, but he didn't even seem to think that was an option. When the family had switched off the main overhead lighting for the game, they'd left the bulbs in the inner corridors burning; the yellowy light did Daniel no favors, not that Grace had any room to throw stones. But it made the clear-eyed determination in his expression easy to read; he really did mean what he said. He wanted her to live, whatever the consequences.

That was more than just chemistry, or a kiss; he'd damn well better live through the night, or she wouldn't be answerable for what she'd do to fix that tragedy. "Thank you," she whispered, past the swell of emotion suddenly clogging her throat.

"No, thank you," he replied, throwing her a half-smile as they hurried on. "Aunt Helene would have killed me to get to you, if you hadn't pushed me out of the way. We're in this together for good now, no takebacks."

"No takebacks," she agreed, smiling tiredly at him as they stumbled along.

---

There wasn't much else to say during the rest of the climb to the roof; she was in pain, they were both pretty shellshocked by the events of the last several hours, and she could tell by Daniel's increasing tension that somewhere deep down, he was still afraid that something else would go wrong. He wasn't letting that stop him, though – or her. By the time they topped out the last narrow servant's stair, climbed out through a window, then picked their way very carefully around to a painted-over shutter rigged to open like a door, they were both completely exhausted. They collapsed together in a dusty corner still strewn with the remnants of several years of boyhood playtime, then settled back to watch the cracks in the shutter for the first hints of sunrise.

They heard noises far away from them in the corridors a couple of times, but nobody had got close by the time they left them, and by that point she'd stopped actively bleeding; it was actually, theoretically possible now that they might make it until morning without having to kill anyone else, and Grace wasn't really sure how she felt about that. She really would have liked to finish off the night with the other adult she could be sure had actually been there when Charlie died, but the idea of Tony Le Domas having to cope with the wreckage of his legacy in the morning had its appeal, too. Provided, of course, that the devil didn't get him first; the absolute certainty of everyone else that the family legend actually was real was starting to convince her, too.

"Exactly how many families are there like yours, anyway?" she asked idly, leaning into the warmth of him pressed up against her.

"What, Satanists?" Daniel made a scoffing sound. "The robe-wearing, Latin-chanting, goat-sacrificing real deal? Probably less than you're afraid of, but definitely more than there should be. You know my parents read the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost to us as bedtime tales? 'To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.' There's always someone else greedy enough to believe that, and too focused on what they can get to give a damn about passing the cost on to their descendants. Even if Mr. Le Bail wasn't who Grandpa Vic said he was, the family's been eating each other in pursuit of the promised rewards ever since, and we're nothing unusual as far as the neighborhood goes. Even Mom and Dad – they act like they still love each other, but he's definitely fucking the maids and I wouldn't be surprised if Mom's fucking Stevens. Aunt Helene's a fanatic, Emilie gets high so she doesn't have to think about any of it, I gave up and drowned myself in a bottle years ago, and Alex...." Daniel's voice cracked a little. "I tried to protect him, give him the room to get out, but like you said, here we are. I don't think Georgie and Milt ever really stood a chance."

From her vantage point, half-draped over his shoulder, she patted comfortingly at the nearest part of him she could reach: the surprisingly toned expanse of his chest, half-exposed now that he'd shed the bowtie and half-undone the buttons of his shirt. "Don't be too down on yourself; it's not like I didn't make that bargain, too. Alex might not have ever told me anything, but I did have some idea what I was signing on for when I said 'I do'. I was just after something a lot less tangible than money. And hey, I got it, so. Like you said, we're in this together."

Daniel sighed, then shifted a little in place, tightening his arm around her. "'Til death do us part. Only without the fun part, first."

"Don't be such a pessimist! I really think I'm right about this," Grace replied. "Hasn't anybody ever survived one of these challenges before? I don't think what happened to the Van Horns is a good example; from what I could tell, even the new spouse supposedly died. So assuming it was more than just a badly-tended fireplace, then it wasn't so much that he won, as that everybody, including him, failed the terms of their ritual."

"Not that I know of – but how did you know about the Van Horns?" Daniel's eyebrows flew up as he looked down at her. "Even I didn't know it was more than just a house fire until Dad said something tonight."

"How did you think I knew to come prepared?" Grace smirked at him. "I did my research. And someone should've done a better job clearing out the Van Horns' library before they put the estate up for sale."

"God, I'd forgotten the girls kept diaries; Sophronia was one of the women Mom kept trying to throw at Alex. I guess it's a good thing she didn't succeed; that could have been him." He sounded a little stunned.

"Maybe. Or maybe he would still have been a good little Satanist, and the ritual would have passed him over." Grace sighed. "Kind of hard to be sure what's real and what's just 'tradition' until it happens to you. Which, huh. I guess there's an argument to be made that tonight's actually about Alex being punished for trying to leave, not me for not being 'one of us'?" She made a finger quote gesture with one hand.

"I'd gladly take not being sure if it meant we all survived the night. We'd just have to live with being shitty people," Daniel joked, then stirred again and lifted a wrist to check the time. "Not much longer now."

Grace took a long, slow breath, then turned her head further into Daniel's shoulder as they fell quiet. It felt a little like the whole world was holding its breath; one way or another, this night would be the most defining before and after of her life. She caught herself absently turning the wedding band and diamond around on her finger, and startled herself with a sudden wave of revulsion; one quick pull later, and the symbol of her marriage was off her finger and sailing across the room to bounce off the window.

It hit the floor with a faint ringing noise – and before the echo had even finished dying, a faint knock-knock-knocking rattled against the other side of the shutter.

Grace started and gave Daniel a wide-eyed, wary look. "I thought you said no one knew about this place."

"Except my brother," he reminded her, frowning. "Though I don't know why he'd come up here. Alex, is that you?" He raised his voice with the last few words.

"Why, were you expecting someone else?" The words sounded like a joke, but the tone didn't; the shutter swung open to admit a version of her new husband that Grace had never seen before. He was as pale and disheveled as she was, his own suit jacket stripped off and tied around his shoulder in a mirror of Grace's makeshift bandage; the set of his mouth was grim, and his gaze was hollow and bleak. His eyes caught on the ring first, then settled on them, and the corner of his mouth curled ominously downward. "Well, this looks cozy."

Even though she'd known for months that her relationship with him was likely doomed, that look still made her flinch; blame oxytocin, or habit, or the last stubborn ember of hope that had lingered until that morning, but some part of her still wished it hadn't had to end this way. There'd been moments of actual emotion there, and fun adventures, and great sex. He was just, you know, also a supremely selfish fuck under the caring veneer.

"Hey, Alex," she said, bracing herself to climb back to her feet. "Some day, huh. How's the shoulder?"

He snorted, thrusting his hands into his pockets as if to keep himself from reaching out. "About like yours. I saw what happened, you know. I got out of the game room and went to shut down the locks. But I had to turn the cameras back on first. Dad was right, wasn't he? You were lying to me all this time."

Grace wasn't sure whether that meant he'd seen Helene's death, or what happened right before it, but either way, she couldn't let that accusation stand. "Not lying. Just omitting a few things. Like you," she pointed out.

"Uh, guys...." Daniel tried to interject, glancing toward the faint grey light coming in through the open shutter.

Alex ignored him, expression darkening as he replied to Grace. "Marrying me to kill my family is kind of a huge thing to omit, don't you think?"

"Marrying you because I liked you and your aunt killed my uncle Charlie," she corrected him, tartly. "Marrying me without telling me it would enroll me in a pact with the Devil seems like kind of a bigger deal!"

"I shouldn't have had to!" he spat back. "I just wanted to be with you! I thought you were good! That if I was with you, I could be good too! But I thought if I told you, you'd leave, and if I didn't propose, you'd leave, so what choice did I have? If you just hadn't pulled that card – but you were actually hoping for this outcome the whole time, weren't you? Were you ever who I thought you were?"

Grace shook her head. "I wanted justice for my uncle, yeah; but I was still willing to be convinced I was wrong about the rest of the family all the way up until you tried to tell me all I had to do was play a game to officially be 'one of you'. Did you ever really love me, or just the reflection you saw in me?"

Daniel tried to interject again, climbing to his feet and taking a step toward Alex. "Look, whatever else is going on, we all agree this whole thing is fucked up, right? So let's just take a breath and...."

"And what?" Alex turned on him, voice wobbling. "I trusted you, Daniel. But I saw you. Charity's downstairs right now, looking everywhere for her, trying desperately to save the family. Aunt Helene is dead. Fitch is dead. Mom is dead. Grace killed them. Dad is ranting in the game room, convinced the rest of us are going to die if we don't kill her back. And what have you been doing? You're busy trying to steal my wife."

The alarm in Daniel's expression, faintly lit by the dim glow of pre-dawn, finally broke through to Grace, and she realized why he was trying to stop the argument. If they were right about Le Bail, and she was right about the conditions of winning, then Alex was sounding awfully close to declaring himself for the other team. And God help her, staring him in the face, she didn't want him to die. "Look," she said, firmly. "This doesn't have to get any uglier. No one I killed wasn't trying to kill me first. You wanted me to live, right? Well, I want you to live, too. We can have messy rich people arguments about betrayal and infidelity and exactly where we go from here after we've all made it to morning. All right?"

Alex took a ragged breath, and she could see tears welling up in his eyes. But there was still a new distance there, as if he was really looking at her for the first time. "You won't be with me after this, will you?"

She couldn't actually make herself say the words, but her expression must have said enough. He drew what looked like a dart gun from his pocket and aimed it squarely in her direction.

"Alex," Daniel said, sounding like his heart was breaking.

"Shut up," Alex replied, not looking away from Grace. "I'll dart you too if I have to. But you know how this has to end."

Then a brighter shaft of light pierced in through the open window, gilding them all in the warm light of true dawn ... and Alex blew up.

"What the fuck," Grace breathed, staring through the spot where he'd been. There was blood – there were things – she was dripping – but there was no Alex. He'd literally exploded.

There was no Alex, but. ... She turned toward Daniel in a panic, instinctively reaching for him. "Daniel...?"

"What the fuck," he echoed, slowly turning to meet her gaze; looking like something out of a serial killer's Jackson Pollack painting, shocked and grief-stricken, but blessedly whole and reaching for her, too. "Grace...?"

Their hands met first – and then she was pulling him in closer, wounded shoulder and gory clothes entirely forgotten. "You won't leave me too, will you?" she asked, shaking as she pressed her cheek against his shoulder.

Daniel's voice was rough with tears as he replied, and he was shaking too, but he was warm and solid against her, and he was clutching her right back. "Not as long as I can help it," he said.

As if in answer to the implied question, the sudden sense of presence drew her attention back to the window. She turned her head again just in time to see the streaming light coalesce into a fiery shape framed against the sky. Grace sensed more than saw Daniel doing the same as the figure nodded to them – and then, just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.

"Holy shit," she whispered, knees going weak as everything finally caught up to her. Then she started laughing, more out of disbelief than anything else. "We survived."

"We survived," Daniel echoed her, then started laughing too.

He had to know as well as she did that the rest of his family had probably followed Alex into oblivion, that if Satan really was real they were going to have to carry the pact now, and that it was going to be a long messy road from here. Had his nephews made it? The maids? How were they going to deal with the legal issues? Was there any way to get out from under the deal without dying? But they were alive, and everything else could be dealt with as it came. The entire resources of the family were theirs now; enough money could solve a lot of problems, and if they were lucky, the connection growing between them would carry the rest.

There was something to be said for starting a new relationship with plenty of chemistry, a raft full of shared secrets, and absolutely no illusions.

"For it is by Grace, all things are possible," Daniel misquoted, looking down at her with dawning hope. Then he leaned in, sealing his mouth against hers as the brand-new day unfurled around them.

(or read at AO3)