Chapter 5: Stay

The book was still open on the desk when Chase turned the lamp a little higher. Sam sat on the edge of the bed with the blanket pulled tight around her shoulders, eyes red but steady now. He slid the book toward her without a word.

She looked down at the page.

The heading sat near the top in darker ink than the rest of the text: The Sanguine Debt.

Her lips moved as she read. She didn’t speak the words out loud at first. She just followed the lines with her eyes, seventy-two hours, male seed delivered internally, the override of will, the force that met any attempt to stop it, the refusal to let the debtor die. When she finished the last line she stayed quiet for a long moment, finger resting on the page like she was afraid it might disappear.

Then she whispered it.

“Sanguine.”

She said it again, louder, the word catching in her throat.

“Sanguine. Yes. When Nate’s grandmother was shouting at me ... she said that. I didn’t know what it meant. It was just noise. But I can hear it now. She said sanguine. She said the debt.”

Chase watched her face. Some of the tightness in his shoulders eased.

“Okay,” he said. “Perfect. Now we have a name. That’s something. If it’s written down, there might be more. Other books. Other references. Maybe something about how it was cast, or what breaks it. We can start pulling everything we can find under that name and—”

The question stopped him mid-sentence. Sam was staring at him, not at the book. Her voice came out quiet, almost unsteady.