I Will Break You

Amethyst wakes drunk and immobilized in her own bed, arms pinned by unseen bindings.

Amethyst wakes drunk and immobilized in her own bed, arms pinned by unseen bindings. A seven-foot specter with glowing white eyes drifts toward the foot of her bed, pausing at the perimeter of the salt circle she laid twice for protection. A cold wind sweeps through the open window, and his hooded head bows toward the salt. He crosses the barrier. Cold fingers pull back her sheets and lift her nightgown. She is the woman who jilted a mass murderer on the day of his execution, who shared her filthiest fantasies with a man on Death Row. Her last conscious hope, as terror swallows her whole, is that maybe this time he will let her come.

Amethyst kills her attacker and buries him in Xero's plot

The night before, an online troll named Jake forced his way into Amethyst's kitchen to kill the woman who ran a fan club for convicted murderer Xero Greaves. As his hands closed around her throat, a dark figure materialized in the doorway—tall, hooded, eyes glowing white. The adrenaline surge gave her fingers enough strength to find a fallen knife and drive it into Jake's neck. She dragged his body through her backyard, through the evergreen trees, and buried it in the cemetery plot she had purchased for Xero's memorial. The wraith followed every step. Back home, she scrubbed blood from the tiles, went live to read Xero's final letter to a thousand viewers, and collapsed into chemically-assisted sleep. Xero had been executed that afternoon. She had failed to attend either the wedding or the death.

Severed fingers and intimate messages arrive from beyond the grave

Jake's corpse tumbled from Amethyst's closet the next morning—cold, heavy, unmistakable—then vanished when she checked again. Her social media account was banned, killing her income. Then texts arrived on Xero's burner phone from someone who recited their most private phone-sex conversations word for word. The sender had found Kayla, the mail assistant who had been stealing Xero's gifts, including his dead mother's locket. A photo showed Kayla deep-throating a familiar dildo. Within days, Myra—Amethyst's best friend and literary agent—confirmed Kayla was dead, suffocated. Under Amethyst's pillow appeared an envelope of five cauterized fingers, each tattooed with a letter: B-D-S-M. They belonged to Gavin, a tech worker who had groped Amethyst the previous night. Whether ghost or impersonator, the entity claiming to be Xero knew everything.

A séance spells Xero's name letter by terrifying letter Amethyst fled to Relaney, her spiritualist neighbor, and joined a séance around a low table in a candlelit room. The lights flickered out. Knocks echoed through the darkness—one for yes, two…