Thomas Finch’s eyes narrowed, studying me carefully. He didn’t immediately confirm or deny it, but the shift in his demeanor was palpable. He glanced around the empty gas station, then back to my face.
“How do you know about that?” he asked, his voice hushed, devoid of its previous casualness.
I pulled the stolen appraisal documents from under my jacket, careful to keep them mostly dry. The paper was still a little damp, but the crucial details were visible.
“Because these are supposed to be my property lines,” I said, unfolding the fraudulent map and laying it on the counter next to his. “And they’re fake. They’re part of a scheme to steal my home.”
He looked at the document, his jaw tightening. He unrolled his own map completely, pressing it flat. It was a true survey, meticulously marked with accurate boundaries. The contrast was stark. My fraudulent map stretched unnaturally, encompassing land that clearly wasn’t ours, while his showed the legitimate, smaller parcel.
“My dad’s been doing a lot of these for Eleanor Garrick,” Thomas admitted, his voice barely a whisper. He ran a hand through his damp hair. “I didn’t realize… not this house. Not *your* house.”
“You know Eleanor?” I pressed, a desperate hope blooming in my chest. “Do you know what she’s really doing?”
He hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck. The fluorescent lights of the convenience store cast harsh shadows on his face, making him look even more tired, burdened.
“Look, my dad… he’s in deep with Mrs. Garrick. She pays him a lot. I just do the grunt work, the actual surveying.” He paused, looking genuinely conflicted. “But I’ve heard things. Seen things.”
“What things?” I urged, leaning closer. The smell of stale coffee and hot dogs was suddenly suffocating.
He lowered his voice further, glancing nervously towards the entrance. “She’s not just buying up land, Lily. Not in the usual way.”
He took a deep breath. “There’s an old family legend, on the Garrick side. About a debt. A phantom debt, they called it. Something owed to an entity that binds itself to the land.”
My blood ran cold. The 911 call. The dead girl’s voice.
“What kind of entity?” I whispered, my voice trembling.
“My dad calls it ‘the Collector.’ Says it’s an old spirit, bound to the Danforth and Garrick lands for generations. He thinks Eleanor is… performing a ritual. To feed it.”
He looked at me, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and conviction. “She wants to expand her family’s wealth, her power. And the legend says the only way to do that, to clear the ‘phantom debt’ and unlock generational prosperity, is to sacrifice the land that was originally ‘owed’ to the entity.”
“Sacrifice?” I repeated, the word tasting like ash.
“Not just the land,” Thomas corrected, his voice grim. “She has to bind something to it. Something innocent, full of life force. To strengthen the connection, to make the exchange work.”
A cold dread seeped into my bones. Toby. My brother, alone in that house. The entity. The 911 call. It wasn’t just about land or money for Eleanor. It was a blood pact.
“She’s performing an occult property ritual at your house,” Thomas confirmed, his gaze fixed on my terrified face. “To feed the spectral caller. In exchange for ancestral wealth. My dad said she was looking for a new ‘host’ for the entity once she takes ownership.”
“Toby,” I breathed, the realization a punch to the gut. Eleanor wasn’t just after the house. She was after Toby, to complete her dark ritual.
Thomas nodded slowly. “That’s what I heard. That’s why the old boundaries, the true ones, were so important to her. They define the ritual site.”
He tapped his own, accurate map. “This is what you need. Proof of the real boundaries. Proof of her fraud. And proof of what she’s really doing.”
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