Groundwater: 3

I know what the covenant was built to do. I know it's been feeding the wrong thing for a hundred and seventy-seven years. I know the tithe, the binding, the tree - every tool Madeleine left me - is part of the problem. Every time I use the system, I feed the thing the system was supposed to contain.I need a different way in.The man at the eastern fence held the line for thirty years past what he was promised. The rougarou tracks my heartbeat from the wire. His body comes to the house instead of the boundary now, and every night he fights it, and the fighting is breaking him apart. Hortense promised him release. I am not Hortense. I don't know yet what I am instead.The man in the walls knows what Madeleine actually did in 1847. I said his name and the house shuddered and a door opened that hadn't moved since the covenant was struck. Two rooms still dark. He's terrified of what happens if I open them.I'm going to open them anyway.Groundwater is a gothic Southern why-choose monster romance - Book 3 of the Vauclain Monsters series.