Chapter One

Chloé


"Ugh, will anyone stop that horrible cawing?!" Chloé yelled angrily as she stomped over to her balcony door and all but threw it open, her latest instrument of torment - a mop she had stolen from the cleaning staff - clutched tightly in her hand as she swung wildly at the jet-black bird resting on the stone railing. "Shoo! Shoo! Pesky bird! Go to your stupid nest and leave me alone! Can't you tell you're ruining my time before my beauty sleep?!"

The bird crowed at her, clearly annoyed, but it eventually flew off to escape the deranged blonde's reckless swinging. Chloé huffed angrily, glancing out over the rest of Paris, a part of her wondering if anyone else was suffering like this.

"Of course they aren't," she muttered as she threw the mop against the wall and went to change. "Plebs like them getting to sleep as much as they want without being harassed by- by- oh, what was that bird called? It wasn't a pigeon, I know that much! A crow? Fits the sound it made, the horrible thing. Oh, the pains of being rich and living in luxury. Must've been the scraps I left on the balcony from dinner. Grr, Jean-Hammond, I told you to clean it up!"

Once she finished her ranting and slipped into her silky pajamas - which she took another selfie of to preserve how beautiful they looked on her - she climbed into bed and grabbed her phone. Her father, because of that horrible backbone her half-of-a-sister had put in him, had quote-unquote forbidden her from scrolling on her social media profiles on a school night, but could he stop her?

"No!" Chloé answered her own question with a cackling laugh. And as was her wont, she scrolled until her eyes got heavy, only then deciding to go to sleep.

She wasn't sure how long she was out, but she started to stir when a creaking sound started echoing through her room. At first, she chalked it up to a dream. Maybe Adrikins had finally decided to see sense and join her for a midnight rendezvous, as she had fantasized before.

Then a voice joined the creaking. And it certainly was not the voice of her dream-Adrien.

"Chloé," the voice said. The blonde girl sat up groggily, trying to place the voice. She thought it sounded weirdly familiar.

"Daddy?" she demanded, half-asleep. "What are you doing in my room?! Get out!"

"Chloé, I have bad news," the voice said. "Your mother… She's leaving for New York. I'm sorry."

"WHAT?!" Chloé shrieked, leaping out of bed. "No! I forbid her! Stop her!"

"I know it'll be an adjustment, but we can make it work," her father said.

"No! Stop her! You're so foolish, you let Mom run away… again…"

The realization caused her to freeze in her tracks. Then her eyes adjusted to the light.

Chloé Bourgeois screamed at the top of her lungs.

The figure in front of her was not, in any circumstances, her father. It looked like a demonic scarecrow - three metal arms made of rusted scrap, a broken circular saw blade on its right shoulder, red-tipped black quills on its back, a torn burlap sack revealing a metal mouth with horrifically sharp teeth and holes for beady black crow eyes - but a cage just below the torn edge of the sack contained a shifting mass of red and black… shapes revealed the true, horrible nature of it. A jagged scythe was kept in a loose grip in its right hand, while a small circular charm dangled from the third arm over its left shoulder.

The monster screamed back at her and began to crawl closer. Chloé screamed again and kicked it as hard as she could. She hit it in the head, causing it to collapse into a pile of scraps. Still hysterical, she ran out of her room as fast as she could, bolted down the stairs and ran into the lobby of the hotel.

"I need to get out of here!" she shrieked, reasoning that being in public would offer some protection.

But she felt herself freeze in place when the monster was standing idly by the front entrance to the hotel, almost daring her to come closer.

"It's fragile…" she whispered to herself, trying and failing not to hyperventilate. "I can break it. I can make it."

She charged towards the door.

Then a cold, rusty metal hand grabbed her ankle. It felt slick, like it was wet.

The monster at the door was a decoy.

The real one had her in its clutches. And it was pulling her into the darkness.

Chloé Bourgeois's last words?

"No! No! NOOOO!"