I rose to my feet. “I’m done listening to you. Are you going to drive me home, Elspeth, or should I call a cab?”

Elspeth looked between Iris and me, a troubled frown creasing her face. “I’ll take you.”

“This isn’t going to go away,” Iris said. “It’s going to get worse. You know that.”

I stepped outside and shut the door with a slam.

“You’re not going to tell Grandmother, are you?” Elspeth asked as she pulled up in front of my house.

I was still seething, all twisted up into knots. I fought the urge to lash out; it wasn’t Elspeth I was angry at. For all my resistance and denials, part of me wondered if Iris was right. The uncertainty was there, lurking in the darkest corner of my thoughts, a little voice I tried to drown out. I pushed it away, withdrew from it. No, I told myself. Even acknowledging the possibility felt like a betrayal. I shook my head slowly, deliberately, and found Elspeth still looking at me, awaiting my response. “I won’t tell,” I said. “Just…be careful. We don’t know what Iris is really after.”

“She’d never hurt me,” Elspeth said with quiet conviction.

Exactly what I’d said about Gideon and his family. The echo did nothing to improve my mood. “If you say so. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Wait,” Elspeth said. She reached to grab my arm, then seemed to think better of it. “Audrey, if it’s the only way to stop the Beneath, you have to consider it.”

“You may trust Iris, but I don’t. I can’t.”

Elspeth looked down at her hands. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

I started to respond, but Elspeth cut me off.

“The thing is—I thought I’d never see her again,” she continued. “For all these months, I thought she was dead. And part of me even thought it would be better if she was. So…I do understand, okay? I’m not lying to myself. I know what she did. I know who she is. I know what the Guardians will do to her once they find her. But she’s my sister.”

As simple as that.

Love changes the rules, I thought. For Elspeth, too.

“You don’t want to believe her,” she said. “That doesn’t mean she’s not right.”

“It doesn’t mean she is.” I leaned back into the seat, staring up at the roof. From outside, I heard the crash of thunder. “Even if I believed her…I wouldn’t even know how to begin to do what she’s talking about,” I said. In the months since I’d released the Astral Circle’s power, I had sensed my connection to it—but it didn’t go beyond connection. The feeling was tenuous and vague, something I didn’t fully understand. It was always there, at the edge of my consciousness, a heightened awareness. But nothing more. Whatever link I had to the Circle didn’t seem likely to help us. “There has to be another solution. A real solution. Mr. Alvarez said he was going to contact the elders at the other Circles and see if they had any ideas.” Before he’d decided to quit the Kin, anyway.

Elspeth hesitated. “Grandmother has been in touch with some of the other leaders, but nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“Can we at least agree that murder should be a last resort, not a first one?”

“I’m really sorry, Audrey,” she said, her voice catching.

I didn’t look at her. “Me, too.”

I climbed out of the car and hurried toward my house. Another downpour had begun, and I nearly slipped on the rain-slick grass that crept up around the walkway. Once inside, I kicked off my dripping sandals, then looked around the darkened house. Mom and Mickey had departed, though the faint smell of coffee still hung in the air of the kitchen.

Fatigue washed over me as I climbed the steps. My limbs felt heavy and drugged. I was just going to sink into my bed, I decided, curl up and pull the covers over my head. Maybe when I opened my eyes again, I’d find everything was somehow fixed. The Beneath would have released Shane’s body and withdrawn back behind the veil of the Circle. Gideon would return to himself. I wouldn’t have to worry about futures or visions or the end of the Kin, or whether or not I determined it. I trudged down the hall and pushed open the door to my room.

I knew he was there before I stepped inside.

Verrick. I had felt his presence often enough before to know it now. I had felt it within Mom’s memory, the night on Harlow Tower when I’d seen his face through her eyes, the malevolence within him. I’d felt it in my readings for the Remnant, that sensation of something watching me, searching as I searched. I’d felt it in my reading for Gideon, the cards almost burning against my fingertips. And I’d felt it that day of the baseball game, that moment when Verrick had briefly touched the surface.

He was here. In my house. In my room. In the dark.

I flicked on the overhead light.

“Gideon?”

He was sitting with his back to the wall, his knees drawn up against him. Rain trickled from his hair and clothing, soaking into the carpet. He looked wholly human, sunburn on his arms and face, no shine of silver showing through his flesh. The knuckles of his left hand were bloody. A thin trail of crimson rolled down his hand to the tips of his fingers, beading there a moment before falling. He was still dressed as he had been the last time I’d seen him. His T-shirt had a rip in the shoulder, but otherwise he looked no different. If I hadn’t sensed it, I might not have known.

He raised his head and his gaze met mine.

The color of his eyes hadn’t changed. It was still that deep, rich brown that was so familiar to me. But they weren’t Gideon’s eyes, either. I could see into them, through them, to the empty of Beneath. And beyond the Beneath, somehow. Impressions flashed through me, rapid and jarring. Fragments, visions, I wasn’t certain which—I saw birds wheeling above and then dropping like stones from a sky that was swollen and dark; I heard the sound of bones crunching, the sound of sirens; a scream and then a sigh. There was the thud of a heart. A throat sliced open, thick blood dripping onto a ground the chalky gray color of ash. All of that there, in his eyes. And rage, as well. An anger so intense it was blinding, choking.

I inched backward.

“Audrey,” he said.

I scanned the room quickly, noting details I’d missed at first. My window was broken. Two or three shards of glass still hung from the frame, but most were scattered across the floor. A bolt of lightning that streaked across the sky outside made the shards spark and flare like they were alive. Gideon hadn’t come here from Beneath, then; he’d climbed up the house. I glanced at the blood on his knuckles, the growing red stain on the carpet below. He noticed my gaze land there, then lifted his hand and sucked at the injury.

I stood there, divided. I wanted to run to him, to kneel beside him and wrap my arms around his thin shoulders; I wanted to flee in the other direction and never look back. In the end I did neither. I just kept watching him. As he huddled against the wall, I saw the quiet glow of the light that surrounded him. The Astral Circle’s light, pulsing faintly. It rippled into the air, warm and clear and familiar. I could feel the edge of its burn. The connection between us.

The way I could kill him, Iris had said.

I chased the thought away once more. There was a quiver in my voice as I said, “Your parents are really worried. Are you okay?”

He gazed up at me again. I had to force myself not to look away.

“You lied to me. You said I was Kin.” Though his words were strained, his tone anxious, his voice sounded the same. Like Gideon. His teeth started chattering. He clutched his knees tighter.

“I’m sorry, Gideon,” I breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

“Gideon never existed. He was just the skin I lived in.”

“That’s not true.”

The teeth chattering stopped. He smiled broadly. There was blood on his mouth from his split knuckle. The dimple in his cheek appeared, but a shiver crawled up my spine.