“If it were true,” I continued, trying not to show my apprehension, “why did you come here?”

“I came here to kill you.”

I flinched. I stared at him, and now it wasn’t what I saw in his eyes that caused horror to grip me—but what I feared he saw in mine. Perhaps he could see into me, the way I had seen into him. Into that flicker of doubt I carried, the tiniest fraction of the smallest of seconds when I had wondered to myself if I should kill him. That instant when I hadn’t been his friend.

“Why?” I whispered, the only word I could manage.

“You killed Brooke.”

“No—I didn’t.”

“Your Kin did.”

“I’m so sorry,” I repeated.

“I don’t want your apologies. I want your death.”

But there was hesitation in his voice. I felt it. Clung to it. “You cared about Brooke,” I said. “I remember. You tried to comfort her after Miss Gustafson died. Verrick only wanted her power. Gideon loved her. You loved her.”

“I am Verrick, Audrey.”

The weary resignation in his tone frightened me almost more than the look in his eyes had.

“No,” I protested. “I saw Verrick. I saw Mom fight him. You’re different.” He spoke differently I realized. Not just his voice, but his words. The cadence. The slight hint of sadness in them. Though it wasn’t quite Gideon, it wasn’t quite Verrick, either. “The Circle changed you. It made you into something else.”

“You know the truth. That’s why you hid it from me.”

“If you’re here to kill me, why haven’t you? Why are you just sitting there? Why break into my room and wait? You wanted to talk to me. You want my help. Because we’re connected. We can figure it out, Gideon. We can find some way to fix it. I know we can. We just—”

Abruptly, he rose to his feet and walked toward me. The rest of my words died unspoken. He was no longer Gideon. Something within him had shifted, distorted. His entire posture changed. He no longer had that hint of a slouch that sometimes bent Gideon’s shoulders, and he didn’t have his long loping stride. He moved with a sleek animal grace, stalking forward, that bloody smile once again on his lips. But it wasn’t his motion that made my heart freeze and my throat close up; it was the malice that thickened all around him. His wrath seeped into the air, and the hate that coiled inside him burned so hot I was surprised it didn’t sear the ground where he stepped.

I remembered the first impression I’d had of Verrick—that if there was a hell, he’d surely crawled out of it.

Crawled out and carried it with him, I thought now.

But he wasn’t looking at me, I realized. He was looking past me.

I spun around and collided with Leon’s chest.

He wrapped an arm around me, holding me tightly to him. Face-first in his shirt, I squirmed, trying to wrench myself from his grasp. His arm didn’t loosen. But he didn’t teleport right away, either. In his left hand, I saw the flash of Guardian lights beginning to glow.

“No!” I said, feeling a stab of horror. I broke free long enough to turn toward Gideon, then Leon caught me again, clapping my back hard against his chest. His grip was firm and unyielding. “You can’t fight him!” I cried.

“I know you,” Gideon said, gazing at Leon. His tone had altered, too. There was a chill in it I recognized, and didn’t want to recognize.

“You should,” Leon answered. His own tone was clipped.

“You’ve known each other for years,” I said, still struggling in Leon’s hold.

Gideon was smiling again. That broad, vicious grin. The words were Verrick’s. “You want to ask me a question. You want to know how your parents died. You’ve wondered all this time, haven’t you? It’s the question you take with you into sleep. The worry that haunts your dreams. Would you like me to tell you?”

Leon tensed. He choked out one word. “No.”

“They died screaming.”

I felt Leon recoil, the hard slamming of his heart. I feared he was going to attack, but instead he lowered his left arm. The bright spin of lights under his skin dimmed. He tightened his grip on me.

He was going to teleport us.

“Leon, no—you can’t teleport me,” I said. “Leave me here. Let me talk with him. He was listening to me.”

“You are out of your mind,” he hissed in my ear.

“Don’t,” I said. I didn’t think. I started amplifying.

He froze. “Stop.”

“No. He hasn’t attacked. He isn’t going to hurt me. He wants my help. He needs my help.”

“If you weren’t in danger, I wouldn’t be here.”

His words stung, but I shook my head. I didn’t stop amplifying. I held to the bond, feeling the heat that coursed through my veins, the surge of strength.

“Dammit, Audrey!”

He wouldn’t do it, I told myself. He wouldn’t risk teleporting.

And then he blinked us out of my room, into nothing.

The darkness closed around me, seconds lengthening. One heartbeat I was in the muffled yellow light of my room, pleading, twisting in Leon’s hold; the next I was in this blank, weightless void, and there was no air to give my words voice, and no arms clasped about me. Then that, too, receded; the darkness dissolved, the empty gave way, and there was gray sky above me, heavy falling rain.

Leon released his grip so rapidly, I stumbled forward in surprise.

“I told you to stop amplifying,” he growled. “Don’t ever do that again.”

After steadying myself, I whipped around to face him. He was furious—but so was I. “Then don’t abduct me! I told you not to teleport!” I dragged my sodden hair out of my eyes. I could barely see through the rain. We were in a field of some sort. Tall grass climbed up to my ankles, bending beneath the downpour. In the distance, I glimpsed the bright beam of headlights along what might have been a highway. There didn’t seem to be buildings anywhere near us. No shelter to be found. I lifted my arms to shield my face. Rain dripped down my nose, clung to my eyelashes. My clothing was already molded to me. “Where are we?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Which meant he’d overshot the distance again. “Well, where were you trying to go?”

“My apartment.”

“This is clearly not it.”

“Yeah, thanks.” He reached into his pocket and removed his phone, but instead of using it to pinpoint our location, he lifted it to his ear.

“Who are you calling?”

“Your mother, to let her know there’s a Harrower hanging out in your bedroom.”

I turned away, squinting in the direction of the highway. It might not have been a highway at all, I thought—it could be a back road, some long dirt lane curving toward a farmhouse. Maybe Leon had teleported us north, across cities and suburbs, and accidentally carried us all the way to my old home. Maybe if I started walking, I’d find the pines swaying in the storm, the little yellow house with its porch swing and a light in the window, and Gram’s blue truck still parked in the gravel drive. I closed my eyes, imagining it. I understood now Iris’s desire to erase time. If I could walk backward and reach that house, and see Gram smile and point at the stars, I’d tell her that I was done with secrets. I wanted no more stories. I’d tell her she was wrong. There was such a thing as fate. You couldn’t escape it. It was like a carrion bird circling above you. Every second, every breath, you felt that circle tightening.

I sighed. More likely we’d traveled south, since that was the direction of Leon’s apartment. We were probably in Iowa again—though, since my Amplification was much stronger than it had been three months ago, we might have gone even farther. For all I knew, we could be in Texas.