Stone Cold

Chapter 18

SHAME

No chain-link fence around the lot, just a vast spread of dirt and gravel set out between the low rise of hills.

The warehouse stood in the center of the gravel, a monstrous structure several stories high that might have once been part of a gravel pit operation. Metal on metal on concrete, it appeared mostly abandoned from the outside, but I knew differently. I could count how many lives were ticking down inside those walls.

Security? Yes. Six men spotted me, walking straight down the middle of the parking lot. I wasn’t hiding; I wasn’t hurrying. I was getting this job done.

Before they could squeeze triggers, I reached down into the center of the Death magic roiling in me and cut the chain.

Six hearts pumped out their last beats. Six lives filled me, fed me, fed the monster inside me. A monster that wanted more.

I knew where Dash and Sunny and Cody were—just behind me, guns drawn, taking care not to be seen. I didn’t let the monster touch them, hurt them.

So far the deaths had been silent. So far there had been no need for guns.

That was about to change. I walked up to the front door—a thick slab of metal and warning signs. Pressed my palm there and let Death magic have at it. Rust ate away at the hinges until they crumbled. I pushed and the door fell inward, tripping the alarms.

An explosion of bullets from above hissed around us.

I did not care, did not pause, did not stop. Davy was in this building, and I was bringing him back for Sunny. Terric was in this building, and I was bringing him back for me.

No matter how many people I’d have to kill to make that happen.

The place was set up surprisingly like an actual warehouse. Crates of product stacked down long aisles, forklifts and dollies resting along walls. I didn’t see any workers. Could be they didn’t have a graveyard shift. Could be they’d seen us coming and run.

I turned left, strode down the aisle. Davy’s heart was easy to track, easy to find. More gunshots cracked through the air around us. Didn’t matter. The gunmen’s hearts were easy to find. Hearts were easy to squeeze, to stop.

I flicked my wrist like throwing a knife. Death magic followed my will, and did what it was meant to do: kill.

Dash shouted behind me. Sunny yelled something back.

More hearts, beating faster, coming our way, stopped by bullets. That was fine with me. Easy to drink their lives, easy to drain them down.

Davy’s heart pumped away, leading me on. Death magic stretched out in me, numbing and pushing aside my emotions, my worry, my control of my mind and body.

I pushed back, a part of my mind screaming, a part of my mind knowing I was losing ground to Death, losing control.

Death didn’t listen. Death didn’t care.

Another left, this time to a hallway that led to a metal door. Locked. I threw magic at it and it buckled, rusted, fell, sending up a cloud of dust.

Death was getting stronger. I was working hard just to stay conscious.

I pushed Death back, shoved the magic away, put it behind me just enough to see where we were.

A storeroom or workroom. Heavily soundproofed, wired up the yang. Magic glyphs painted on the walls up to the ceiling, and across the ceiling, glowing with faint blue light.

The walls were lined with bars. Cages. Jail cells. In each cell were people. The kidnapped, spell-carved people. Mindless as zombies.

In the center of the room stood a larger cage. Magic poured down the bars of the cage, too bright, and smelling of kerosene. I couldn’t see what was in that cage, couldn’t hear anything from it. If I were operating off my senses alone, I’d say there wasn’t anything in there.

But my gut told me otherwise. Said it was an Illusion surrounding that cage. My soul told me who was trapped in there, dying in there.

“Terric?” I whispered, everything in my head going suddenly shock-blank.

“Shame!”

I turned. Dash ran my way. Behind him, Sunny supported a very bloody Cody in her arms.

“Dash! Two o’clock,” Sunny yelled. She turned and half dragged Cody behind something that looked like a generator.

Bullets sprayed around us.

Jesus. Someone was shooting at us.

Dash tackled me. Yes, it hurt. I bitched him out about it as we crawled across stained concrete to a supply shelf.

He was bleeding. So was I. But bullets couldn’t kill me. I was already dead.

“Fucking suicide,” Dash yelled as he took aim across the warehouse to where the gunmen were gathered. “Walking right into the line of fire, in a warehouse full of guns. Fucking stupid fucking ass.”

It was possible he was talking about me. Reality was knocking on my brain box and I was doing everything I could to open the door and let it in.

We were surrounded. Injured. Worse, the cage in the middle of the room had taken bullets too. If Terric was in there, if Davy was in there, they could have been hit.

No, they most certainly would have been hit.

Possibly dead. Probably dead.

“Can’t just walk into a fucking gunfight in the middle of the enemy’s fucking living room,” Dash said.

I’d give him a hard time about his language going to crap when he was being shot at, but, well, we were being shot at.

“Stay here,” I said.

“Fuck that. Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he said.

“To save them,” I said. It was hard to talk, to make my thoughts fit inside words. Death snarled and howled and chuckled behind every pulse beat, behind every breath. It scratched claws against the core of me, against my mind, my sanity.

“Trust me,” I think I said.

“Like hell. You’re going to get yourself killed,” Dash said. “They have guns.”

“I’ll take care of that. Stay back.”

He reloaded, swearing the entire time, but didn’t try to stop me. He put down some covering fire.

I strode out from behind the storage shelf. Death magic reached for hearts. Reached for pulse points. Greedy, hungry, it shut them down one by one, each life feeding the monster in me, making the monster stronger.

Almost stronger than me. Almost out of my control.

The magic-drenched cage was only a few yards away. I made for it as quickly as I could.

“You got this?” Sunny was suddenly at my side. What the hell was she doing here?

Death wanted that. Wanted her. Pulsing bright. Her life burning like a bonfire in the darkness.

No.

“Go back, Sunny,” I said. “Get away from me. Now.”

“Bite me,” she said. “Where’s Davy?”

“I’ll get him. I’ll bring him to you.” Alive, I thought while Death magic churned and growled, hungry for killing. “Back off before I lose control.”

“If you kill him, I will kill you, Flynn. Are you listening to me?” She grabbed my arm.

Death magic paused, a predator zeroing in on the scent of prey—on the scent of her.

No. I closed my eyes, jerked my arm away. Built walls in my mind as fast and hard and solid as I could. Walls I could trap the Death magic behind.

“Go!”

But it was too late. Death magic slipped my hold.

The pulse of Sunny filled me. I tried to pull back, couldn’t. Tried to yell, but Death stole my breath.

Son of a bitch.

Death put my hand over hers, gazed in her eyes. At the worry there. The anger, the need.

I tugged and pulled, fought to move my hand away, move my body at all.

No!

And then Death drank her down.

Something inside me broke, shattered like brittle glass beneath a bootheel as I screamed and screamed and watched her die. I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t save her.

Death magic did not care.

Sunny slumped to the warehouse floor, empty, dead.

Death used my mouth, my air, to laugh.

Fucking hell.

Death was drunk from the high of killing someone I cared for. My pain, fear, and anger had made her death all the sweeter.

If I had control of my body, I’d be puking.

Instead I focused my thoughts. Quiet, calm. Calm enough to recite a spell. Calm enough to draw the spell in my memory, deep within my mind.

Bind.

Death’s heavy gaze turned inward. To me, my life, my soul, and the spell I was drawing.

I concentrated on the Bind spell, making it as whole and real as any other spell I’d ever carved. Then I pushed it outward from my center, to surround my body and the Death magic that held the wheel.

I had no idea if this would work. It probably shouldn’t. But if Death was me, then I was it. The magic I called up from deep beneath the earth to fill a spell in me should answer me.

Maybe.

I mentally traced the last line in the Bind spell, angling it to catch up and bind the Death magic possessing me. I filled the spell with the magic that pooled deep in the earth beneath the warehouse.

A shotgun crack whipped through my brain. Pain flashed black, then hot white.

Then I was in control of my body again. Death magic squirmed and chewed at the Bind spell inside my head.

This was not good. Not good at all.

But better than a moment ago.

I wiped the blood off my face and took a second to get my bearings.

No more gunfire. But I could feel more hearts, more people coming, rushing this way. Maybe with bombs, maybe with magic.

They weren’t here yet. And when they were, I’d kill them too.

I had to get the hell out of here.

“Shame!” Dash yelled.

I didn’t look, didn’t answer, too afraid I’d lose control and drink him down.

I jogged to the bars of the cage and wrapped my hands around them. They were filthy with magic, spells tied to spells that refreshed and renewed the current of magic that powered the spells carved into the bars.

It was horrifyingly beautiful. Genius. Someone knew his shit. Knew how to make magic bend to his will.

Eli Collins. He’d made this cage, set this magic. He’d been here.

I searched for his heart, didn’t feel it. Not near.

I couldn’t break magic and make it do what I wanted. Not without Terric using magic with me. Using the Death inside me was a very bad idea.

But there were other forces that could break a lock. Guns, for instance. I pulled the Glock Sunny had given me . . .

...don’t think about Sunny. Don’t think about what Death did to her . . .

...took aim at the lock, and fired.

Unloaded half the clip. Enough bullets, it broke metal and interrupted the stream of spells.

And then it was just a metal cage in the center of a warehouse.

With two men bleeding on the floor.

Davy Silvers.

Terric Conley.

Oh God. No. Terric.

The Bind spell in my head wavered as my concentration slipped.

One step at a time. Get them out of here before the Death magic in my head broke free, or the rush of people coming our way with guns showed up and killed us.

I couldn’t carry them both out. Wasn’t sure if I could even carry one out. Probably shouldn’t touch them at all.

I should get Davy. I’d promised Sunny I would find him, bring him to her.

She was counting on me to come through for her.

... her eyes wide, as Death pressed my hand over her hand and she crumpled to the floor . . .

I looked around for her.

“Sunny?”

She stood a short distance from me, next to Eleanor. who had gained some slack on her rope. Sunny seemed a little faded, a little see-through, just like Eleanor. Her eyes were wild, and a black rope around her neck tied her to my arm.

I’d caught up her soul just like Eleanor, which meant I’d used her, killed her, and stood aside while Death magic ate her alive.

Fuck. Me.

Eleanor floated over to me and pressed her fingers against my cheek. Save them, she said.

Right. Davy and Terric. My guilt, my horror would have to wait.

I walked over to Terric. He was curled on his side, bullet holes in his chest. The pool of blood beneath him was not new.

I knelt, the knees of my jeans soaking up blood, his blood. Turned him onto his back. His face was swollen, bruised. His shirt was bulky from bandages soaked in blood. His bare arms were burned, cut, and bloody.

Not just shot. Torn apart.

Tortured.

Fury caught fire in my chest and burned through me. Not a clean anger. This was a ragged, tearing rage. A rage that would break my hold on Death.

I pressed my hand against Terric’s heart, felt the stagnant beat there.

He was alive.

Still alive.

Death magic wasn’t going to make him better. Death magic was the worst thing to have around him right now.

I was the worst thing to have around him.

He was dying, even though he carried Life magic. He was in too much pain to heal himself.

I could take that on. Some of that pain. Give the Life magic inside him a chance to work.

I’d never done it before. Never heard of anyone taking on another’s wounds like this. Back in the old days, we Proxied pain all the time.

But I was . . . different now. A small part of my mind—probably that thing called “reason”— knew this was a bad idea. A very bad idea.

I didn’t care.

I drew a Proxy spell in the air between us, tying it tight. His pain was my pain. Enough of it was mine that his heart could beat. Enough that he could breathe.

I relaxed my hold on Death magic, just enough it could feed the spell, then tightened my fist around that Bind spell again.

The glyph between Terric and me crackled with black lightning. His pain rushed into me.

Holy mother of God, that hurt.

But I’d just killed a few dozen people. Like it or not, I was filled with their lives. I was strong enough to endure his pain.

I pulled Terric’s arm up over my shoulder, got him sitting.

Dash was yelling again. I still couldn’t understand what he was saying. Caught a couple of words: hurry, and out, and now.

Someone ran up to me. It was Dash. That, finally, brought me out of the shock I’d been wading through.

Dash gathered up Davy, helping him to his feet. Davy was solid, though blue magic pulsed from his bare chest like broken neon. That was good, I guessed. It meant he was alive. But he wasn’t conscious.

And then Cody limped over. Cody had blood running down his face, and one of his eyes was filled with it. He stopped next to Sunny, gave me an accusatory glare but didn’t ask. Of course, he didn’t have to.

I didn’t want to answer anyway.

He picked up Sunny, her unbreathing body. Her empty shell. He stayed as far out of my reach as he could.

I got Terric standing and walked with him out of the cage. He was barely conscious. “Stay close,” I said. Or I hoped I said. Because I was going to burn this place down to the ground, and I didn’t want them in it when it went to ash and cinders.

They stayed close, Dash supporting Davy, Cody carrying Sunny.

It felt like it took a year to walk out of that hellhole. One foot in front of the other, dragging Terric at my side, enduring his pain, begging him to hold on until we got out, got away while I tried to hold Death down inside me.

“That is far enough,” a voice rang out across the rafters. “Mr. Flynn. You will not take a single step more. Not with my property.”

I knew that voice. It was Krogher. The man who had used Eli as his very own pet psychopath. The man who had been stockpiling drones, using people as walking bombs charged with magic.

The man who I assumed had killed two Soul Complements and hadn’t even gotten to the meaty center of his plans.

I blinked. Focused on my surroundings. We were in the outer section of the warehouse, fully stocked shelves and crates around and behind us. Krogher was not there. I knew that bastard’s heart too. He was off-site, not even close enough for me to get a hook on his pulse.

But this was his facility. He had cameras. He knew exactly what was going on.

And what was going on was this: There were half a dozen drones standing at the front of the warehouse blocking our only way out. Men, women, young and old, blank-eyed and silent.

Easy to kill. But I was tired of killing. Terrified to let loose Death’s chain and not be able to pull it tight again. Killing was the fastest and easiest way out of this. The only way out of this.

Hell.

I sucked in a breath, loosened my grip. Death magic lashed out.

Nothing happened. It was like throwing a feather with all my strength. Lots of windup, zero results.

Eli must have done something with the spells he carved into those people to keep them safe from magical attack, to keep them safe from me.

Son of a bitch, that was smart.

As one, they raised their hands. As one, they released the magic stored in the spells carved into their flesh.

Holy shit.

Magic is fast. Bullets are faster. I raised the gun, aimed. Fired.

Two of the drones went down. Their magic released, rushing at us in spiraling red flames.

I couldn’t pull up a Block spell fast enough. Didn’t even have a split second to react.

Didn’t have to.

Davy was somehow in front of me, in front of us all, faster than a living being could move. Those spells Eli had carved in him gave him abilities most people didn’t have, one of which was not being solid when he didn’t want to be. He appeared in front of us, and was a very solid and, in my opinion, highly suicidal being.

Sunny, who was nothing but a ghost, ran to him. She tried to pull him out of the line of fire. But even a ghost isn’t faster than magic.

Davy spread his arms wide. Magic hit him like a wall of fire. Fast enough, hard enough, he should be on his heels. But instead he absorbed it, all those spells carved into him sucking it in. He lifted his hands and threw the magic back at them with a ragged yell.

Had I mentioned he was not quite a regular guy anymore?

The drones disappeared in the blast furnace of that magic. They fell. Not dead. Not yet.

But maybe now that they were all out of magic, I could put them out of that misery.

I released just the edge of Death magic again. Let it drink down their lives, all six of them.

It was like gulping acid. The changes Eli had made in them, twisting them from human into living bombs, made them toxic. Poison. There was nothing human left to them.

He’d carved out their souls and used that to fuel the magic in them.

Holy shit. I’d seen dark magic before. I’d used it. But I had no idea anyone could twist spells to do the horrors he’d done to these people.

My vision narrowed in, just a speck of light out there at the end of the tunnel ahead of me as I endured this new pain. Their ghosts clawed at me, fingers burning into my bones. They were mindless, screaming spirits, nothing like Eleanor or Sunny.

But finally they slowed, calmed. For half a second they looked human again.

And then they whisked away like smoke in a strong wind.

They were dead. Maybe at peace.

Now there was nothing but a pile of dead bodies between us and the only way out.

I heard the distant thump of helicopters. Krogher had the resources to bring in the national guard, the police force, and any other heavily armed reinforcements he wanted. Those helicopters were probably coming for us, bringing more men, more guns, more magic.

The grumble of truck engines approaching filled the air too. Filled with even more lives scrambling to take us out.

Delightful.

We were officially screwed.

Time to run.

So we ran. Davy was able to move under his own power now, and helped Cody with Sunny’s dead body.

Sunny’s spirit pulled against the rope around her neck. I knew she wanted back in her body.

I knew I should let her go. If I could figure out how to do that, maybe she’d live.

We reached the SUV and I leaned Terric into the backseat, sliding in beside him and breathing hard with his pain. Okay, his pain and my pain. Sucking down the lives and magic from those poisonous drones had been a very bad idea.

Terric was pale, bloody, and not breathing nearly enough.

“Go now, go now!” Cody said from somewhere near the front of the car.

The car lurched across the lot, speeding down the road.

Bullets cracked through the night air. I heard Dash tell Cody to call for help, heard Davy begging Sunny to live, heard Sunny’s ghost yelling at me to fix her.

But something in me was terribly broken. If drinking Eleanor down had shattered the wall between me and the monster I feared, then killing Sunny had given that monster permission to use me as its little puppet man.

I didn’t know how to break the tie between Sunny and me. I didn’t know how long I could keep Death from killing again.

So I focused on Terric, on his pain. That pain was all that was holding us together. It was all that was keeping him alive.

And I needed him to be alive. I needed it more than breathing. But no matter how much of his pain I took, his life was slipping, thinning. His life was winding down, spooling out. He’d be dead soon too.

No.

“Pull over,” I said.

Nothing. So I said it again, “Pull over. Now.”

Shame, you bastard. Listen to me. Sunny punched me in the face.

The world rubber-band-snapped back down around me, sharp edges, sounds, motion.

Dash was driving, Cody in the front seat. He was on the phone. I had no idea who he was talking to.

Sunny’s body was in the back of the car. Davy held her in his arms as he talked to her in a soothing, monotonous tone. Sunny’s spirit was floating in front of my face.

Put me back, she demanded. Cut this damn rope and put me back.

“I . . . can’t.”

Then I’m going to cut it. She pulled a knife. Typical. Blood magic user dies and takes her knives with her. But it was just a ghost knife. She hacked at the tie between us, but it didn’t change a thing.

She pulled her head back, glared at me. Had that stabbing look in her eyes.

“Sunny, don’t—”

Too late. She buried the blade in my chest.

Yes, it hurt. But that blade was her energy, her anger, her pain. And therefore it was consumable. I absorbed the blade without even thinking about it. It faded. Was gone.

“Settle down,” I whispered. “Just. Stop yelling. Let me think.”

“Shame?” Dash asked, glancing at me in the rearview.

Terric moaned. I had my arms around him, his head resting on my shoulder.

No wonder he was dying. He was in my arms. I was killing him.

“No, no,” I said. “It’s going to be okay, Ter. Just hang in there. You’re going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.” I let go of him and propped his unconscious body against the door. I didn’t know what else I could do for him. He needed a doctor. He needed an army of doctors. He needed magic. He needed life.

He didn’t need me.

None of them did.

“Pull over,” I said again. “Damn it, Dash, pull over.”

“Cody, tell me you found us a safe hole,” Dash said.

“There’s a house just outside Umatilla,” he said. “We can stop there.”

“We got it, Shame,” Dash said. “Just keep it together a little longer.”

I crossed my arms and closed my eyes, turning my attention inward. I wrestled Death magic down, retraced the Bind spell.

But no matter how far I distanced my mind and magic from the real world, I could feel the heartbeat of every person in the car.

Worse, I could hear Sunny’s ghost talking to Davy. Telling him she was sorry, and that she loved him. Telling him I’d killed her. And if it was the last thing she was going to do, she was going to kill me right back.

I kind of hoped she was going to follow through with that promise.

I measured the passage of time in the rise and fall of Terric’s pain. Maybe it took an hour before we stopped. I didn’t know. Didn’t care. Cody and Dash handled the getaway.

“This is it,” Dash was saying. “What do you need, Shame?”

I let the world return.

Dark, painful. Sunny and Eleanor hovering right in front of my eyes, one sorrow, the other pain.

Both my fault. Blood on my soul. If I still had one.

“Shame?” Dash tried again.

“Help me with him.” I opened the door, got out of the car. My legs were heavy, numb in places and on fire in others. I was too hot, too cold, Terric’s pain making me shake. I staggered away from the car and puked.

Serves you right, Sunny said. Put me back. Put me back in my body, Shame, or I swear I will kill you.

I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. The oily film of Death magic smeared there along with blood. My blood.

“Better hurry up,” I whispered, “or you might not get the chance.”

I turned around, watched as Dash and Cody pulled Terric out of the car.

Davy was already walking to the house with Sunny in his arms.

Sunny shot me a dirty look. Help him, she said. Please.

I put my hand on the rope that tied her to me. Her eyes went wide with fear.

“I can’t break this.” I yanked on the rope and all it did was flex. “I’ve tried for years. I can’t free you.”

You freed me once, Eleanor said.

“Yeah, well, I did that by dying. So if you can kill me,” I said to Sunny, “do it.” I spread my arms wide.

She floated over to me. Stuck her hand in my chest, maybe looking for my heart.

Nothing. There was nothing there she could touch. And the longer her hand was in me, the more Death wanted to drink the rest of her down.

I licked my lips. “Hard to kill Death, love.”

She jerked her hand away. What are you?

“Not to be fucked with. So please, for all of our sakes, don’t. Just don’t.”

I turned and walked toward the house, ghosts on my heels.

Cody and Dash had managed to get Terric inside.

The house was nice enough—maybe someone’s vacation home. Fully furnished, clean but smelled cool and stale from disuse.

Cody and Dash took Terric down a hall to a bedroom and laid him on top of the bed. Davy had already settled Sunny on the couch in the living room.

He sat on the floor beside the couch, one hand holding her hand, and looked over at me as I walked in.

“Good to see you, Shame.” His voice was flat, his eyes yellowed and bloodshot. He looked like he’d just been scraped off the bottom of the devil’s shit kickers.

“I’m glad you’re alive, Davy,” I said. “We tried to stop Eli, stop Krogher, when they first grabbed you.”

“I was there. I remember.” Steady stare. That man used to be my friend. Not anymore. Not after what they’d done to him.

And what I’d done to Sunny.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” he said.

“What? Try to save you?”

“Bring her here. With you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

Me, Sunny said. He’s talking about me.

I waited to see if Davy had heard her. He didn’t even blink, just gave me that dead man’s stare.

“Sunny?” I asked. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have. But you know her. She wouldn’t stay behind. She would have gone without me.”

“Did you kill her?” he asked.

I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t. There were no words in me for what had happened, for how I’d lost control and she’d paid for it with her life.

But he knew. He must know. He closed his eyes and bowed his head over her hand.

“Davy, I—”

“Shame?” Dash walked into the room. “You should be in here.”

I followed him down the hall to the bedroom. The door was open, but I didn’t walk in. I didn’t want to get too close to Terric. Didn’t want to kill him. Didn’t want to kill Dash or Cody or, hell, anyone else either.

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

Cody shrugged. “I think you know. He’s dying.”

“We pulled over like you asked,” Dash said. “We got him here. What’s the plan?”

“This is the plan,” I said. “I need to leave. As far as I can get from . . . all of you. I can’t be near him. I can’t be near any of you.”

Dash closed the distance and grabbed my coat. He walked me backward until my back was pressed against the hallway wall.

“You are his Soul Complement,” he said. “Leaving him is always the wrong choice. Using magic with him is always the right choice. Use magic and fix him.”

The heat of anger, pain, and fear rolling off Dash made the Death magic in me kick. Here was another life, burning bright for the taking. And my Bind spell was failing.

Death lashed out, slipped my control.

Damn it.

Shame, no! Both Sunny and Eleanor stepped in front of me. Stepped between Dash and me.

I hauled back on the magic but was too slow.

Dash jerked away, his hands instinctively rising to protect his head from the attack.

It was just a taste, the lightest lick of his life. Any other man would have dropped to his knees, but Dash stumbled backward, his hand reaching for the gun at his side.

“I am doing everything I can,” I said over the howl of magic raging in my mind. “But I am toxic. If I stay here I will kill Terric and all the rest of you with him. Don’t you understand me? Don’t you understand what I am? What I’ve always done to him? Death,” I said in case he wasn’t following. “Pain and death.”

Dash wiped at his face with his arm, as if trying to scrub off blood. But when I took a life, when Death magic drained a life down, there were no marks left behind on the living.

He hadn’t pulled the gun on me yet. Idiot. This was his chance, might be his only chance to put me down.

“If you walk out on him right now,” Dash said, “I will spend my life making you pay for that choice. Every damn second.”

I didn’t know what it was. Maybe just the tone of his voice. The fear and frustration. He knew Terric was slipping away. He knew I was about to lose him. He knew he was about to lose him too.

Dash wasn’t the kind of guy who harbored revenge fantasies. Just hearing that desperate promise—and there was no doubt in my mind he meant every word—brought everything into focus.

I got an upper hand on the magic in me—not just a Bind spell, I regained clarity—and shoved it down, down inside me, and threw the locks.

I broke out in a cold sweat. It was like coming up out of a swamp, sucking for air and sunlight. I was mostly just me again, no more puppet man, even though Death magic still twisted in my bones.

Shame? Eleanor said. Is that you in there?

“Yes,” I said. “Mostly me.”

Then while you are here, and sane, I want you to release us. Release Sunny and me. Now.

I glanced at Sunny, who had on her killing eyes.

If I released her soul to go back into that dead body, she’d be dead.

Everything suddenly looked clearer now that I had control over Death magic, so: win. But that didn’t mean things looked good.

We were holed up in a house with one dying man, a dead woman, and a spelled-up man who was not quite real and maybe not sane. We’d broken into a government holding cell, taken Davy and Terric out of it. We had killed. I’d killed.

We’d taken down their spell-carved drones.

There was no way Krogher was going to let us go. Ever. As a matter of fact, the ease of us getting into and out of that warehouse made no sense. Even if they hadn’t seen us coming, even with me walking around in my bubonic boots, we shouldn’t have pulled that off that easily.

I didn’t know why we weren’t currently being shot at.

“You need me to make my point a little sharper?” Dash asked.

Right, Dash. We’d been talking. Or arguing.

“No, I heard you,” I said. “Right now, this minute, I’m listening. Tell me what we need to do.”

He held one hand up, wiped his face again. “I don’t know, Shame. We got away, but if Krogher is as powerful as you say he is and has Eli under his thumb with those gate devices, we could have an entire damn army up our ass any minute.”

“Then why aren’t we running?” I asked.

“You wanted us to stop.”

“And you listened to me? I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.”

“What the hell, Flynn? Yes, of course I listened to you. Terric’s dying.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Hold on. Can we call someone to heal him? A doctor. A doctor who can use spells?”

“He can’t be healed,” Cody said from where he was standing next to Terric’s bed. I had forgotten he was in the room.

“We have to do something,” Dash said. “Take him to a hospital so they can put him on life support, pain medications.”

I was listening to Dash but watching Cody, who held my gaze.

Cody shook his head. “You can do something to help him, Shame,” he said. “It won’t be easy. You won’t want to do it.”

Cody always had an angle. He’d saved my ass plenty of times when we were running cons. He’d selflessly saved all our asses back when magic had almost ended our world and he’d stepped up to be the vessel in which dark and light magic could join and heal. I’d developed a pretty hefty trust in the kook.

“Will it save Terric?” I asked.

He inhaled and lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t know. This trip took some unexpected turns. What you’ve done, how you’ve killed. Sunny.”

So he knew about Sunny.

He knows you killed me, Sunny said. He’ll tell someone. And they’ll put you down. You are on borrowed time.

I’d been born on borrowed time, but I didn’t tell her that. We needed solutions to our problems.

“Tell me what to do,” I said to Cody. “Tell me what I can do to fix this. Fix Terric.”

“You have to kill him.”