I'd certainly had enough experience with that. Calmly, I set the stone on the counter, imagining shrinking down in my chair in my high school English class when the teacher asked a question. I thought of walking through a bad part of town at night, keeping close to the buildings, sticking to the shadows.

I thought of sneaking across the lawn behind Cyrus's mansion to meet with Nathan at the gate, and pictured the guards looking at me and seeing nothing.

Then I realized I was already an expert at invisibility. No one had seen me without me wanting them to for years. My face, my build, even my hair color were so nondescript I could rob a bank without anyone identifying me. This would be a piece of cake.

At the same time I thought it, another wave of confidence rose within me. It was darker, ego driven and wild. Crazy.

It was Dahlia.

"I drank her blood," I heard myself saying, as if from far away. "I think it's doing something to me."

Cyrus stepped back. Even Nathan seemed frightened.

I am invisible, I chanted in my head as I wiped the oil on the stone. The flowery scent calmed me, even as the stone seemed to burn from my concentrated energy. All my thoughts and visualizations flowed from my body through the fingertips of my right hand, into the stone.

Then, just as abruptly as the sensations came, they stopped. The dark energy left over from Dahlia's blood soaked into the stone, leaching some of me with it, and I jerked my hand back.

"She did it," Cyrus said, almost breathlessly. "I can't believe she really did it."

"What? What did I do?" Before they could answer, I picked up the stone, so cold it burned, and gasped as my hand, then my wrist, then my arm vanished as though dissolving. I looked at my feet, only to see the floor they should be standing on. I waved my fingers in front of my face, but they weren't there anymore.

The room spun around me. Without visual confirmation of my body in its own space, I lost my sense of balance for a moment, stumbling against the counter.

"Grab her!" Nathan shouted.

"How? I can't see her!" Cyrus reached out uncertainly and I grasped his arms. The second the stone touched him, he vanished as well.

We stood perfectly still, holding each other for balance. I would have paid anything to see the expression on Cyrus's face.

"Well, we know it's not just figurative invisibility now, don't we?" he said with a rueful laugh, and I laughed with him.

Something was finally working to our advantage.

Chapter Twenty
Origins

Sitting up, Max blinked in an effort to bring his vision into focus. When he tried to rub his eyes, chains rattled and his arms met with marked resistance. Waking up in another dark, strange place, restrained.

Perfect.

"I wondered when you would wake."