“So cast Nicholina out!” I roared, my own mask exploding in a wave of fury. Of helplessness. When Coco jerked upright, glaring at me in silent rebuke, I clenched my head in my hands. Fisted my hair, pulled it, tore it, anything to combat the fierce ache in my chest. Shame colored my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. Just—please. Cast Nicholina out. Please.”

“It isn’t that simple.”

“Yes, it is.” Desperation laced my voice now. I dropped my hands, pivoted sharply on my heel. Paced. Back and forth. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Faster and faster, my footsteps carved a jagged path in the sand. “In the book of Mark, Jesus cast demons into a herd of six thousand pigs—”

“This isn’t the Bible, Nicholina isn’t a demon, and I’m not the son of fucking God.” She splayed her hands, facade cracking just slightly, and gestured to the sand and waves around us. “Do you see any pigs?”

I spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m saying there’s a way to remove her. We just have to find it.”

“And what happened to the possessed after Jesus cleansed them?”

“Don’t be stupid. They were healed.”

“Were they?” Her eyes flashed, and she tore a vial of blood from her pack. “The human body isn’t meant to house more than one soul, Reid.”

I spun to face her, my own hands flying upward. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying this doesn’t end the way we want it to end,” she snapped. “I’m saying even if we miraculously manage to evict Nicholina, Lou won’t be the same. To have touched another soul so intimately—not just in a sonnet or some other bullshit symbolic way, but to have actually touched another soul, to have shared the same body—I don’t know if Lou’s will survive intact.”

“You mean—her soul could be—”

“Fragmented. Yes.” She marched forward, dropping to her knees beside Lou with more force than necessary. Black sand sprayed in Lou’s pale hair. I mirrored her movements on Lou’s other side, sweeping the sand away. “Part of it might go with Nicholina. All of it might go with Nicholina. Or”—she uncorked the vial, and the acrid stench of blood magic assaulted my senses—“Lou could already be gone. She was in a bad way. Nicholina wouldn’t have been able to possess her otherwise. Her spirit was weak. Broken. If we force Nicholina out, Lou might . . .” She took a ragged breath. “She might be an empty shell.”

“You don’t know that,” I said fiercely.

“You’re being willfully ignorant.”

“I’m being hopeful.”