My heart starts to hammer. Hard and steady.

No. I won’t lose her. Not this time.

“You did have her.” Anders’s voice cuts through the pounding in my blood. “You had Frankie.” He’s staring at me. Steel eyed.

He knows.

And he’s seen. He’s seen me move. He’s felt the strength in my arms. He can feel it right now.

He looks at me, so stunned that his face is a perfect blank. “What are you?”

And then I move.

I race into the woods, with him beside me.

He stumbles at first, then tries to run, then falls. I drag him through the trees like a purse on a broken strap. We rush up to the shed, Aunt Mae padding as quick as she can behind us.

The shed door is hanging open. Even by the moonlight, I can see that the root cellar door is open, too, the barrels and bags shoved messily aside. The cross drawn in my blood, the circle of river stones; they don’t matter against a bunch of clumsy human hands. Their power means nothing to the powerless. I pull Anders, who has clambered to his feet again, toward the gaping cellar.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell him. And then I shove him as gently and quickly as I can down the cellar stairs. I swing the door shut and bolt it.

I turn to Aunt Mae, who is staggering up to the shed. “Are they still in the house?”

“I believe so.” Her voice is raspy now. Painful to hear.

“Will you stay with him?” I point to the root cellar. “I’ll be back.”

Aunt Mae nods.

With my key, I open the back door and slip inside. I can already hear them, thumping upstairs, two loud voices. They’re in my room.

I’m up the stairs, standing in my bedroom doorway, before they can even turn toward the sound of my steps. They’ve switched on the bedside lamp. Frankie is nowhere to be seen. Sasha is digging through the dresser drawers. Her head is down. Carson is standing nearer the door, looking up at the picture of Anders onstage, the one I printed at the library, posted above the row of candles.

“. . . sure we’ll find proof. Because this is seriously sick,” he’s saying just as his eyes float toward me.

I keep still.

I can see the thoughts flash through Carson’s mind. Weighing the risks. Guessing my next move. Then he lunges. He’s aiming for my shoulders, his big hands out and open, ready to knock me down.

It’s only once he touches me that I move.

My hands strike his chest. He flies into the air, lands, slides backward across the hardwood floor. The back of his head strikes the wall. Hard. He slumps, his chin nuzzling his own shoulder.

Sasha gapes at me. Her face is flat with horror. She drops the thing she’s holding—I think it’s a pair of my socks—and takes a small step backward.