“Give him to her, Kath,” Betty says quietly. Katherine obliges and passes the newborn to his mother. When Pearl reaches out, worry and love are written on her face. When she holds her baby close, a quiet horror takes over.

Over her shoulder, Cecilia gasps. “His eyes!”

A small curl of apprehension buzzes along my skin.

Maybe Cecilia has that feeling too, because she looks ready to bolt from Pearl’s side.

Katherine shakes her head. “Told you not to mess with that red-eyed devil, but you did, didn’t you? Ain’t nothing good coming from a man you meet at the crossroads, Pearl. Nothing.”

Pearl’s eyes are filled with tears. She shakes her head twice, to deny Katherine or to deny what she’s seeing, I don’t know. “He’s my son,” she says with a trembling lip.

I speak to Louisa without looking, my feet already moving closer to the scene. “What’s wrong with his eyes?”

“A crossroads child,” Louisa says cryptically.

She doesn’t stop me or call me back. I’m almost at Pearl’s side, and my hands are shaking like my entire body already knows what’s wrong with this baby. What—and who—he’ll look like.

“He may look like a baby, but that is their disguise,” Katherine says, sadness and chastisement equally strong in her voice. “They cannot be trusted because it is in their nature to lie. You know this, Pearl. Just like his father, he will turn on you one day.”

I’m close enough to see the newborn now, standing between his mother and Cecilia. I lean forward, Pearl’s desperate voice loud in my ear. “He is my child!” And I see what I dreaded I might.

Two amber eyes, glowing and bright, stare up at Pearl from the baby’s soft brown face.

Then, defying Patricia’s comprehension like Louisa before her, Cecilia grips my elbow. Her eyes blaze with awareness and lock firmly with mine. I try to turn away from their fire, their burning—but she holds fast. “This is not a child,” she says fiercely. “It is a monster.”

The world spins and disappears again.

After we land, Cecilia pulls me with her in a fast walk. I don’t need to turn to know that Louisa is not with us. “This way.”

We’re back at Carolina, and it’s the pitch black of the middle of the night. Cecilia drags me toward the center of the campus at a dizzying pace.

“Why did you show me that?”

“Because you needed to see it,” Cecilia says breathlessly, echoing Louisa’s earlier words.

“I needed to see that baby?” I gasp. “What was he?”

She explains without stopping. “A crossroads child, born of a crossroads man. The father walked among us and shared our form, but in truth he was a demon born of the shadows. The child is half-human.”