He squeezed my hand, then uncrossed and recrossed his legs. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound good, but that’s how Sonny is. The practical one. I’m the dreamer, he’s the doer. It’s…” His pupils dilated and his color rose, and he looked like he had that night after the heist. Drunk on adrenaline and tequila. “I can’t even begin to explain it, Hope. Sonny and me—we can do anything. And now, with you, it’s only going to get better.”

I should be relieved—he wasn’t going to kill me—but I could only stare at him. He squeezed my hand hard enough to hurt, apologized, rubbed his thumb across my knuckles, then uncrossed and recrossed his legs again, as if he couldn’t sit still. His face glowed and I swore I could see a barrage of thoughts ping-ponging around behind his eyes as he struggled to release them in some semblance of order.

Another hand squeeze, pulling himself closer with the motion. “You’ll see, Hope. You’ll see. And when you do…”

His eyes rolled back, pure bliss, the tip of his tongue sliding between his teeth. Even through my fear, I felt the waves of chaos rolling off him, that pure chaos, so intense that for a moment, I just wanted to let go, to share that high.

I slid back and disengaged my hand from his.

He sighed. “Yeah, I know. You’re not too happy with me right now. You liked them. Hell, I liked them. Guy, Rodriguez, Tony, Max. Even Bianca wasn’t so bad. But there wasn’t any other way, Hope. You’ll see that soon. You can’t worry about other people. They’d do the same to you. You can’t let anything block you from your goal.”

Another shift, this time stretching his legs, letting them rest against me. “Sonny and I, we’ve been given a gift. To not use that gift would be wrong. You have one too—something that makes you better than any Cabal sorcerer. So why should you work for them? Grovel to them? Why should they hold all the power? Biology is destiny, Hope. It’s time for you to seize your destiny.”

I could only stare at him, searching his eyes for the fever of madness. What glowed from his face was the fervor of conviction. Was it the same thing?

“You killed Bianca, didn’t you?” I said finally. “It was you, in the hall. You impersonated that Cabal guard—the one you claimed robbed you. You killed him and the other one, staged their homes and ‘became them’ to kill Bianca.”