I lifted my head. Struggled to focus. Everything in me pleaded with me to relax, just lie back and enjoy it. Don’t spoil—

I saw Paige. Crumpled against the wall. Her pretty face twisted with horror. A bullet hole through her forehead.

I screamed. As the sound ripped from my throat, it changed into a roar, the chaos bliss hardening into something that filled me, burned me, seared my eyes, my brain, my gut. Through the blaze, I saw Jaz. Only Jaz. On his feet. Coming toward me.

I lunged at him, kicking, clawing, screaming in a voice I didn’t recognize as human. I smelled blood. I felt its heat. I tasted its sweetness.

Something jabbed my arm. The prick of pain only spurred me on, but Jaz had wrenched from my grasp. I wheeled. Through the blood haze, I spotted his dark form, and I tried to launch myself at him, but I just kept turning. Turning. Turning. My knees gave way and I spiraled to the ground.

The last thing I saw was Paige’s dead eyes, staring at me.

HOPE CRASH AND BURN

HOPE

CRASH AND BURN

Twice before, I’d watched my life crash and burn.

The first time had been my last year of high school. In the midst of SATs, training for a regatta and struggling through the first serious fight with my high school sweetheart, I’d started seeing visions. Convinced it was stress, I’d been furious with myself for showing such weakness and determined to “fix” myself before anyone found out and shipped me off to therapy. I’d fought it so hard that I had a breakdown, I lost it all—the SATs, the regatta, my boyfriend—and spent my prom night in a private mental hospital.

It took years to recover from that, but I did. I learned what I was. I established contacts in the supernatural world. I graduated from college. I found the “council” and got my job with True News. From debutante to tabloid-reporting, gun-toting, chaos demon spy girl. Not exactly what my mother had in mind, but I’d been pleased with myself. It was like going to bed an ordinary girl and waking up a superhero.

More like super-chump. I’d discovered that my new life was built on a lie. I wasn’t protecting the innocent; I was delivering them to the Cortez Cabal. My self-confidence took a beating that it still hadn’t recovered from. But with Karl’s help I’d bounced back and became exactly what I thought I’d been before—a council operative.

Now, with a single bullet, my world had shattered again. This time it wouldn’t heal.