Paige had believed me. I said I’d needed her help and she’d taken me at my word. How many times had I heard the council tease Paige about her impetuousness? They told stories of her running headlong into danger, mind fixed on a soul that needed saving. But such tales were rooted in the past, and even Paige laughed at them. She was older now. More experienced. More cautious.

Yet hadn’t I seen the worry in Lucas’s eyes when she set out on a dangerous assignment? I’d always told myself he was just concerned for his wife. Now I realized that Paige was, at heart, the same person she’d always been, one who’d throw herself into a bullet’s path to save a friend.

I’d called for help. She’d listened.

I’d begged her to tell no one. She’d listened.

After arriving, she’d had misgivings, but I’d played it so cool she’d told herself she was wrong. And followed me to her death.

She’d trusted me. She was dead. It was my fault.

Benicio Cortez would chase me to the ends of the earth, now, convinced I’d been part of the conspiracy against his family. Who would I turn to? For justice? For mercy? Lucas? The council? I’d killed Paige. No one would help me now.

I would not recover from this. Could not.

And yet, even as I thought the words, they were only words. I didn’t care what happened to me. All I could see was Paige’s face. Her dead eyes staring at me.

My greatest fear had been that, faced with the death of a friend, I’d be so overcome by the chaos that I’d stand by and watch. Now I knew I’d been wrong. I’d faced the chaos and overcome it. I’d tried to stop Jaz. Tried to save Paige. Did it matter? No. Because I’d still been responsible for her death…and I didn’t even have the demon to blame.

I LAY IN the back of a car. I had no idea how long I’d been there, trapped in my thoughts, smelling vinyl and vomit, feeling the rumble of the tires, hearing the sharp words of an argument. It all washed over me, muddled by whatever drug sloshed through my veins.

Even when the voices became coherent, I listened, aware that what I was hearing was important, connected to me, but unable to make that connection. Just disembodied voices floating through the ether.

“You have to do something about her.”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Fine? Look in the mirror and tell me everything’s fine, Jaz. She attacked you—”

“I shot someone she liked. What’s she supposed to do? Run over and kiss me?”

“Kill you more like.”

“She wouldn’t do that.”