“The music,” he said, pretending like he hadn’t heard me. “Now that you are here, that is all that shall matter.”

My frown deepened. Because the way he’d said the word “here” had felt somehow . . . loaded.

“But . . . this is a—”

The words dried in my mouth, stolen by my own sense of suddenly screaming alarm.

Erik had brought me here for a reason, to a setting that confined me to a boat. And the conversation he’d led me through, full of holes and non-answers, had been meant only to distract me.

He must have seen the realization dawn in my eyes. Because he stopped rowing, a small smile touching his perfect lips. It was a smile, however, that did not reach his eyes. Eyes that no longer carried the warmth or sadness I had seen in them before, but now suddenly displayed far-off, inhuman, light-like glints.

The boat rotated, and my gaze fell from his tall, straight form to his image reflected in the water’s surface.

Panic surged into my heart, sharp, piercing, and cold as an ice pick.

Though I wanted to scream at the sight of his reflection’s crimson garb and death’s head mask, I acted instead, remembering what he’d said about this dream being a spell—his spell.

I pushed out of the boat and dove for the waters.

Though my body made a splash as I hit, I did not end up in the lake. I instead toppled—awake—from someone’s arms, landing atop a floor of beautiful carpeting.

At once, the sound of lapping water revealed itself to be the soft ticking of a clock, and I found myself faced with a fireplace outfitted with tiles showing feathery paintings of birds on porcelain. The carved deer’s head watched me from its mounting over the hearth, its antlers casting long, wicked shadows up the wall.

No . . .

The stag was too small to have owned the whole of those curved, spiked shadows. Their true source came from something that loomed behind me.

I dug my fingers into the carpet, and my breathing came quick now. Because there was no question of who I would see when I dared to turn and look.

What.

PART

II

FIFTY-TWO

Lucas

“You have to be certain if we are seriously going to do this,” said Patrick. “Absolutely, positively, irrevocably certain.”

I glowered at him from across the restaurant table, irritated at him and the rest of the SPOoKy crew all over again.

“Yeah, because you know me,” I snapped, folding my arms as I leaned back in the booth. “I really like to make stuff up. Especially when there are people’s lives on the line.”

“No,” said Charlotte. “You don’t make stuff up. You just leave stuff out.”

“Preach,” said Patrick while giving his sweet tea a stir.

I sent Charlotte a glare, one that she gave right back until I had to look away. Because, as much as I hated to admit it, she was right.