Rastin turned, exiting the foyer by way of the back hall.

“Guys,” I said to Wes, Charlotte, and Patrick, “take Stephanie and get out of here. Now.”

“Lucas,” Charlotte began, but I shot her a glare that silenced her.

“We won’t get another chance,” I told her, keeping my voice low, so that Stephanie wouldn’t hear my words. Though I wasn’t sure why.

With that, I made to follow Rastin.

“Lucas?” Stephanie called after me. “Wait. Where are you going?”

I ignored her and, skirting the fallen chandelier where it still lay, I trailed after Rastin as he entered the kitchen—moving in the direction of the door I knew he would open next.

I paused in the center of the kitchen as Rastin opened the cellar door to reveal a darkened stairway. He shut it quickly, then opened it again.

“It’s as I feared,” he muttered, shutting the door a second time. “With my connection to Erik now severed, there is no link binding us together any longer. The heart Stephanie gave him. Somehow, it must have focused his entire soul. Including the missing shard. There is now no way for me to reach his side.”

“The only thing that matters at this point is that he has a heart,” I said. “There’s got to be a way we can draw him out.”

“Erik!” Stephanie screeched, causing me to whirl in the direction of the hallway. “Erik, no, you can’t!”

At hearing these words, Rastin and I made a break for the kitchen entrance, both of us jumping to the conclusion that he’d crossed back to this side, to Stephanie. We halted, though, at the unlatching of the basement door, which then creaked open.

Neither of us turned. Not even when a voice emanated from within the cellar.

“I am here, gentlemen.”

A spear of ice pierced me through the gut. Together, we spun, Rastin and I, to find a figure in the doorway. A masked one.

Shock rooted me to the spot.

I had come here knowing I would face him. Still, nothing could have prepared me for the sight of him.

Tall and rail-thin, cloaked and garbed in ebony, he emerged from the nighttime blackness of the cellar into the daylit kitchen, twin lights glinting at us from within the eyeholes of his split metal mask.

Unable to help it, I stumbled back a step, into Rastin, who quickly pushed himself ahead of me, an arm extended. As if he could have done anything to protect either of us.

“Erik,” said Rastin. “What trick is this?”

“No tricks this time, Shirazi,” the creature said.

“Erik, no!” Stephanie screeched again, her voice coming from farther away now. Because the others. They must have taken her out of the house.

Stephanie, though . . . Why was she yelling at him like that? Like she was afraid. Less of him and more . . . for him.

Her fear. It didn’t seem to stem from where it had before, in the graveyard—that he would kill me. But that didn’t make any sense.