What? Me again?

“Mr. Cheney,” he said, this time with more force. “The door.”

I turned my head toward the hall as Stephanie appeared, her face white with terror, her mouth open. Calling someone’s name. But . . . not mine.

“She will never be free if you let her cross to me again,” he hissed. “Never.”

And that was the only thing he could have said to make me do as he had commanded.

Catching the door, I pushed it shut just as Stephanie reached it, our eyes meeting for one brief and horrible moment. I’d never seen that look in her eyes, either. Or in anyone’s. A beseeching stare. One of horror and utter devastation.

From the other side, she screamed to me. “Lucas, please don’t!”

I glanced back at him, the monster, Erik, who now clutched a hand over his heart.

“Very well” was all he said as he turned from me and Rastin, continuing down the path to the conservatory. “Follow me. Quickly.”

SEVENTY-EIGHT

Stephanie

I crashed against the door as it slammed shut, blocking out the sight of Lucas, and of Rastin and Erik.

“Lucas!” I gripped the handle, but when I opened the door again, it was the sun and the day that greeted me. Things I should have been glad to see again.

I wasn’t glad, though.

Terror for Erik’s plan, the one I felt in my heart, seized me.

“Where did they go?” asked a voice behind me.

I whirled to find Charlotte there.

The boys. They’d held me back, pulling me to Charlotte’s car. That was until Charlotte had ordered them to let me go.

“They’re going to kill him,” I told her.

“Lucas?” Patrick asked as he and Wes entered the hall behind her.

“No,” Charlotte answered for me. “Not Lucas.”

Had she seen him shut the door on me like that? She must have.

“Zedok,” said Wes.

“Erik,” I corrected in a breath.

“They’re going through with the plan,” said Charlotte as she passed through the door and onto the porch, like she thought doing so could still take her to Lucas. “And Erik’s going to let them.”

I gripped my heart, a horrible ache ricocheting through me with her words. The pain was the same he must have felt all those times. An ache more of the soul than of the body.

“I can’t lose him,” I whispered, robbed of the ability to breathe, my steps taking me out into the world I hadn’t quite been ready to return to after all. “Not when I just got him back.”

“It’s true, then,” said Charlotte out of nowhere.

I looked up to her, searching her for the answer I didn’t have but, apparently, she might have found in all of this.

“You love him.”

I gaped at her, awestruck, because she’d put into words what I’d been unable to. Not even to the person to whom it would mean the most. To whom it would mean everything.