The windstorm, raging against him, sent the monster staggering backward several paces. A low roar of defiance emanated from him, growing loud enough to rise above Rastin’s whispered prayers and the blustering. The monster reclaimed surer footing, even as a white halo of light began to radiate around him.

Conflicted, still remembering that look on Stephanie’s face as I’d shut the door on her, I gripped the dagger at my side, its handle already slick with sweat. The light surrounding the monster expanded then, revealing itself not to be an aura . . . but a portal, one that would remove him from this world forever.

A glance to Rastin showed the medium’s focus locked on his target. Beads of sweat trickled down his temples. He’d widened his stance and now held out both hands. What would happen, though, if his strength failed him?

Still undecided, I spun back in the direction of the monster.

His black jacket began to disintegrate, the fabric thinning, then molting away to reveal tattered and time-yellowed skin and bony limbs.

The glowing white rift tore itself even wider behind the creature.

Then the mask itself dissolved, crumbling to pieces.

The monster screamed. Impossibly, he took a staggering step toward me, straining all the while against the portal that, like a vacuum, began to suck the loosened rose petals, leaves, and flower heads into it.

And then. Then the creature did something awful.

Lifting an emaciated, skeletal hand to its chest, it pried fingers between its own ribs—and ripped downward, tearing bone and papery flesh away to reveal the rose.

Again, I twisted the dagger in my grip, trying to make myself believe that I would do what Rastin needed me to. What Stephanie and her family and this monster did, too.

But now that the moment had come, the point of no return, something about it felt . . . wrong.

I peered again to Rastin, who gritted his teeth, his arms trembling against the creature, who took another step in my direction.

Then, with a roar of his own, Rastin shoved both hands forward, and the monster went flying back, straight at the portal. And, as if the portal was not an opening but a wall, the creature slammed against it with a demented cry of pain, his face distorted in rage and agony.

He began to claw at his own chest, at the heart that caused him so much pain. The heart that was now the only thing keeping him here, locked in his ruined body and caught in this warped existence. The only thing besides me, that was.

He couldn’t remove it, though. Even so, his hand fastened around it, he squeezed and screamed, dead muscles straining.

Do it. I should.

I’d said I would.

And I would have. If I hadn’t glimpsed within the centers of those two pits what Rastin had seen and perhaps now Stephanie, too. Not a monster. Not a creature. But a soul. A person.

God. He loved her.