I startled at Nathan’s voice in my head, calm and coherent for the first time since he’d been taken from me.

I haven’t been taken. Not yet. But I’m running out of time.

“Nathan!” I tried to shout out loud, but no sound issued. What happened? Are you better?

No. The word sent a wave of despair across the tie between us. It’s sleeping. It has to sleep.

What has to sleep? I thought of the demon who’d worn his skin, imagined it as a slimy, scaly thing gripping Nathan in its cruel claws.

I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. There was a note of urgency to his tone. God, Carrie, I don’t what’s happening to me.

His mounting fear turned my throat to dust, and I swallowed. You’re possessed. Max is looking for you, to help you. Where are you?

I don’t know. In the dark. Carrie, please help. The last part came across as a sob wrenched from my own, dry throat. I’m not possessed. This thing…

Silence. I’d lost my link to him. I called out to him, my brain trying feverishly to connect with him, like the marrow of a broken bone reaching for a way to rebuild itself.

“Wake up!”

I gasped as I came awake and felt the pressure of a stake at my chest.

March stood over me, her face framed by the fluffy, red marabou lining the edges of her satin dressing gown. Her knuckles were white from gripping the stake. Her body trembled with rage and she twisted the wood hard, grinding the point into my skin. “Who do you work for?”

This is how I die. “I don’t work for anyone.” I resisted the urge to glance wildly around the room for an escape route. That would give her enough incentive to stab me then and there. “I’m not Movement, I told you.”

“I know that! Do you think I’m stupid? I checked you for Movement connections before you even got this room.” The pressure of the stake let up a bit. Her reason was returning, though just barely. “But it’s not the Movement I’m worried about.”

“Then who are you worried about?” I shifted a little, the wooden point still too close for comfort.

March’s eyes narrowed. She leaned forward on the stake, worming it into my sternum. I could take her, I realized. She was older than me, and therefore should have been stronger. But she hadn’t been at a prime age when she’d been turned. Plus her stance, kneeling on the edge of the bed beside me, wouldn’t support her if I kicked her away.

But then I would have a fight on my hands, and something in her expression told me she didn’t want that, either. “Who sent you?”