“Oh,” Rose says softly. “He’s embarrassed.”

“And that woman’s a banshee.” Kara points across the room at a pale-faced woman following an elderly guest a little too closely. She gives me a sly look out of the corner of her eye. “Of course, if you’re too scared…”

I glower at her. “I am not.”

Kara tosses her hair over her shoulder. “I bet you can’t last a minute out on the dance floor.”

“Watch me!” And to prove it, I dart into the crowd.

Immediately, I swerve to avoid two dancing men in glittering vests, then duck under the arm of a woman making sloshing gestures with her pumpkin root beer as she talks. I make it to an open space in the middle and slow, looking for an escape. I proved my point; now I’m getting out of here before—

I gasp as a hand brushes mine. A chill shoots through me in a burst of power I’m still not used to. Everything turns hazy, and suddenly I’m reliving someone else’s memory. Compared to other visions my powers have given me, this one is strangely warped, as if looking up through muddy water.

I’m in someone’s motel room. A man stands at my side, but I focus on the one tied to the chair before me. His pale face is covered in bruises, but his gray eyes are resolute. He’s not giving me the information I need. At his feet lies the body of a white woman with bright red hair and empty green eyes staring up into nothing. She didn’t answer my questions either.

The man next to me nudges me aside, and I step away, bowing. His voice is the rush of autumn leaves, the air faint with the scent of pine. I can’t make out his words. He wraps his hand around the man’s neck. A golden light buds beneath his palm, flowing from the captive’s throat and up the veins in the man’s arms.

Then the motel room door opens.

A boy no more than fourteen stands just inside the doorway, another older teenager behind him. The younger boy drops his keycard with a gasp. The last of the light leaves the victim, and he slumps forward, dead.

Then I’m on the kid, tackling him to the ground. We wrestle. I nick his shoulder with a knife as he throws me off. There’s a terrible sound, and I roll over to see a knife in the other man’s ribs. The older teen pulls another blade out and sends it flying into the man’s shoulder as he flees through the window.

All at once, the cold recedes and I come back to myself at the party. I’m on the ground, breathing fast. Whoever I bumped into—whoever gave me that vision—is gone.

Rose and Kara help me to my feet with identical frowns.