Alana opens it. It’s Eric. She’s about to tell him she’s glad to see him, that she could use a little magic on her side right now.

But something in his face stops her cold.

He looks guilty and sick.

“I have something to tell you,” he says. “You’re not going to like it.”

An hour later, Eric’s throat and face are mottled with bruises that are already a violent purple. He’s limping as they walk through the woods.

“How much further?” Alana asks.

“Not far,” he rasps.

His voice sounds like a rusty hinge. Probably because she nearly strangled him when he first told her what he’d done. He also looks sore from where she tossed him around the hotel room. Good, she thinks. It’s a hell of a lot less than he deserves.

A hundred yards later, he makes a turn at the base of a small hill, and she sees their destination: a small cave that was known as the Smuggler’s Port on an old map of Middleton. The woods are filled with tunnels and caverns that run through the foothills. They all used to play in them as kids. Until John Dennis nearly died in one. Then the city declared all the caves off limits.

It didn’t stop kids from exploring them, of course. The evidence is by Alana’s feet, scattered all over the cavern floor. Condom wrappers, broken beer bottles, cigarette butts, years of teenage rebellion arranged in sedimentary layers. She could probably find crushed empties of Keystone Light from when she drank out here, deep under the used Juul pods.

Eric throws up his hand, and a ball of glowing light appears and hangs in the air, illuminating the cave. She scowls at him. She knows his powers have returned. She’s not thrilled with how he’s been using them.

From the deep shadows at the back, beyond where the light can reach, a small figure steps forward: a small boy with golden-blond hair, younger than Grace, but moving with an adult’s confidence.

“You’re him,” she says simply. “You’re back.”

“I am,” Colchester says. “I’d say it was nice to see you again, but the last time we met, you put a sword in my chest.”

“Good times,” Alana says.

The little-boy face twists into something uglier. “You want to watch that mouth of yours, missy. Considering.”

It’s so fucking obscene, watching his expressions on that little face, hearing his voice come out of that little body. Alana is tempted to kill him just to end it.

But she restrains herself.

“I’m here,” she says. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get my daughter back.”

Colchester drops the ugly look on the boy’s face. “Well, hoo-ray,” he says, clapping his hands. “And it’s going to be so easy for you. I don’t even need you to kill anyone.”

“What do you want?”