Wake up, I think to myself. It’s your imagination. Mara Graziani—to harbour such hate for so long, without once revealing her identity—must be incapable of pity. I look at her boots and I see the sword, Ra. The point of it, stabbing into the metal grate next to Vidhan’s head. She took it from me. I see the chain hanging from her hand. The Wraith, snatched off my neck. And me, too stunned to do anything but let it happen.

Then a hissing sound. A thump. The door closes.

And I’m left alone. With Vidhan’s body.

—

I roll onto my back and I bang the back of my head on the floor. I’ve let them all down. Bea. Frankie. The Old Man. Mother. Gabriel. AM-41. Malik. Myself. Everyone. But especially Vidhan.

My throat closes. I feel dizzy.

I lie still, listening to the ship’s engine thump somewhere beneath me. The floor tilts suddenly and my stomach drops. It feels like we’re rising.

What difference does it make?

I slam my head down again and again on the hard grate. All that power I’m supposed to have and I let it happen right in front of me.

Vidhan is dead. His blood, on my hands.

And Malik…

No. Stop. What would Bea tell me?

Get up, Moon. Stand up. Do something.

I roll my head and stare at the body slumped on the floor. He looks smaller somehow—a shadow, not a person. He’s fallen in an awkward way and his left arm sticks out weirdly and the thumb of his left hand seems to point at me.

What are you showing me, Vidhan?

And then I remember.

I lift myself up off the floor. I take a deep breath and I haul out Vidhan’s bent handbook from where I stuffed it right inside my jeans, up against my skin.

The Book of Seven.

I flip to a very specific chapter.

FALLING

Moving through the fabric of one realm into another, is known as a FALL. It is, at the core, a QUANTUM LEAP into another dimension and involves moving through space and time. Though rare, there are instances of people Falling between worlds and disappearing altogether, or reappearing with knowledge beyond the ordinary.

I skip forward a few pages, skimming the parts I know, and arrive at this: