His expression shifts again as his temperature soars past one hundred, his blood racing and his skin turning pink with the rising heat. Sweat drips from me, and I dig deeper, watching with malevolent satisfaction as his eyes roll back and his body begins to thrash.

“Auggie?” Gunnar’s voice is frayed by alarm, but I barely hear him. Blisters swell and burst across William’s skin, his temperature passing two hundred and still climbing. Smoke rises from him in wispy threads, his skin splitting and crackling, the stench of cooking meat spreading along the corridor. My chest heaves, my heart pounds, but I don’t let go.

Dark fluid is leaking from his nose and ears when the first tongues of flame erupt along his twitching arms—and then he is completely engulfed. White-hot fire consumes him from the inside out, liquefying his brain, instantly severing the magic that’s kept him going since the day he died. Within seconds, his flesh and blood are reduced to ash, and all that’s left is a smoking pile of dust and bone in the middle of the school hallway.

My limbs shake, sweat stinging my eyes, and a relentless pain hammers at my temples. The shadows swim and wobble, winding themselves around me, and the ringing in my ears is unbearable. Gunnar takes hold of me, shouting something—but he’s too late. The shadows lunge down my throat and I drop away.

Moray, Scotland

1053

The fell of dark was at last upon the heath, rendering the low fog blue where it crept through heather and gorse. Wrapping his cloak tighter around his shoulders, the bearded man raised his lantern against the gloaming, and cast another furtive look around. He was alone, of course; he’d been alone since he’d left the outskirts of Inverness—but this body was depressingly vulnerable, and even a common thief could pose a mortal threat.

Frankly, it was insulting.

He sensed the sisters long before he saw their fire burning, a wavering glow in the distance that answered the light he carried, and he hurried onward. The trio had made camp within the remnants of an old abbey church—a long-abandoned ruin in the desolate countryside, its walls crumbling and caked with moss. Superstition was a plague in this part of the country, and the three women had exploited it with admirable efficiency, driving away the curious with unexplainable phenomena and eerie cries in the darkness.

The doorway to the abbey was an arched gap, a hole broken through the side wall where hellish light danced, shadows bounding like feral beasts. As pointless as the gesture was, he drew his sword before making his way inside, an instinct this particular body found it comforting to obey.