“If you pledge your loyalty to the Order of the Northern Wolf tonight, they’ll let us go.” My mother stares into the camera, her pupils so wide her eyes are completely black. They’re being mind-controlled. “Come alone to the old metro station on Culver Avenue after midnight tonight. Please, Auggie. Please save us.”

“If you don’t, they’ll kill us.” My father hesitates. “They’ll start with your mother, and they’ll … take her apart slowly.”

“Please save us,” my mother repeats—and the video cuts off.

I sit there, sobbing quietly into my hands, for so long that a five-minute warning comes on over the library’s speakers. Out of everything I’ve gone through, this is what almost breaks me, what almost makes me forfeit my ridiculous scheme and give in to Rasputin’s demands. Even though my parents would die anyway, at least it wouldn’t happen because of my hubris.

Quaking so badly I can barely find the right keys, I manage to type a response:

These are my terms: On Friday night, two hours after sundown, you will come to the west picnic grounds at Colgate Woods, and you will bring my parents. When I see them with my own eyes, alive and unharmed, I’ll take the oath. If either of them has so much as a paper cut, or if you go anywhere near my friends in the meantime, you will die in agony. I have access to more of Azazel’s powers than you think. Don’t bother responding to this message.

After I hit send, it takes nearly all the time I have left to get myself under control, but I finally write one last message to Adriana, delete my account, and leave the library.

The next day and a half pass like a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel full of broken glass, my hands constantly sweaty, every moment a new opportunity to second-guess my strategy. To hate myself for terminating any chance of further communications with Rasputin. It was the smart thing to do, I know that—my only leverage lies in my refusal to negotiate, my depriving him the chance to send me a video even worse than the first.

He needs me, I keep telling myself, and I laid out my conditions plainly. No matter how angry he gets that I didn’t jump at his command, he wants control of the Corrupter more than he cares about hurting my parents. When he tries to reply to my email and it bounces back, he’ll see that there’s no point in lashing out at me by deliberately violating the terms, because I’d never know. I repeat it over and over … but I’m not very convincing.