My face was cold and my legs trembled. Her friendship had been a lie? A sham to keep tabs on me? I couldn’t believe it. Remembering the lost sound of her voice as she asked me to keep the sun from killing her, I couldn’t believe her friendship had been a lie.

“I told her to follow you when you quit,” Piscary said, the blackness in his eyes taking on the tension of a remembered passion. “It was our first argument, and I thought that I had found the point where I could make her my scion, where she would show her strength and prove she could hold her own against me. But she capitulated. For a time I thought I might have made a mistake and she lacked the strength of will to survive infinity with me and I’d have to wait yet another generation and try with a daughter born of her and Kisten. I was so disappointed. Imagine my delight when I realized she had her own agenda and was using me.”

He smiled, the slip of teeth a little bigger, showing a little longer. “She had fastened upon you as her way out of the future I saw for her. She thought you could find a way to keep her from losing her soul when she dies.” He shook his head in a controlled motion, the light glinting across his smooth scalp. “Can’t be done, but she won’t believe.”

I swallowed, making fists as my feelings of betrayal faltered. She had been using him, not following his direction. “Does she know you murdered those witches?” I whispered, sick at heart that she might have known and never told me.

“No,” Piscary said. “I’m sure she suspects, but my interest in you stems from an older reason, having nothing to do with Kalamack’s current holy grail of a ley line witch.”

I kept my eyes from my hands gripped tightly in my lap above the opening of my bag. I couldn’t reach for the vial. If it wasn’t for that, why did Piscary want me dead?

“It must have cost her pride dearly to come to me, begging for clemency when you survived your demon attack. She was so upset. It’s hard to be young. I understood more than she knows what it is to want an equal. And I was inclined to spoil her more once I realized she had used me without my knowing. So I let you live, provided she break her fast and take you completely. You being her shadow had an ironic twist I liked. She promised she would, but I knew she was lying. Even so, I didn’t mind as long as she kept you and Kalamack apart.”

“But I’m not a ley line witch,” I said, keeping my voice soft so it wouldn’t shake. I could have breathed the words and he would have heard. “Why?”