“He told me what you are,” I hiss. “Showed me pictures of you following me last year!”

Luka presses his lips together.

“You should’ve done it then. You should’ve killed me. Because guess what? I don’t remember anything. Whatever I had is gone! So when this is all over and you trot back to your Historian master with nothing to show for—what? A year’s worth of work? Two?—what’s he going to do to you? What’s the punishment, Luka, for returning empty-handed? Because I may be new at this, but even I know that you suck as a hunter.”

During all this time, he hasn’t moved. And just as I’m contemplating whether I can get one good jab in before he stabs or shoots me or whatever he plans to do—because I’m sure I’ve got it coming now—I realize he’s staring at me. Two and then three seconds tick by, but there is no rage, no hint of homicide in his expression.

And then he lets go of my arms.

I exhale a short laugh. “You won’t even deny that you’re supposed to kill me.”

“No,” he says quietly, and I wonder what he’s waiting for. “Now ask me if I’m going to.” A car whisks by, and then a rumbling truck, air shuddering around the car.

“Don’t you think we’re past that?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No, I’m not going to kill you.”

For a moment, neither one of us moves. His gaze is stony, and I wonder if I’m looking into the eyes of a murderer.

“The Audra before knew that. She also knew I was going to follow her to Maine. That I would be waiting. To protect her.”

I laugh in his face, but I’m trying to keep my arms from shaking. Adrenaline has long since obliterated whatever Rolan put in my glass, and now it’s all I can do to keep my teeth from chattering with it.

“I knew your address before you even got there. Little island two hundred feet from shore.”

“I get it. You’re creepy.”

“You gave it to me so I could find you!”

He reaches up and lifts my arms over the rest. My wrists scream, my shoulders have all but seized up.

For the first time I actually take in our situation: cockeyed on the shoulder of some two-lane highway surrounded by cornfields. “Just let me go. Let me out here.”

“No way. He’ll kill you.”

“Well, that’s really interesting. Because that’s the same thing Rolan told me about you!”