But she was already facing down the first monster, now finished with its feast. It crouched back on powerful legs, watching her with a cruel smile on its gore-smeared face. Rebeka extended one hand to it, and it took all of Phillip’s willpower not to scream at her.

“Trust me,” Rebeka said softly. She averted her gaze from the monster just long enough to meet his eyes. “Like I trust you.”

And then Rebeka collapsed to the floor, her heap of a body shimmering—as if caught between both worlds.

Phillip froze. “Rebeka!” he shouted, despite the monsters—half a dozen of them now—despite everything. “Rebeka, please—”

The cabin rumbled like the beating of a thousand wings. The air around them turned dense and scraped at his arms.

Go, the monster roared, its voice multitonal, a frightful chorus. The word was coming from the other monsters’ mouths now, too. Go, Phillip. Hurry!

Phillip gathered up his tools and raced for the cabin door.

CHAPTER TWENTY

REBEKA

Rebeka both was the monsters and wasn’t them. She could move them like marionettes, but they bobbed and writhed on strings in ways she couldn’t control. They were her eyes and nose and ears, but she was never fully in command of them as she straddled the two worlds, two times, two lives, and maybe more.

The man she’d encountered before in the shadow realm hadn’t found her yet. Maybe he didn’t know she was here. Maybe by staying halfway in her own world, she could evade him—but then again, he might be busy with something else.

She shuddered, not wanting to imagine what that something else might be.

In truth, the shadow realm was a lot less frightening this time. It wasn’t a dead place; the plants writhed with their own breath, and the drone of insects and other nameless creatures spoke to a vastness she couldn’t begin to comprehend. These ruins were where entire civilizations had once thrived, in the past the other being had shown her. The shadow energy sustained this dark place and gave it life with the same relentlessness as the sunlight in her own world. Apparently, that dark energy had been pulsing in her all along. And yet feeling it, accepting what it had given her . . . she felt brighter than ever.

She stumbled past another cluster of eerie ruins and thought of the faceless figure, the time it had shown her from before. Before humans had reached through the barrier and stolen some of the shadow for themselves. She remembered the figure approaching her, reaching inside her head as if passing judgment. Had it trusted her not to betray them like Sicarelli did? It must have known she was unlike that angry man who prowled the shadowlands now, conquering some of the more predatory monsters. The being had shown Rebeka for a reason. It trusted her to be better.