Liam watched him climb through the panel for a second, then tightened his grip on the thin steering wheel, fingers wrapping all the way around. As his nails dug into his palms, he opened himself once more to the dark and dismal place. He’d been pulling from it every few hours, drawing out what he could, but now it was time for the final charge. The shadows suffused him, frothing and pulsing, before he tapered off his draw on them and closed the rift again.

His biggest challenge yet. He laughed to himself, body bristling with electric anticipation. He was ready. Holding the shadows inside for so long—it was both exhilarating and terrifying. Comforting and restrictive, like a heavy winter blanket. It both dulled and sharpened his senses like the buzz of a first drink. He craved this. He needed this. And the book—the book could give him more.

He adjusted his officer’s cap, sat up as straight as he could—trying to look anything more than his eighteen years of age—and cranked the driver’s side window down.

“Your name?” the guard asked.

Liam smiled, toothy, shadows deep and thick as oil around him. No other guards in the gatehouse. Abruptly, the shadows flowed over the windowsill and slipped into the guard’s ears, his nose, snaring him before he could react.

“Sturmbannführer Junker.”

Liam, the shadows whispered. Faint as spider’s silk, but there all the same. Liam tightened his grip on the steering wheel and ignored them. There was nothing to fear. He was in control.

Pure black eyes stared back at Liam as the guard waved him through.

CHAPTER SEVEN

DANIEL

Daniel shouldn’t have wedged behind the crates with Rebeka. The cramped space was too much—all he could imagine were the walls squeezing in, his lungs full of lead while his body was on fire. He was back on the train to Łódź, pinned in by sixty or seventy other bodies. His viola case had been ripped from his hands by the sheer mass of humans as the SS soldiers herded them aboard, leaving him with nothing but the clothes he wore. Rebeka had clung to his sleeve, and he’d clung to Ari’s; their mother shed silent tears somewhere nearby, too far away to touch.

But who had Ari clung to when the next trains came? Had their mother held him all the way to Chełmno? Had they smelled it, the same thing he and Rebeka smelled when they stowed away on the passenger train—the stink of exhaust and burning flesh? Daniel smelled it again now, smelled it clinging to him, all over his skin and hair, as if he’d been buried alive with all those corpses. Like he would have been, if he and Rebeka hadn’t run.

Rebeka took his hand and squeezed.