But she seemed genuinely unaffected by his taunting. “And I’d do it again. I got what I wanted. So did you. But you’re not going to kill me,” she said.

A strange buzzing started in my head. It was as if someone had turned on a television, but all I could hear was the high-pitched frequency noise. Dahlia’s voice filled my head. It was nothing like the communication I’d had with Cyrus or Nathan through the blood tie. This was a different connection, watery and slightly garbled, and it made my skull vibrate with pain, but I could understand it enough to get her meaning. “The package never left the premises.”

I saw her lips moving as she spoke to Cyrus, his superior expression as he answered her, but I couldn’t hear their words. I shook my head as if I were trying to clear water from my ears.

“Thank you,” I thought back to her, my words ricocheting unpleasantly in my skull. “I’ll never be able to repay you.”

“This doesn’t mean I like you. We’re not gonna go shopping for shoes or whatever the hell you’re thinking.”

There was a moment of silence, then the buzzing stopped, then her next words were crystal clear in my mind. “Kill him.” I saw her tremble as she turned to leave the room. “He will kill me eventually. I need him dead. I’d do it, but I can’t. Kill him, and I’ll pay you back with your heart.”

So, she did love him. Not enough to trust him with her life, and she shouldn’t have, but she did love him. She’d claimed it wasn’t his power that had drawn her to him. I’d had a hard time believing that, but now it was apparent. What had she said to me before?

Some things aren’t good or evil. Some things just…are.

I guess Dahlia just was, like a tornado or a tidal wave. A force of nature. I wasn’t going to try to understand her motives beyond simple self-preservation.

She paused as she passed me on her way to the door. “Make it quick. Don’t let him suffer.”

Then she left. I was so busy watching after her in awe that I forgot she’d released Cyrus.

It was Max’s shout that alerted me. “Carrie, look out!”

Cyrus clutched my blood-stained stake and rushed me with it. I leapt aside but lost my balance, tumbling onto my back. Without hesitation, he brought the stake down. I rolled away. The wood shattered as it drove full force into the floor.

Max started toward me, but I waved him away. “Stay with Nathan!” Though no longer unconscious, Nathan wasn’t strong enough to fight off a swarm of gnats, let alone anything else that might come after him. And I still didn’t trust Dahlia, bless her crazy little heart.

I jumped on Cyrus’s back, using my momentum to propel him face-first into the wall. I reached forward to gouge at his ruined eyes and felt his teeth close on my forearm. My bones cracked easily in his jaws and blood dripped from my paralyzed fingertips.