For an instant, no one moved, and then Felix screamed again.

Scared, I dropped the line. Blackness hit me, and I stiffened, afraid to move. It was gone, everything, and I froze. I could feel nothing.

“Rachel!” Jenks called, and the world rushed back. Trent took me in a crushing embrace, and I breathed. Numb, I felt his heart beat against me. It reminded mine of what it was supposed to do. It was dark, and I didn’t know why.

“Breathe,” Trent said, his hold never easing. “Stay with me, Rachel. This is where you belong.”

“I know,” I mumbled, but the words seemed hard to form.

Pain iced through me when Felix screamed a third time, and my eyes opened. Trent held me as I stood. Cormel struggled with a bound Felix on the couch. Beyond them, Bis stood on the kitchen counter with Jenks. The gargoyle’s red eyes were round, and his skin was blacker than the line was white. “Am I okay?” I whispered, and he nodded.

“You broke the lights,” he rasped.

Blinking, I realized I had. Only the glow from Jenks’s dust and the candle Trent had started lit the room.

“My God,” Jenks whispered, and my gaze shifted to him. “It worked! He’s got an aura!”

The hunched shadow of Cormel let go as if stung. Shock—unusual and frightening in the undead—shone from him, a forgotten, unneeded emotion. He staggered back as a faint bluish-green haze, patchy and thin, began to rise from Felix. It was his soul, and it was struggling to escape even as Felix writhed, trying to contain it.

“Take the cloth!” I exclaimed. “Burn it! Now!”

Cormel reached out, hand drawing back as if afraid to touch him.

“Oh, for Tink’s ever-humping loving,” Jenks swore, darting down and snatching the silk off Felix.

“Burn it!” I cried out, struggling against Trent’s arms as a thin ribbon of aura trailed from Felix, mixing with Jenks’s dust as he flew to the candle.

“No!” Felix howled, back arched and searching, and then the cloth hit the flame. It went up in a flash. Jenks darted to safety. Felix collapsed, sobbing, but it was different this time, broken, relieved, full of pain. His soul was trapped in him. This wasn’t going to be good.

I can do better than this, I thought, shaking as Ivy came to my mind. She wouldn’t have such a hard time of it since she hadn’t been dead for two centuries.

Cormel inched closer to Felix. “Is it done?” he asked, and I nodded, only now realizing that I was still in Trent’s arms.

His hold was tight in fear, and I looked up at him, seeing the stress in the lines by his eyes. “I’m okay,” I said, and he let go fast.

Jenks hovered close, eyeing me sharply. “You sure?”