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I open my eyes to laughter, to music, to bright lights.
“All right there, Kace?” Maggot grins down at me. Her smile is garish, too much color in her cheeks. She’s holding a glass of dark liquid, which sloshes over the rim and lands on me as she beams, swaying to the beat of the drums. “Having a little nap? Never could handle your drink right!”
Then she moves off, swaying, still singing, dancing to the drums.
The drums.
I turn, my eyes widening. Evor’s playing the drums about a hundred yards away. Kazem’s dancing near him, doing his wild dance, arms thrashing, legs kicking. And there are people—so many people. It’s everyone. And this is...
No.... it can’t be.
A fluttery feeling emanates from my heart, across my chest. This is... I remember this. I was dancing wildly with him.
“Kacey, there you are!” Shweta grabs me. Her eyes are wide, the blue rings around the outsides of her irises so vivid and clear. Her grip on my upper arms is strong, tight. She’s shaking. “I don’t know what’s happening, how we’re—”
“So far back in time?” I stare at her. My voice sounds strange, kind of echoey, getting lost in the beat of the drums.
“How far back? Which Night Party is this?” I look around for a clue, then back at Shweta. But her eyes gloss over as she looks behind me. Her mouth drops open.
I turn and look.
It’s Hana. Shweta’s Hana.
Hana’s alive.
My mind whirs. We’re at least four months back in time. Four months. Hana died just short of four months before we tried the takeover of New Zeralzi.
I focus back on Shweta. “Why has this happened? Come on, you have to know.”
But Shweta doesn’t answer me. “I knew I’d see her again,” is all she says. She lets go of me and moves toward Hana. Hana who’s lifting her arms into the air, swaying to the music, eyes shut, long blond hair fluttering around her.
Shweta approaches her, gets right up to Hana before she opens her eyes. The two embrace, and then they’re kissing. Kissing a lot, and Shweta’s crying, tears glistening as they roll down her face.
“What’s the matter, love?” Hana asks, her voice like a melody.
Shweta just cries and cries, and I turn away, feeling like an intruder. My heart won’t stop pounding. This isn’t... We’re at least four months back in time. Way before the siege. Why? So, we can find out who the traitor is? Stop that happening? And stop the person setting the time loop?
The time loop! Ysabelle—Ysabelle set it. That’s what Caia-Lu was telling me. And I see Ysabelle’s eyes as I blink. See the fire in them, the cunningness. See her. She’s playing with me. She’s playing with time. She and the Overlord Seer, it has to be. You need a Seer to do this kind of work.
And now I’m back four months ago.
Clive runs past me, grinning wildly, manically. Everyone’s dancing and drinking and taking the ayahuasca.
“Hey, Kacey,” a voice shouts, only just audible above the pounding music. It’s Sian, her red face beaming. Her blond hair’s spiked, partly matted. “Come and dance with me.”
And then she’s here, taking my hand, leading me toward Evor, where Kazem and the others are still dancing. I feel myself starting to move too, but I’m swept along with it. It’s like I’m drunk too, but I can’t be—can I? I blink. My head feels lighter, strange, and my body’s fluttery—but that can’t mean I’ve gone back to a point where I was drunk, can it?
I take a deep breath, cast my mind back to the last Night Celebration. Was I drunk? I can’t remember. Shit—of course I was. I’m always drunk at these. I drink, just like everyone else does. We all have fun. The only people that don’t are the...
“The guards!” I shout, but the word’s swept away by the music. They’ll be sober people here. We always make sure there are.
I stumble toward Evor. The beat of the drums gets louder and louder and I stare at one of the drums for a moment. The way the taut cowskin stretches with every beat of the deer’s leg on it. How it rebounds and stretches. And I imagine the cowskin breaking, snapping, a huge bang that stops...everything.
Evor’s face is blank yet he’s smiling at the same time. I try shouting to him, but he doesn’t appear to notice my words. I shout louder, but I don’t know if I actually am. So, I turn away. The guards will be on our perimeter... Out at the stones... the rocks? What are they called? I frown.
I stumble to the right, following a small gravel path that I don’t recognize. Of course I wouldn’t. We always hold the celebrations far, far away from the Enhanced in the no man’s lands. The lands that we don’t use a lot because of high spirit activity. But on the evenings of the Night Celebrations, the Seers encourage the spirits to move along a little, so it’s safer for us.
The Seers...
More than one Seer... Not just Shweta. Others too...
Yes! We’re near Yarrow. The Yarrow Group! And suddenly, I see the Yarrow faces around us. Their guards. It’ll be their guards, it’ll—
There’s a figure far away, on the hillside. A woman screaming at the sky. And above her, the sky is changing. A dark mist swirling. A spirit.
My eyes widen, my heart thrums. “Who’s that?” I ask the nearest person. Bhavesh.
But he doesn’t answer. He’s high or something. His eyes are bulging, too round.
I look back to the person. The spirit’s going for her. She’s screaming, and it’s almost like I can hear her screams now. Scared screams.
No one is helping her.
I pat my thighs—no weapons in my pockets. I look around. No weapons here. A glance back shows me the woman’s fallen down. The spirit’s going for her—going to feed? Oh Gods.
I’ve got to go now, got to help her.
What, you’re going to fight a spirit with your bare hands?
I don’t think anymore. I just run and—
Dizziness washes over me, and I stagger, head pounding. Shit—I’ve still got this dysautonomia thing. My heart squeezes as I try to catch my breath, try to blink away the dark dots in my vision, try to stop the colors swirling around me.
The woman screams. The spirit—it’s definitely feeding on her!
Go!
I push myself. A fast walk, start to run then slow down as the dizziness takes me again. I scream at myself, clench the muscles in my legs in the way Evor taught me to. Imagine my blood not pooling. Myself not fainting.
I can do this. I have to do this.
And I do—I leave the dancing and the singing and the drinking and the drumming behind, and I climb the mountain, knowing I’m going to be too late. But knowing I’m still trying.
Because that’s what matters.
Or maybe you should’ve been smarter! Alerted someone else! There has to have been a guard about...
“Hey!” I scream, running at the spirit, surging forward, begging myself not to faint. My eyes flit around, trying not to settle on the seething dark mist. Never look a spirit in the eye. That’s one of the first things I was taught at D’Elinous. Few people live if they do...
The woman, maybe she’s already dead? She’s not moving and—
Icy pinpricks run over my body as the spirit whips toward me.
“Stop it! Leave her alone!” I yell, and the woman lifts her face.
It’s Celena.
Celena? What the hell is she doing out here?
The spirit looks at me—and I look at it. A thousand glittering eyes in the dark, swirling mist. I jolt. I am looking a spirit dead in the eye. I’m going to die. This is it.
But the spirit doesn’t come toward me. It doesn’t reveal gnashing teeth or whatever spirits like these have to eat people with. It just looks and it hisses.
Oh God. The hiss grates through me, so much of it inside my head. I cover my ears, feel blood rushing through my ear canals. Feel it on my hands, sticky, hot, wet. I’m bleeding. Shit. Blood’s pouring out of me.
So much blood.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Celena screams at me. Her words are only just audible through my bleeding.
I jolt, look up at her, my hands in front of my chest. Hands that are dripping blood. And I feel more of it trickling down the sides of my neck, my shoulders, my chest.
“Saving you!” I mutter.
“No!” Celena says. She staggers to her feet—she’s still alive, somehow, miraculously. She swears at the top of her voice, then looks at the sky. “Where are you going? Come back! We’ve got—”
A high-pitched screeching answers her. The spirit? She’s literally talking to a spirit?
“What the hell is happening?” I stare at her. My heart’s pounding hard again, but I can feel my pulse in my thighs and my feet. I don’t like it.
Celena glares at me. “You’re ruining everything. He was only just getting started.”
Only just getting started?
“Were you trying to have sex with...with that?” My head pounds, and I stare at her... confused. “That’s a fucking spirit,” I hiss. My hands drip blood everywhere as I flick them about. I can’t even comprehend this. Is this how she gets around the no-sex rule that Maggot set? By having sex with a bloody spirit? Is that... is she that desperate for a sex? For a baby? So much so she’d sleep with a bloody spirit.
“You know nothing! Just go! Leave me alone!”
“Go?” I echo her word. “You want to call that spirit back? Are you actually that stupid? You can’t make a deal with them. It’ll kill you.”
“And that proves how much you don’t know.” She gives me the strongest glare ever—and it is so strong that I stumble back. What the hell? She shouldn’t be able to do that. I blink hard. Am I that drunk?
I stumble back.
Shweta. I need to find Shweta. Shweta will sort all of this out. She has to.
#
“I DON’T WANT TO BE away from her for long,” Shweta tells me. Her gaze lingers back to where Hana is waiting.
The Night Celebration is still going strong, and Celena is presumably still on the hillside trying to get that spirit to come back, but my head’s clearer now. Even if it is still pounding.
“Yes, I know, but just listen. I saw Caia-Lu before the reset. And I know who did the time loop. Who set it up.” Ysabelle. I don’t even want to say her name. But I have to. She is trying to hurt me, trap me. Revenge for killing her group?
And now I have to tell Shweta about the clansmen. About what I did.
So I take a deep breath, and I tell her, and as I tell her I look toward the hillside. Where—oh Gods... Celena’s actually... copulating with the spirit. I look away quickly, my heart pounding, feeling heat rushing to my face. She’s... oh. My eyes widen. She had that pregnancy test. Or rather, will have one when we get to that part of this time loop again.
She’ll think she’s pregnant. Can she get pregnant by a freaking spirit?
“And you think he’s alive, too?” Shweta rubs her eyes.
It takes me a moment to realize she’s talking about the Overlord Seer. “Yes.” I shake my head. “I need to find Ysabelle and the Overlord Seer.” We’re further back this time—that has to be for a reason. Caia-Lu somehow helping? Because I need to find them before they begin the time loop the first time.
Shweta nods.
I meet her eyes. “We need to kill them, don’t we?”
Her gaze darkens, and a twisting feeling fills my heart. There’s no need for her to say the word, but she says it anyway. “Yes.”
This is exactly what I was made for, says the Beast. Killing. Let’s kill everyone.