I STARED AT the phone in my hand as though it had turned into a poisonous snake. I’d answered No, and Bronson had said, Good-bye, Miss Moore, and hung up.
He knew.
I didn’t know how he knew, but he knew I’d been there.
I looked at the phone. The time read five fifteen. The slaughter at Tyler’s house had happened before dawn. Not much before, maybe about four a.m.
Nearly thirteen hours ago. Long enough to fly there, kill them, and fly back.
Panic swept over me, hot and moist, making my skin tingle everywhere it touched. My armpits, my elbows, the backs of my knees: all of them were set alight with a buzzing, electric jolt sensation.
There’s no record of a flight, because you didn’t fly.
Relief fell on me, driving me down into the chair I kept by the desk in the corner. A bubble rolled inside my chest. Laughter. Ridiculous, hysterical laughter. It twittered behind my breastbone like a caged hummingbird, trying to take wing and fly free from my voice box. I swallowed it, sniggering instead.
It was okay. I was going to be okay.
Daniel moved, his legs sweeping the covers off him to fall and tumble in a bundle to the floor. His head twisted, and he began to murmur.
Daniel’s going to be okay.
The moment the thought was complete, he convulsed, jerking off the mattress as if a string had been hooked to his spine and yanked sharply upward. Arms and legs stiff, he vibrated on the bed as though a hundred thousand volts of electricity were coursing through him.
I grabbed his arm. His skin burned my fingers with fever. “Daniel!” I screamed, trying to wake him, drag him back to this reality.
His voice stuttered from his throat, jerking past clenched jaw muscles, coming out low and animal-like. Foam boiled through lips pulled thin and tight over his teeth, a symptom of rabid dreams rampaging through him. His skin purpled as he failed to squeeze air into the lungs trapped inside his constricted chest.
He choked, suffocating on a nightmare. I tried to jam my fingers into his mouth, to pry it apart, but they bounced off his teeth, shut like a portcullis.
Think. THINK!
Shoving my hands against his chest, I tried to push him down on the mattress. He was made of case-hardened steel, unmovable, unbendable. Pressing with all of my weight made no difference at all. His face darkened, gallows-black creeping down his neck as arteries throbbed like living things trapped under his skin.
Desperate panic clawed at my mind. Without thinking, I shoved my hand under the edge of his shirt and touched my Mark to the sweaty, fever hot skin over his heart. The cut lines in my palm lit like a brand against his perspiration, making me cry out. Pushing through the pain, I commanded the magick inside me.
Show me.
The steel circlet convulsed around my throat, a cold metal clench that sent shivers up my spine. The magick sputtered to life, flickering inside me, a hand shaking off droplets of water, and my mind’s eye fluttered open. My vision slewed sideways into a weird, grainy tone, as if the room had switched to a cheap black and white film.
Daniel looked hollow, a near empty chalice, slicksided with the remnants and the dregs of a slow-draining pool of his life force. The energy gathered in the low places of his body. Some of it flowed through our connection, a thin tributary running from his chest into my arm, feeding the magick that connected us. The rest turned in a slow-moving whirlpool, corkscrewing away into a sinister spot nestled by his spine.
I pulled my hand away, breaking the connection. The real world slapped me in eye-searing color. Leaning over, I grabbed Daniel’s arm and pulled. His body slid a few inches on the sheets. He was too stiff, too heavy. I couldn’t flip him over.
Changing tactics, I shoved, pushing him off the edge of the bed to roll onto the floor.
Scrambling, I found him face down on the floor, spine still arched, making his feet hang in the air—but that’s not what I saw, not what my eyes locked on.
His shirt had ridden up in the fall off the bed, gathering around his chest, under his armpits.
A fist-sized chunk of tumor blinked up at me from the small of his back.