“Kaylee, right?” Heidi said, and her voice wasn’t familiar, because I’d never heard her speak. “We almost met once. Do you remember?”

I nodded, my insides cold from shock, my hands shaking at my sides.

“Oh, you’re trembling!” Her smile brightened, but her gaze was cold. “Is that fear or guilt?”

It was actually confusion and terror, but admitting that seemed unwise, so I started with something more basic. “Are you real?”

“As real as you are.” She reached for my right hand, then held it in both of hers. Her hands were warm around mine, and undeniably solid.

“How…?” She was dead. I knew she was dead. Was she the corpse Luca had sensed? If so, what was she doing here? Was this a trap?

I couldn’t make sense out of all the possibilities, and I couldn’t make sense out of her.

“You’re asking the wrong question. How doesn’t matter,” Heidi said, and she laughed when I pulled my hand from her warm grasp. “What should matter to you is why. Ask me why.”

I blinked, but no words came out. I was drowning in shock and horror, followed closely by a devastating confusion.

“Okay, I’ll say your lines, but just this once.” Heidi cleared her throat and closed her eyes, and when they opened again, she frowned at me in a mask of bewilderment obviously meant to mimic my own. “Why are you here, Heidi, when we both know you died months ago?” she said in a falsetto that sounded nothing like me.

“I’m so glad you asked,” she continued in her normal voice. “I’m here because of you, Kaylee. Also, not coincidentally, I’m dead because of you. I wasn’t supposed to die, and you failed to save me, just like you failed to save all those other girls. Just like you failed to save the woman propped up on a toilet in the bathroom. I left the stall open. Someone will find her soon, and they may never know her death was your fault, but I’ll know it. And you’ll know.”

I was breathing too fast, and I wasn’t even sure how that was possible, but I couldn’t make it stop. Luca had only sensed one corpse, and if there was a dead woman in the bathroom, she had to be what he’d felt. Which meant Heidi wasn’t dead.

How could she not be dead?

“You can’t hyperventilate anymore, but I appreciate the drama. Very angsty. But even if you could pass out, this would all be here waiting for you when you wake up. Me. The woman in the bathroom—a random, innocent soul, plucked in its prime. And she’s only the start. Every life I take will be on your shoulders. You couldn’t stop it then, and you can’t stop it now. All you can do is squeeze your eyes shut and scream for their souls. Isn’t that right, little bean sidhe?”

I don’t know if it was the way she called me a “little bean sidhe” orthe way her gaze narrowed on me, her mouth open slightly, like she could taste my fear on the air. Either way, in that moment, I realized I wasn’t talking to Heidi Anderson.

I never had been.

“Avari,” I whispered. “You’re the soul thief?”

Heidi threw her head back and laughed. She sounded like a girl, but that look in her eyes, that brutal mirth in response to my pain—that was all hellion. “That shall be my new epithet,” he said, abandoning the borrowed teen-speech pattern altogether. “Avari, thief of souls. I like it. Although, ‘devourer’ has more of a menacing undertone. But we can work on the details later.”

I blinked, resisting the urge to shake my head in denial. This made no sense. But then, neither did my existence.

“What is this? First Scott and now Heidi? How are you possessing dead bodies?” I demanded, trying to find even one connection between the jumble of mismatched puzzle pieces in my head.

Had he taken Scott’s corpse, then returned it to the morgue? Why didn’t Luca sense Heidi as a walking corpse? And how could Heidi possibly look exactly as I remembered her, seven months after she’d died? How was she still dressed the same?

“You haven’t figured it out yet,” the Heidi-thing taunted. She put one hand on my shoulder and circled me slowly, trailing her hand across my back, then down my arm, and I could only shudder in revulsion. “The dead can’t be possessed, and even if they could, the real Heidi Anderson would not be fit for public viewing. She has long since started to decompose.”

“Then what is this? How are you here?” Was this some kind of illusion? Was I dreaming? Sabine could design one hell of a nightmare, but she couldn’t manipulate the fears of the dead, so this couldn’t be her work.

“I’ve learned a new trick. And I have a new toy.” Avari spread his borrowed arms and turned Heidi slowly, for my appraisal. “Isn’t she pretty?”

“She’s not a toy.”

“You’re right. She’s more like a pawn, and pawns exist to be sacrificed. Fortunately, your world is full of pawns.” Avari waved one arm at the shoppers ambling from store to store, but the gesture had greater meaning. Greater horror. His chessboard wasn’t the mall; it was the world. My world. “And I will use as many of them as it takes.”

“They’re not pawns, they’re people,” I said through gritted teeth.

“And you want to save them?” he asked. I didn’t bother to answer. “You can’t save them all, Ms. Cavanaugh. Even in your new state of being, you don’t have that kind of power. But you can save one. I will gladly accept your soul in exchange for the one I now carry—the woman in the restroom.”