“Not if I get him first.”

He might be rich, he might surround himself with bodyguards, but what was all that to someone like me?

“Cady,” Lon warned. “I can hear what you’re feeling, but you can’t act on that.”

“Why not? Who else can stop him? The police?”

“We can’t just ram down his door and kill him. That makes us no better than he is. And we have other things to think about.”

“Like?”

“Like Jupe. Telly was only a couple of years older.”

“Dare wouldn’t—”

“You want to bet on that? How do we know what he won’t do? Even if he won’t pull the trigger, what’s to stop him from arranging some kind of accident when Jupe’s at school? You think a man who doesn’t give a shit about killing one teenager is going to hesitate to kill another one?”

“But he was your father’s best friend. You’re family to him.”

“You willing to bet Jupe’s life on that? Mr. and Mrs. Holiday? The Giovannis?”

I stared at him across the darkened car for several moments before shaking my head.

“I’m responsible for too many people, Cady, and that includes you. I’m not taking a chance until I’ve had time to think it all through.”

I couldn’t argue. He was right. But as we drove home in silence, another part of me wondered if us being cautious just meant Dare had won. Again.

• • •

When we got home, I played phone tag with Kar Yee, leaving her a message that I had news about Telly. She left me one in return that she’d stop by Lon’s house tomorrow afternoon on her way back from visiting our friend upstate.

We checked in on Jupe—he was snoring off his night with Yvonne—sent the Holidays back to their own house, and crashed. I fell asleep angry, still thinking of Dare, but ended up dreaming about someone worse.

I was lying on my back in a field of cheery wildflowers, red and yellow and purple. A soft breeze rustled through the green grass and stems swaying around my limbs. Lon’s hand clasped mine. He lay at my side, eyes closed, wind fluttering his honey hair.

The bright blue sky began to darken around the edges, cerulean shot through with dreary gray. Something approached—something that I couldn’t immediately see, sneaking through the field. Fear blanketed me as I watched tall stalks of grass bending. The flowers around us drooped and withered. The green grass turned to straw.

Something was coming.

I shook Lon, trying to wake him, but he remained asleep.

Two legs appeared in the dead grass. My gaze followed them. My mother’s long face peered down at me, a smirk curling her lips.

The sky behind her continued to darken, but it wasn’t night. I said, “Why are you here? The moon’s not out, and I’m not doing magick. You can’t see me.”

“The moon is not visible here,” she corrected, her white toga shifting in the breeze. “But it’s night on your plane.”

“But I’m not doing magick.”

“This makes no difference to me. Not anymore. As long as the moon is visible, I can track your Heka here.”

“Where is this?”

“Between the planes.”

“Liar,” I said. “This is a dream.”

She squinted. “Me, a liar? Look at yourself. You are the one with the tail and the forked tongue like the serpent in the garden. The great deceiver, filled with venom.”

Forked tongue. I remembered biting my lip at the racetrack. It still wasn’t fully healed.

My tail slithered down the side of my thigh. Black and white stripes rotated as it grew until it was longer than my legs. My mother watched it carefully, taking a step back to stay out of its reach.

“What am I? What did you put inside me?” I whispered.

“Why, Sélène—don’t you like your serpentine form? It is the real you, after all. And every night you will shed your human skin and become your true self, my little one.”

I shook my head. “I’m not yours.”

“You’ll always be mine. I called forth beings you can’t imagine and trapped their magick to create you inside my womb. I birthed your body.”

“A pact with what? What am I? What did you create?”

Instead of answering me directly, she talked around my question. “After all my hard work, how do you repay me? Cause me nothing but misery.”

She murmured words that sounded like a spell, crouched at my feet, and cruelly clamped my tail to the ground. Pain spiked through it, all the way into my spine. I tried to move away, but I was paralyzed. She’d done something to me with magick.

Terror overtook me. I strained to look at Lon. He was still sleeping.

My mother growled at my feet, still holding my tail to the ground. “You sold your own parents to a demon,” she said, anger darkening her eyes. “Once she took us into the Æthyr, Nivella killed your father. Sliced him into shreds like he was meat.” She leaned over me. “Do you not care? The man who raised you is dead.”

“No, I don’t care,” I said coldly. “I’m glad he’s dead. I wish you were.”

She growled in my face. “It is your fault. Your father’s blood is on your hands. And you may not care, but I do. He was my lover. My soul mate. My reason for living.”

“Why are you still alive, then?”

“I live for you, now, darling. Only you.” She crawled over me and whispered into my ear. “And I want what’s mine. I created you, spent the last twenty-five years of my life waiting for you. And you may think you’ve gotten away, but it’s only a matter of time before I will have you under my control again. And to prove it, I will take from you what you took from me. An eye for an eye . . . a heart for a heart.”