Those remarkable gray eyes watched me with worry. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I mean, no. It’s complicated.”

“Well, I’ve got time,” she said as we stepped into the warm summer night. “We could get some food and talk.”

I hesitated, unsure if I wanted to unburden myself. I’d met Nina earlier this year, just after she’d helped her sister transform back from being a Strigoi. Nina was a spirit user like me and had helped a little when I’d fought to capture some of the power that went into restoring a Strigoi—power that we’d found could act as a vaccine to stop others from being forcibly turned against their will. Her sister, Olive, was also Neil’s object d’amour, if you could go that far. The two had only met a few times and maybe had a brief fling, though when she dropped out of communication, he pined for her as though they’d been together for years.

“I’m a good listener,” said Nina when I didn’t respond.

I shot her a smile. “I’m sure you are. I just don’t want to drag you down.”

“Drag me down?” She gave a harsh laugh. “Good luck. First of all, spirit’s already doing a great job at that, so you’ve got tough competition. Ever since I restored Olive, that . . . I don’t know . . . do you get that? That kind of dark, dreary haze?”

“Yup,” I said. “Sure do.”

“Well, that seems to be a daily visitor now, which makes life delightful, as I’m sure you can imagine. Meanwhile, after going through all that for Olive, she’s run off on some vision quest because she decided she needed some ‘alone time’ to think about everything that’s happened! She somehow manages to keep ending our dreams before I get a chance to talk to her. I’d go try to look for her, but Sonya keeps insisting I stick around here to help with her spirit research. They put me up here in swanky accommodations, but I don’t have any other means to live off of, so I had to take a part-time secretarial job at the palace. Let me tell you, doing ‘customer service’ for a bunch of self-absorbed royals? Well, it’s like a new circle of hell.” She paused, remembering whom she was talking to. “No offense.”

I laughed, maybe the first time I’d genuinely done so in a while. “None taken, because I know exactly the types you’re talking about. If you do talk to your sister, by the way, you should let her know she’s breaking poor Neil’s heart.”

“Noted,” said Nina. “I think he’s one of the things she’s reflecting on.”

“Is that good or bad?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” she laughed.

I started laughing too, and suddenly, I decided to take her up on her offer. “Okay. Let’s get something to eat . . . though honestly, after the last twenty-four hours . . . I’d rather have a drink. I don’t suppose you’d be into that?” It was probably a terrible idea, but that hadn’t stopped me before.

Nina grabbed my hand and began leading me toward a building across the lawn. “Thank God,” she said. “I thought you’d never ask.”

F

CHAPTER 5

SYDNEY

OR A MOMENT, WHEN I SAW Sheridan’s syringe, I thought she was opting for some extreme form of tattoo refreshing. Like, instead of injecting my skin with small amounts of charmed ink, she was going to shoot me up with a monster dose to make me toe the line.

It won’t matter, I tried to tell myself. Magic use protects me, no matter how strong the amount they use. The words sounded reasonable, but I just wasn’t sure if they were true.

As it turned out, however, Sheridan had something entirely different in mind.

“Things seemed so promising for you after we last spoke,” she told me after plunging the needle into my arm. “I can’t believe you didn’t last an hour on your own.”

I nearly said, “Old habits die hard,” but remembered I needed to act contrite if I wanted any sort of advancement. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It just slipped out. I’ll apologize to Harrison if that’ll—”

A strange feeling began to well up in my stomach, starting at first as just slight discomfort and then building and building until it was full-blown nausea, the kind that took over your whole body. My stomach felt like it had a tidal wave in it, and my head began to throb. I could sense my temperature rising as well and sweat breaking out everywhere.

“I’m going to be sick,” I said. I wanted to put my head down, but the chair kept me locked in place.

“No,” said Sheridan. “You won’t be. Not yet. Enjoy the show.”

Along with arm restraints, the chair’s headrest also made sure I couldn’t turn my head, thus forcing me to look straight ahead at the screen. It turned on, and I braced myself for horrific images. What I saw instead were . . . Moroi. Happy Moroi. Friendly Moroi. Moroi children. Moroi doing ordinary things, like sports and eating at restaurants.

I was too miserable to puzzle out these baffling pictures, though. All I could think about was how I wished I could throw up. It was that kind of sickness—the kind where you knew you’d feel better if you could just expel that poison. But somehow, Sheridan was right. I couldn’t get my body to throw up, no matter how much I might’ve longed to, and I instead had to sit there as that terrible, corrupting nausea twisted my insides. Waves of agony swept me. It didn’t seem possible that I could contain this much misery inside me. I groaned and closed my eyes, mostly to make my head feel better, but Sheridan read another motive into it.

“Don’t,” she said. “This is a pro tip: It’ll go a lot easier on you if you watch of your own free will. We have ways of keeping your eyes open. You won’t like them.”

I blinked back tears and focused back on the screen. Through my suffering, my brain tried to figure out why she’d care if I was watching pictures of happy Moroi or not. What did that matter when my body felt like it was being turned inside out?

“You’re trying to . . .” I gagged, and for a moment, I thought I might get that relief after all. I didn’t. “. . . create some sort of Pavlovian response.”

It was a classic conditioning technique. Show me the image and make me feel terrible while I look at it, with the goal being that I’d eventually come to associate the Moroi—harmless, happy Moroi—with extreme discomfort and suffering. There was just one problem.