“What did you see?” Luke asks Cody.
After Cody finishes sipping some water, he says, “I…um…” He glances my way again, briefly, that fear in his eyes, but none of the guys seem to be reading it like I am.
“I didn’t see Finnegan,” he says. “It was like something was pushing back against me. I’m wondering if they have some spell to keep me from getting through.”
“I saw something,” I admit.
All eyes turn to me, and Alexei approaches, stepping behind me and resting his hand on my back. His touch is so goddamn soothing.
“When I touched Cody, it was like I was transported into Finnegan’s body. I didn’t know at first, but I saw images, and one of them was a reflection in a mirror. That’s how I knew. I was in his head and had access to memories, but…it wasn’t just Finnegan in there with me. There was something else, and I had access to its thoughts too.”
“Farras?” Brad asks.
“No, it’s something else.” It’s hard to even put into words, but I go for it. “It’s an entity. I think its name is Syphor. It’s never been in a physical body before. I don’t know how to explain it; it’s something I just knew.”
“When I had my first vision,” Luke says, “that’s how Cody explained it to me. It’s like being in a dream where you just know things without knowing why. Like there’s a woman you’ve never seen before in real life, but you know she’s your sister in the dream.”
“That’s exactly what it was like. This thing, it’s loving being in a body because that’s a new sensation for it. The guys…it’s controlling them somehow, using Finnegan to do it.”
“How many guys?” Seth asks, and I’m sure it’s because he’s wondering how many times Cody will have to put hislife at risk. And even from what happened to him after what he did with me, I know it must be too much.
I turn to Alexei, since I don’t want to say anything he wouldn’t want me to share.
“All of them?” he asks, and I nod. “Fuck. There are four total: Preston, Finnegan, Spencer, and Gage.”
“So we’re scrapping the plan where Cody deals with each of these guys, right?” Seth asks.
“Let’s talk this through,” Luke says. “Let Matteo finish telling us what he saw.”
“It’s not just Syphor doing this,” I say. “There’s someone he’s connected to, someone he’s doing these things for. A leader. He’s on a mission.”
“So something’s controlling Syphor,” Brad says, “and Syphor’s controlling these guys. Making them do stuff.”
“Preston and Finnegan were in the woods the night that monster was on the loose,” Cody says. “You think whatever’s possessing them might have been responsible for it?”
“After what I just saw,” I say, “I think that’s possible.”
“And Syphor knew about us already,” Cody goes on. “He got Alexei to spy on us—that’s how he knew about my power and that they needed to do something to block me, but for whatever reason, it didn’t block Matteo.”
“Yeah, I’m really curious to know why that is,” Seth says, eyeing me suspiciously. “How do we even know we can trust this guy? Something evil was inside him. What if it’s still there and this is all a trap? Or what if he’s making the whole thing up?”
“Or,” Alexei says, “what if when we performed that spell,it changed something in Matteo? Something that connected him to these entities?”
“Like frequencies,” Cody says.
“What?” Brad asks.
“When I connected with Kysar, it was almost like I was suddenly able to access the channel he was on, and it was coming through clear, but only for a few minutes. What if the spell let Matteo access the frequency Farras and these entities are on? So they could block my frequency, but not his.”
It takes me a minute to wrap my thoughts around that, but it makes about as much sense as the rest of it. Since no one chimes in to let Cody know that’s bullshit, the other guys must get it.
“Like networks,” Alexei observes, drawing everyone’s attention. “It’s like you’re an IP address and your IP was set to have access to Kysar, but maybe blocked from this other network, which Matteo has access to.” Given his major, I’m not surprised that’s how he’d look at it. “So if that’s true,” he tells Cody, “you might not be able to get in.”
An image rushes back to me: that strip of metal around flesh. “They’re wearing something. Some kind of metal.”
“What?” Cody asks.
“When I first realized I was inside someone else’s body, this thing thought I shouldn’t be able to be in his body, and then it worried I’d see its weaknesses before this image was projected—metal around flesh, gold-colored…that’s all I remember.”
